Speed Up the Delivery of Transportation Projects - continued...
4. Expand Opportunities for Advanced Right-of-Way Acquisition
The ability to use Federal funds for corridor preservation is severely restricted until after the NEPA process is completed for the entire project, generally just a few years prior to construction—not nearly early enough time to take full advantage of the potential for reduced cost and reduced community disruption. In addition, obtaining right-of-way is an “environmentally neutral” event—it is simply a way of preserving options. Federal legislation and regulation should be modified to: encourage corridor preservation and advanced acquisition along existing and new alignments; separate the right-of-way acquisition process from the environmental review process; specify that entire corridors do not need to be part of a fiscally constrained long-range plan for corridor preservation funds to be used; allow concurrent construction and right-of-way acquisition; and establish a federal corridor preservation fund to encourage investment in preserving future transportation corridors.
5. Ease the Administrative Burden of Demonstrating Fiscal Constraint
Fiscal constraint is necessary for delivering successful transportation programs, and the States DOTs are accountable for delivering the programs promised in state transportation improvement programs (STIPs), in many cases including performance metrics to measure the delivery of their programs. However, current federal fiscal constraint requirements have morphed into an increasingly detailed accounting practice that is administratively onerous on the State DOTs and no longer adds value to the programming process. Fiscal constraint needs to be re-focused on public accountability rather than balance-sheet accounting. In addition, projects that anticipate leveraging private-sector funding need to be permitted in STIPs and long-range plans, and portions of large corridor projects should be allowed to move beyond the environmental stage even when uncertainty may exist in project costs, schedules, or public/private funding mix for the entire corridor.
Additional Recommendations to Improve Delivery of Transportation Projects and Programs
- Designate a single “lead agency” within US DOT for transportation projects to reduce multiple reviews, approvals, and revision processes for each project document and decision.
- Maintain existing relationships between states and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to continue delivering transportation programs that meet the needs of the urban areas and the states as a whole.
- Promote Integrated Planning and Programmatic Approaches by providing assurances that environmental decisions made in the planning process will be carried forward into the NEPA process and encourage program-level approaches rather than project-by project reviews.
- Increase funding for the Center for Environmental Excellence by AASHTO to provide information sharing, technical assistance, and training services to state DOTs in improving environmental performance and program delivery.
- Allow detailed design to proceed prior to completion of the environmental process so that the State DOTs can continue moving forward on projects after a “preferred alternative” has been selected.
- Allow substitution of state procedures for right-of-way acquisition and relocation on federal projects to expedite project delivery after certification by FHWA.
- Permit greater use of proprietary products to help increase safety when no equally suitable alternative exists.
- Broaden opportunities for using warranties on construction projects to allow the option to cover entire projects, not just certain products or features.
