Streetsblog New York City

Highway projects can take 10 to 15 years from planning through construction. The length of the process leads to cost overruns, some due to inflation, some from having to pay engineers and contractors for years on end. No matter how you feel about the worthiness of road capacity expansion, if a project gets built it doesn’t do anybody any good to have that project cost twice what it ought to because of delays. Plus, reducing delays is going to be a key element in upcoming debates over cost-effectiveness in the transportation sector.

Road-builder Thomas Margro told Congress that the completion of SR 241 has been held up for 15 years due to environmental reviews. Photo: craiginvegas/flickr

House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica (R-FL) has pressed the issue, insisting that the industry, together with government, must find ways to streamline the process to save money. He’s hinted that environmental reviews might, at times, be too burdensome.

Rep. John Duncan (R-TN) says U.S. projects take two to three times longer to get off the ground than other developed countries, and he chaired a Transportation Committee hearing today on project delivery delays.

Lawmakers and witnesses from transportation companies focused on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) as a cause of the delays. NEPA was enacted in 1970 and in many ways still serves as the foundation for environmental review policies throughout the nation.

Thomas Margro, CEO of Transportation Corridor Agencies, which builds toll roads in California, testified, “Our agency completed the first 51 miles of our planned 67 [mile] toll road system in 12 years. However, we have spent the last 15 years trying to accomplish and finish the last 16 miles, as it has been mired in the federal environmental review process.”

The first stage, to develop a “Purpose and Need” statement and the “Alternatives” for initial evaluation, took four years to accomplish, according to Margro. (Note: his written testimony says it took 28 months.) The second stage, preparing technical studies and environmental measures, he says, took six years.

In the end, the National Marine Fisheries Service agreed that the SR 241 project “would not likely adversely affect endangered or threatened fish species” but at the first hint of controversy, they backtracked. Margro says the process has failed them.

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City Council Minority Leader James Oddo. Photo: SI Advance

City Council Minority Leader James Oddo has a surprising message for Streetsblog and its commenters: “Thank you.”

We didn’t think too highly of Oddo’s proposal to require environmental review for bike lanes. And experts said it would throw an unnecessary road block in front of expanding the bike network, making the projects exceedingly slow and expensive without any countervailing benefit.

But in a phone call with Streetsblog, Oddo said that story was exactly what he wanted to see. “I used you guys,” he crowed. “I knew when I touched the third rail of bike lanes, it would get noticed. The aim of my letter to the Deputy Mayor and the DOT Commissioner wasn’t bike lanes. It was the city’s environmental review process.”

He hurried to say that he didn’t have any problems with bike lanes — but his explanation will be cold comfort to cyclists who can no longer ride on the Father Capodanno Boulevard bike lane in his own district. “This commissioner and this department, they can build all the bike lanes they want,” he said. “As long as I get drivable roads in my borough, that’s my concern. I can’t help the fact that Staten Islanders are addicted to automobiles because the government hasn’t given us mass transit.”

Oddo called the environmental review process “arbitrary, pointless, and a job killer.” He said his ultimate goal was to raise attention to this white paper by Manhattan Institute fellow Hope Cohen, which outlines an agenda to reform environmental review.

To what end does Oddo want to loosen the city’s enviro review procedures? The Staten Island Advance reports today that he wants road widenings to be sped through the process — projects that will actually induce more traffic and cause more pollution. The Manhattan Institute paper does not address the appropriateness of environmental review for specific types of transportation projects, like road widenings.

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City Council Minority Leader James Oddo. Photo: SI Advance

You know something’s amiss when you hear Republicans calling for more red tape and government bureaucracy, as Staten Island Council Members James Oddo and Vincent Ignizio did earlier this week with their call to require environmental review for all new bike lanes. But let’s indulge Oddo and Ignizio and take their proposal seriously for a moment. Does it have any merit?

We asked some top legal and planning experts for their opinion, and they agreed: Bike lanes generally don’t and shouldn’t need to go through environmental review.

Oddo’s office didn’t respond to Streetsblog’s request to see the letter outlining his proposal, but it seems as though he would have to pass new legislation. It’s fairly clear that under current law, striping a bike lane generally doesn’t require environmental review. There’s a presumption that small street changes like signage are exempt from environmental review, said Columbia Law School professor and environmental law expert Michael Gerrard.

Specifically, the law exempts the “installation of traffic control devices on existing streets, roads, and highways.” Pavement markings are included in the federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, suggesting that bike lanes fall under that exemption.

Even if bike lanes aren’t categorically exempt, continued Gerrard, a given project may not be predicted to create a significant enough impact to require environmental review. That determination would be made, in this case, by the city DOT.

Bike lanes not only don’t need to go through environmental review, they shouldn’t, said former DOT First Deputy Commissioner Sam Schwartz, now the head of Sam Schwartz Engineering. “EIS laws and guidelines were established to protect the environment. If an action is not likely to meet the threshold set by regulation (and few if any bike lanes do), then why waste a ton of money?” Schwartz said. “Ironically, it would probably mean more work for my firm, but it’s a waste of taxpayer money.”

“No bike lane would fail an environmental review,” said Michael King, a principal at the transportation planning firm Nelson\Nygaard.

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Last week’s release of “before” and “after” stats on the Prospect Park West bike lane tells an increasingly familiar story: A DOT redesign has increased cycling while making the street safer for pedestrians and drivers. Since safer streets make it easier for New Yorkers to get around without a car, and since biking and walking are emissions-free modes, it’s safe to say that this is good news for the environment.

Staten Island Republican James Oddo. Photo: SI Advance

Well, City Council Member James Oddo begs to differ.

The Post reports that Oddo and fellow Staten Island rep Vincent Ignizio want to require time-consuming environmental reviews for future NYC bike projects:

Staten Island Councilman James Oddo, the Republican minority leader, said plans for new bike lanes should undergo the city’s lengthy environmental-assessment process, or the city should allow other, more minor traffic changes to bypass the review.

Oddo and Councilman Vincent Ignizio (R-SI) penned a letter last week demanding an explanation from Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, an avid cyclist and bike-lane proponent, of why the lanes don’t require the scrutiny.

“The creation of bike lanes and the removal of vehicle travel lanes represent a major reordering of Department of Transportation priorities that may affect the environment and appear to qualify” for a formal environmental review, the letter reads.

Oddo was part of the team that successfully lobbied to kill the Father Capodanno bike lane late last year. The city erased that decades-old cycling route — in what you might call a “major reordering” of the street — without any public hearing or environmental review. Now, under the guise of environmental review, Oddo and Ignizio want to throw more monkey wrenches at bike projects.

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Republicans on the Senate environment committee, who months ago began criticizing the Obama administration for evaluating federally funded infrastructure projects for their impact on climate change, today introduced legislation that would bar the White House from making climate a factor in environmental reviews.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), one of the new NEPA bill's sponsors, holds up a copy of the Senate climate legislation. (Photo: AP)

"As it stands, NEPA is subject to frequent abuse by radical environmentalists who want to use litigation to impose their agenda on federal agencies," Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), one of the measure's sponsors, said in a statement. "Our bill seeks to prevent that abuse."

The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), responding to a petition from green groups, issued draft guidance in February that asked agencies to evaluate the climate impacts of new projects estimated to increase emissions by 25,000 metric tons or more of CO2 -- the same level that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) used for its rule on mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas production.

As the EPA noted in its explanation of the 25,000 metric ton threshold, such a level of emissions would be equivalent to 4,600 new passenger cars or the energy use of 2,3000 new homes.

The CEQ's guidance is not set to become final until after a period of public comment ends next month.

SF MTA Chief Nat Ford and Mayor Gavin Newsom work the green rollers. Photo: Matthew Roth.

Meanwhile, here in New York, we've been shouting and muttering curses over the loss of a well-used bike lane segment in Williamsburg. So I figured it might lift everyone's spirits to share some of the good vibes emanating from Streetsblog SF. Here are some highlights from just the past few days:

Where's the Assembly's eco-warrior when you need him?

The MTA rescue package does not, in fact, fall under the purview of SEQRA, even though it's probably the most important piece of climate policy that the state legislature will consider this year. The Senate's latest stab would keep the trains and buses running for a few more months, but it's an eco-stinker compared to the Ravitch plan and any other package that includes road pricing or tolls on currently free bridges.

Let's go back to the spring of 2008. Remember all the carping from Richard Brodsky and other state legislators about congestion pricing not going through the SEQRA process? That was regarding a policy projected to take 112,000 cars off the road each day. Now we have an MTA funding plan getting serious consideration that would create worse traffic bottlenecks and more incentives to drive, but so far not even a peep about environmental consequences from Albany.

NEPA oversight should prevent the Garden State Parkway from being widened using stimulus funds.

For advocates of green transportation, NEPA protection will help deter the construction of additional road capacity, but it does come with a potential downside.

The provision should assist the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, for example, in its fight against the widening of the Garden State Parkway, a project on New Jersey's stimulus wish list. The state has tried very hard to avoid federal oversight for this massive highway expansion project, going so far as to attempt funding it completely with toll revenue. Paying for the added lanes with stimulus cash should only be possible if the project can skirt NEPA.

While many are breathing a sigh of relief that the Senate fended off an end run around NEPA reviews, the application of 1970s-era environmental legislation could produce unintended consequences for deserving projects. Similar laws have been invoked to delay the implementation of San Francisco's bicycle network for three years and to impede car-free parks in New York.

No EIS necessary. Photo: tlindenbaum/Flickr

AYR recounts a talk given by progressive developer Jonathan Rose, who says that NEPA -- favored by a real estate industry that did not want to subject itself to an alternative law based on land use planning -- was flawed from the start:

"So the effect was that we turned our back on national planning, and we turned our back on a national infrastructure policy," Rose said. "And, at the same time, here’s what happens: 1000 individuals choose to subdivide a parcel in the suburbs, or the exurbs, and it falls under the screen of an environmental impact statement, each one is one individual act."

"One person chooses to build a 1000-unit urban project in a city and they get held up for five years in an environmental impact statement," he concluded. "And so the unintended consequence of NEPA actually was one more of the many things that made it easier for suburban sprawl to proceed from 1970 to 2000 instead of urban redevelopment."