APA Awarded $60,000 to Research Tribal Transportation Planning

APA's Research Department has been selected from among 20 competing research organizations to conduct a synthesis study on the status of tribal transportation programs in the U.S.

The project for the Transportation Research Board's National Cooperative Highway Research Program will seek information from tribes that are currently undertaking transportation planning, project development, construction, safety, transit, and maintenance. Information will include current staffing for tribal governments and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the amount and source of funding for transportation programming activities.

Tribal governments and state, local, and federal agencies are expected to use the information in this study to determine the state of tribal transportation programs and measures needed to assist tribes in developing capacity to perform transportation-related functions. The research will be conducted over 15 months starting December 1, 2004.

"We are very pleased to be given the opportunity to work with TRB on this important issue," Research Director Bill Klein said. "Tribal transportation, while having some characteristics in common with transportation elsewhere, has a number of unique and special aspects that will be identified and analyzed in the study. There are also differences in practices of transportation planning and implementation between tribes that must be carefully considered."

The research team for the project will include senior research associate Jim Schwab, AICP; senior research fellow Stuart Meck, FAICP; librarian Shannon Paul; Becky Retzlaff, AICP, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago; and Sara Lutz, a planner in APA's education department who is a recent transportation graduate from Rutgers University.

The chairs of APA's Transportation Planning Division and new Indigenous Planning Division were consulted during the proposal development process. Key members of both divisions will come together in a focus group in March at APA's National Planning Conference in San Francisco to review the study design and survey instrument, and later to review drafts of the report.

Among the tribes likely to be involved in the study are:

Redlake
Oklahoma Cherokee Nation
Eastern Band Cherokee
Seneca Nation
Salish Kooteni
Navajo Nation
Osage
Mescalero Apache
Bois Forte
Lummi Tribe
Kawerak, Inc. consortium
Southern Ute
Hoopa Tribe
Missippi Band Choctaw
Poarch Band Creek
Standing Rock Sioux
Wind River Shoshone and Northern Arapahoe
Mashantuckett Band of Pequot
Mohegan
St. Regis Mohawk
Tohono O'Odham
Fort Belknap Indian Community

Anyone seeking further information about the project may contact Jim Schwab (jschwab@planning.org) or Stuart Meck (smeck@planning.org).