By: Greg Cohen
In recent years, Congress has focused an increasing amount
of attention to oversight of the federal highway program in the areas of
reducing paperwork, cutting waste and saving time to speed delivery of needed
projects. Years of regulations and court decisions have created an exhaustive
and time-consuming approach to getting approvals to proceed with highway
construction. Project approval times have grown substantially since the 1970s
and nowhere is that more evident than the bureaucratic highway project planning
process.
In developing TEA-21, Congress required the U.S. DOT to
bring all involved agencies to the table and to establish time lines and
deadlines for comments. Five years later, the results have been decidedly
mixed. There is little consistency in interagency agreements from state to
state and delays have actually increased. The General Accounting Office
estimates that major projects take between nine and 19 years to be completed,
while a recent National Cooperative Highway Research Program study indicates
that the problem is pervasive, affecting even those projects that have little
to no environmental impact. In addition to the cumbersome legal hurdles that
can only be solved through legislation, there appears to be a problem that
varies from state to state regarding the willingness or ability of some federal
participants to make highway projects an agency priority.
In 2002, recognizing the immediate national and regional
priorities associated with major transportation projects, U.S. DOT Secretary Norm
Mineta implemented President Bush's executive order on environmental
stewardship and transportation project reviews. In announcing his intention to
convene top-level agency decision makers into a streamlining task force, Mineta
noted that the major proj-ects (those that provide the greatest congestion
relief, safety benefits and productivity gains) require 13 years of study on
average before groundbreaking can even begin.
The same year, two bipartisan streamlining bills were
introduced by key transportation leaders, Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska) of the
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and then-Chairman Max Baucus
(D-Mont.) of the Senate Finance Committee. The bills had slight differences,
but both were focused on three fundamental goals: (1) advancing projects
quickly through improved procedures; (2) preserving substantive environmental
protections; and (3) maintaining public involvement in project planning.
2003 is the key year to enact streamlining legislation. As
part of the much larger legislation to reauthorize TEA-21, specific
streamlining laws need to be placed in law in order to reverse the trend of
delays, provide predictability to a complex process and restore trust with
motorists suffering in traffic jams. At a minimum, four basic changes must take
place to effectively address delay:
* The environmental review process must strengthen the
U.S. DOT's role to determine the transportation "Purpose and
Need" and range of acceptable alternatives, enforce a schedule and
interagency review deadlines;
* Section 4(f) of the 1966 U.S. DOT Act needs to be
amended to allow U.S. DOT flexibility for advancing projects that have
insignificant impacts on parks and historic sites;
* A 60-90
day filing deadline should be set for lawsuits against projects. Currently,
proj-ect opponents can wait up to six years--after millions are spent on
design, right-of-way and even preliminary construction--before filing a
lawsuit against a location approval; and
* Allow corresponding state agencies the voluntary
delegated authority to stand in place of the federal agencies, subject to
oversight and federal regulations.
About The Author: Cohen is vice president for policy and government affairs at the American Highway Users Alliance, Washington, D.C.
