What is an Alternatives Analysis (AA)? The Alternatives Analysis, or AA, is part of the planning and development process established by Federal law for new transit projects. The AA includes:

• Identifying specific transportation problems in an area, or “corridor” being studied;
• Defining reasonable alternative strategies to address these problems;
• Forecasting potential environmental, transportation, and financial impacts of these alternatives; and
• Evaluating how each alternative addresses transportation problems, goals, and objectives in the corridor.

The AA provides decisionmakers with enough information to select a specific project design concept and, also, to determine the scope of the project so it can be included in the metropolitan area’s long-range transportation plan. With this information, the project can also advance to preliminary engineering and the final phases of the environmental review process.

Since the AA requires attention to potential environmental impacts, the environmental evaluation required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)—an Environmental Assessment (EA), in this case—is incorporated into a combined EA/AA process.

What is an Environmental Assessment (EA)? The National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) requires that all major Federal actions with the potential to significantly affect the human or natural environment must be evaluated to determine if such impacts would likely occur, and how great they would be. Since Capital Metro is considering the possibility of applying for funding from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) for potential transit system improvements that may be recommended by the Future Connections Study, those improvements could be considered a major Federal action.

An Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, determines the nature and extent of environmental impacts that are expected to be significant. However, since the impacts of the kinds of improvements to be considered in this study are not known to be significant, an Environmental Assessment (EA) will be conducted to answer that question. An EA:

• States the purpose of and need for the project;
• Summarizes the process used to develop the alternatives evaluated;
• Identifies any potential social, economic, or environmental impacts; and
• Identifies methods to avoid or mitigate impacts.

The EA will result in either a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) or, if significant impacts are identified, an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) will be required.