AASHTO PH16

Abstract

Scope: Overview This Handbook assists transportation agencies in defining a path and realistic goals for implementing the Eco-Logical process for their programs. In 2006, a team of representatives from eight Federal agencies, including the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), published Eco-Logical: An Ecosystem Approach to Developing Infrastructure Projects1 to present a vision of early collaboration among transportation, natural resource, and regulatory agencies when planning infrastructure projects and programs. In that vision, the interagency collaboration during system-wide planning provides an opportunity for sustaining or restoring ecological systems and their functions and values on an ecosystem scale, while also identifying more context sensitive solutions for the transportation plan, and improving environmental compliance and documentation. The goals of Eco-Logical are to: &#9632; Help state and local transportation agencies improve decisionmaking; &#9632;Minimize the time and costs associated with planning, environmental reviews, and permitting; &#9632; Provide for more effective environmental mitigation; &#9632; Capitalize on environmental enhancement opportunities; and &#9632; Improve public perception of the transportation project delivery processes. Many state departments of transportation (DOTs) and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) have used some of the methods that make up the Eco-Logical approach. Eco-Logical broadens the scope of interagency cooperation with an overarching methodology to guide both transportation agencies (state DOTs and MPOs) and resource agencies in addressing natural resource issues system-wide. The Eco-Logical concepts for addressing natural resource avoidance, minimization, and mitigation on a broad scale have been organized into a systematic, step-wise process. 1 Eco-Logical: An Ecosystem Approach to Developing Infrastructure Projects. DOT-VNTSC-FHWA-06-01, FHWA-HEP-06-011 (April 2006). <a href="https://www.environment.fhwa.dot.gov/ecological/eco_index.asp"> https://www.environment.fhwa.dot.gov/ecological/eco_index.asp.