Justice40 FY23 Baselines

Justice40 is a government-wide initiative with a goal of delivering 40 percent of the benefits of certain federal investments to disadvantaged communities (DACs) that face burdens related to climate change, the environment, health, and economic opportunity.

USDOT is not only meeting, it is exceeding the goal.

USDOT Baselines and Benefits Distribution

When making discretionary grant award decisions for Justice40 covered programs, DOT first considers program statutory language and Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) requirements.  When considering Justice40, DOT does not simply consider whether a project or project impact area is located within a disadvantaged community. Instead, DOT considers the benefits a project will create and how those benefits will help reverse or mitigate how a community is experiencing disadvantage.  Formula fund recipients are encouraged to do the same when making project selections.

Agency-wide Benefits Distribution 

Investments create multiple benefits across a wide variety of categories. Safety is and will always be USDOT’s top priority and is a core benefit of our investments. Through the Justice40 initiative, federal agencies were challenged with developing methods to measure the overall benefits flowing to disadvantaged communities, particularly as they relate to climate change, the environment, health and economic opportunity.

USDOT met this challenge by developing methods to measure the percentage of benefits generated by each Justice40 covered program across five benefit categories related to Justice40- increasing access, reducing emissions, increasing resiliency, supporting economic competitiveness and advancing safety.  

For the purpose of establishing the baselines, each funding program determined the percentage of measurable benefits generated by each program across each benefit category.  For example, FTA’s Buses and Bus Facilities program determined that 75% of the measurable benefits from its investments go to improving Access and 25% to Emissions Reduction.  To learn more about the percentage of benefits attributed to each funding program please visit this chart.

Justice40 Distribution of DOT Benefits by Category

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Justice40 Benefits in Action

The map below has a sampling of discretionary award announcements that were made in FY22 and FY23 in disadvantaged communities, from Justice40 covered programs. This sampling represents 1% of the total Justice40 covered program discretionary and formula fund investments in these years. Click on each project marker to learn more about examples of projects generating benefits in the 5 categories: Access, Safety, Resilience, Economic Competitiveness, and Emissions Reduction and the categories of disadvantage the project area is experiencing.

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USDOT's Justice40 Covered Programs & Their Baselines

​Covered Programs

USDOT currently has 40 programs, totaling approximately $150 billion in contract authority and advanced appropriations for fiscal years 2022-2026 across five modes. 

A Justice40 “covered program” is a Federal Government program that generates benefits in one or more of the seven areas in this graphic. Four of the seven areas have a direct tie to USDOT’s programs: clean transit, climate change, remediation and reduction of legacy pollution, and training and workforce development.  

Baselines

The baselines below are broken down into two separate funding categories: discretionary grant programs and formula grant programs.  They provide an up-to-date snapshot of each Justice40 covered program's- 

• Percentage of awarded funds benefiting disadvantaged communities; 

• Total funds awarded benefiting disadvantaged communities; and  

• Total number of awarded projects benefiting disadvantaged communities. 

This Justice40 KPI summary sheet and the percentage of benefits generated across each program by each benefit category, provides an explanation of how baselines were calculated.