For my Chuck Green Fellowship experience this Summer, I had the opportunity to partner with ReConnect Rondo. ReConnect Rondo is a nonprofit organization driven to right the wrongs of the construction of the I-94 freeway which tore through the historic Rondo neighborhood by reconnecting the Rondo community via the construction of a landbridge over I-94 and the creation of an African American Cultural Enterprise District. With these two objectives, ReConnect Rondo seeks to empower the Rondo community to reverse the effects of systemic oppression.
Throughout my time at ReConnect Rondo, I utilized my geography and mathematics skills to perform a study on how existing traffic conditions in the Rondo area affect Carbon Monoxide and Particulate Matter emissions. Since there is significant discourse surrounding the many proposed alternatives to the current I-94 freeway among MnDOT and the general public, understanding how these different alternatives affect traffic-related CO and PM emissions is crucial. Since MnDOT has no intention of doing this analysis itself, the work is left to other organizations, such as ReConnect Rondo. To understand how alternative solutions affect emissions, an understanding of existing conditions must be done. Thus, my primary work revolved around following EPA-recommended procedures to perform a traffic-related CO and PM hotspot analysis of the Rondo area.
To perform this CO and PM hotspot analysis, I used EPA’s emission estimation tool, MOVES. Throughout my time at ReConnect Rondo, I spent my time understanding how MOVES worked and followed the necessary procedures to perform my hotspot analysis. These procedures included using ArcGIS to define my analysis scope and model the scope in terms of traffic links, developing my own tools to be utilized in traffic counts, and performing intersection volume counts at each intersection of the project scope. Once the data collection was complete, I spent the rest of my time inputting the data into MOVES, performing the CO and PM analyses, and congregating the results into a final report. The report included geospatial analyses of the data to understand the different emission processes and highlight critical emission hotspots.
I am extremely grateful for the experience that I was provided at ReConnect Rondo. I gained valuable insight into the inner workings of the nonprofit world and gained an understanding of how the skills I am developing at Macalester help to create meaningful change in the world. Beyond my educational and professional growth, this experience has given me hope that purposeful work is being done to create actual systemic change.