One of the most significant pieces of environmental legislation facing the 108th Congress will be the reauthorization of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), which will expire in September 2003. Since the law was enacted in 1998, Congress has invested more than $200 billion in transportation infrastructure. But now, given federal and state budget shortfalls, money will be tight, and the reauthorization debate will center on how to augment resources and whether previous investments were economically sound. Environmentalists and fiscal conservatives will be trying to hold the line on spending and funnel money to environmentally friendly projects. Conversely, the construction industry, automakers and some state highway departments -- along with their friends in Congress and the Bush administration -- will continue their efforts to short-circuit the environmental review process for highway projects.

Notwithstanding the government's own findings that environmental reviews are not a significant cause of delays, President Bush signed an executive order in September to "streamline," or expedite, the environmental review process for transportation projects. A month later, the Department of Transportation announced its first streamlined projects -- six road projects and one airport -- that could damage the environment by increasing air and water pollution as well as trigger more sprawling land development.

Environmentalists charge that the administration's concept of streamlining is more akin to steamrolling, but some members of Congress insist the administration has not gone far enough. In the fall of 2002 they introduced two bills -- one in each house -- that would impose a one-size-fits-all process with arbitrary, tight deadlines on states and localities across the country. Both bills -- "Expediting Project Delivery to Improve Transportation and the Environment Act" (ExPDITE, H.R. 5455) and "Maximum Economic Growth for America Through Environmental Streamlining Act" (the MEGA Stream Act, S.3031) -- also target a statute that is the bedrock of environmental protection: the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.

NEPA is Critical for Environmental Protection

Signed into law in 1970 by the Nixon administration, NEPA simply requires the federal government to examine the potential environmental impact of federally funded activities and share its findings with the public. This commonsense law has been fundamental to our success in cleaning up the environment. Thanks to it and similarly effective statutes, such as the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, environmental quality has improved dramatically over the past three decades.

Under NEPA, the Department of Transportation and other agencies are afforded the opportunity to fix problems with environmental compliance and review before decisions are finalized. If new, rigid deadlines and review procedures are imposed from above, federal agencies would be forced to cut corners. This could lengthen the process down the line by spurring legal challenges and forcing agencies to make time-consuming revisions.

The Role of Environmental Reviews in Transportation Projects

The bureaucratic term for the project-specific transportation planning process is "project development." Environmental review is just a part of project development, which must be considered in its entirety if improvements are to be effective and lasting. NRDC believes the emphasis should be on quality and not just speed -- these are big investments and the infrastructure will be "hard wired" into our communities and environment for decades to come.

Proponents of streamlining environmental reviews claim that such reviews cause unnecessary delay. In fact, they slow down only a small percentage of projects every year. It is true that the process of producing an environmental impact statement (as opposed to an environmental assessment) requires time, especially when the project is controversial. But there are fewer and fewer such full-blown statements; the number filed in 1994 -- 532 -- was less than half the 1,273 statements filed in 1979. In the 1990s, only about 20 percent of environmental impact statements were challenged in any given year.¹ Today, a mere 3 percent of federally funded transportation projects require one.²

In most cases environmental reviews are not a significant time killer. In a 2000 study of 89 projects that had been delayed at least five years, the Federal Highway Admininistration (FHWA) found that environmental impact statements were not the major cause of delay. According to the study, the most significant factors slowing down these projects were lack of funding, local controversy, low priority, and project complexity, which collectively accounted for 62 percent of the delays. The remaining 38 percent included a range of other factors, including environmental ones. Endangered species and wetlands accounted for only 7 percent and 4 percent of delays, respectively.³

NRDC's "Best Practices"

While the Bush administration and some members of Congress are using project delay as an excuse to roll back environmental protection, states and municipalities are testing promising new project development practices. Many have been able to complete transportation projects more quickly when they address community and environmental concerns at the outset.

If the federal government were serious about streamlining transportation project delivery, it would disseminate information about these new practices and provide incentives for state and local agencies to embrace them. NRDC has identified five key "best practices" that state and local authorities should adopt:

Resource-sharing: Some state departments of transportation acknowledge that environmental reviews are often labor-intensive and time-consuming, so they provide funding for reviewers at other state agencies. Fortunately there are federal transportation funds for this very purpose, thanks to Section 1309 of TEA-21. According to FHWA, 34 states now share resources in this way. For example, the state of Maryland uses federal transportation funds to underwrite one Maryland project reviewer at three federal agencies: the Army Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Environmental Protection Agency.⁴ FHWA should track how long state reviews take to determine how to improve resource sharing.

Context-sensitive design: TEA-21, its precursor, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA), and the National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 included new highway and road design concerns that go beyond the usual issues of safety, durability and maintenance. Thanks to the greater design flexibility included in these statutes, planners and engineers can better measure and minimize or prevent harm to environmental, scenic, historical and community resources. As a result, projects win community support and can be processed efficiently.

Traditionally, engineers have bristled at the idea of accommodating these broader concerns. They say they are hamstrung by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials' bible of transportation design, "Policy on the Geometric Design of Highways and Streets," widely called the "Green Book." To correct this misconception, FHWA issued a guide in 1997, "Flexibility in Highway Design," which argues there is greater flexibility in Green Book design standards than engineers acknowledge. The guide also showcases ways to use this flexibility to mitigate project damage to communities and environments. This is the essence of "context-sensitive design."

The May-June 2002 issue of Public Roads, an FHWA publication, profiled projects in Kentucky and Montana that have successfully utilized context-sensitive design to upgrade roads. One of these, an expansion of U.S. 93 in Montana, was mired in a 15-year conflict over how expanding the road would affect the environment and the communities that use it. In the late 1990s, the logjam was broken when a consultant formed stakeholder committees and met individually with more than 600 property owners along the U.S. 93 corridor. The feedback from these meetings ensured that the designs were sensitive to their context. It resulted in a reduction of driveway access to the road by 50 percent, which lessened the impact of the road on those who live near it. The meetings also helped cement good relations between the agencies involved and the public. The final outcome: In December 2000, FHWA, the Montana Department of Transportation, and the confederated Salish and Koote tribes signed a memorandum of agreement that provided for 42 fish and wildlife crossings. Construction may begin as early as 2004.

Better Technology: As technological tools such as transportation system computer models and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) -- which are used to pack more information into maps - become more powerful and less expensive, planners will be able to better identify project designs that yield the greatest community and environmental benefits. Using technology to better prepare for new projects wouldspeed up the process by reducing the likelihood that a transportation department will have to review factors that it should have considered earlier.

A 2000 National Research Council report, "Technologies to Improve Environmental Concerns in Transportation Decisions," described some of these advances, including new collaborative planning and design processes, use of GIS to determine natural and community constraints on a project (called "gap analysis"), and computer visualization programs that allow users to view a proposed project and its potential impact in three dimensions. A panel of experts that reviewed the report concluded that these and similar techniques would expedite transportation projects, but as yet not many states are using them.

New technology can help planners accomplish tasks in a fraction of the time it used to take. For example, in the 1960s, landscape architect Ian McHarg's firm was trying to determine a "context-sensitive" location for a new road on Staten Island in New York. It took his team nine months to create maps indicating slopes, scenic values, forest and wildlife values, and other data, and superimpose them on top of one another. Like a negative image of a photograph, the least harmful route became clear in the final product.⁵ Now, using GIS tools and gap analysis programs, a planner can produce a map like McHarg's in weeks, or even days.

Reversing the environmental talent drain: Federal and state agencies often lose their environmental experts to the private sector and to retirement, which will loom as an even bigger problem over the next few decades. According to a recent study, nearly half (46.3 percent) of government workers are age 45 or older, while only 31.3 percent of private sector employees are over 45.⁶ FHWA itself estimates that 45 percent of its workforce will be eligible for retirement in 2010.⁷

When key staff members leave, departments have to bring new planners and engineers up to speed, which can cause project delays. Agencies need to focus on retaining younger staff and training new recruits to make sure projects get done on time. FHWA, state departments of transportation, and metropolitan planning organizations also should supplement their traditionally engineer-heavy workforce with experts from other disciplines, such as the environmental sciences, as recommended recently by a National Research Council public advisory board.

Better, earlier, and more public involvement: Some states are finding it easier to reach consensus among various constituencies by increasing public participation. For example, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation is backing a project involving substantial redevelopment of an area in Warwick, including a new 3,000-vehicle parking garage. The state has held nine conveniently located, early evening public meetings, so people who work during the day can participate. Early public involvement has paid off -- there has not been a single negative comment from the public or other stakeholders.⁸

Oregonians have had a similar experience. In the late 1980s, the 1,000 Friends of Oregon initiated the Land Use-Transportation-Air Quality (LUTRAQ) project in response to a proposal to build a western bypass road to reduce traffic jams in Washington County, Oregon. The project included an intensive public outreach effort with sophisticated computer models addressing pedestrian and transit accessibility issues. Ultimately, the 1,000 Friends of Oregon successfully rallied public support for LUTRAQ, which showed that comparable reductions in congestion and driving could be achieved by providing economic incentives and focusing development around public transit.⁹

Adopting Best Practices Means Better Transportation Projects

Reauthorizing a major transportation bill when the country is focused on overseas conflicts and facing massive government budget shortfalls will make 2003 a challenging year. Congress will have to overcome splits among interest groups, geographic regions, and political parties to pass a worthy sequel to TEA-21.

The timing couldn't be worse for engaging in a debate over divisive, environmentally harmful streamlining proposals. Fortunately, some states and localities are experimenting with real improvements to transportation project development. Some of these experiments have had positive outcomes, including better environmental stewardship, higher quality projects, and, when appropriate, shortened delivery schedules. NRDC calls on transportation advocates of all stripes to set aside proposals to steamroll projects over communities and the environment and join forces to accelerate the spread of best practices.

Notes

1. Council on Environmental Quality reports, 1993 and 1997.

2. General Accounting Office testimony (citing the Federal Highway Administration as the source) before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, September 19, 2002.

3. FHWA, "Reasons for EIS Project Delays," September 2000.

4. "Interagency Funding Agreements Foster Streamlining: FHWA's Guidance on Use of TEA-21 Funds to Expedite Reviews," FHWA's Successes in Streamlining newsletter, August 2002.

5. See CEC, "Design with Nature," Ian McHarg, Doubleday & Company, 1969.

6. "The Aging Government Workforce," Craig W. Abbey and Donald J. Boyd, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, July 2002.

7. "Positioning FHWA for the Future," Workforce Planning and Professional Development Task Force, December 1, 2000.

8. "Warwick Intermodal Station Presentation," Rhode Island Department of Transportation Director Bill Ankner, July 23, 2002.

9. "Making the Land Use, Transit, and Air Quality Connection (LUTRAQ) - Freeways or Communities: It's Your Choice" fact sheet, adapted from a speech by LUTRAQ project director Keith Bartholomew.