# DOT travel barriers

The below description is taken from DOT directly:

Consistent with OMB’s Interim Guidance for the Justice40 Initiative, DOT’s interim definition of DACs includes (a) certain qualifying census tracts, (b) any Tribal land, or (c) any territory or possession of the United States. DOT has provided a mapping tool to assist applicants in identifying whether a project is located in a Disadvantaged Community, available at Transportation Disadvantaged Census Tracts (arcgis.com). A shapefile of the geospatial data is available  Transportation Disadvantaged Census Tracts shapefile (version 2 .0, posted 5/10/22).

The DOT interim definition for DACs was developed by an internal and external collaborative research process (see recordings from November 2021 public meetings). It includes data for 22 indicators collected at the census tract level and grouped into six (6) categories of transportation disadvantage. The numbers in parenthesis show how many indicators fall in that category:

- Transportation access disadvantage identifies communities and places that spend more, and take longer, to get where they need to go. (4)
- Health disadvantage identifies communities based on variables associated with adverse health outcomes, disability, as well as environmental exposures. (3)
- Environmental disadvantage identifies communities with disproportionately high levels of certain air pollutants and high potential presence of lead-based paint in housing units. (6)
- Economic disadvantage identifies areas and populations with high poverty, low wealth, lack of local jobs, low homeownership, low educational attainment, and high inequality. (7)
Resilience disadvantage identifies communities vulnerable to hazards caused by climate change. (1)
- Equity disadvantage identifies communities with a with a high percentile of persons (age 5+) who speak English "less than well." (1)

The CEJST uses only Transportation Access Disadvantage.
