How Biden’s Infrastructure Dollars Could Speed Cost-Effective Rail Transit

Del Mar Metro Station underneath a residential building in Pasadena (Photo – Colorado Boulevard.net)

President Biden is nearing a potentially significant bipartisan win on federal infrastructure spending, as a $550 billion package was approved by the Senate and received a commitment from Speaker Pelosi to get the bill passed in the House by September 27.. The United States has a poor track record, however, of spending this kind of money wisely, particularly on rail transit.

By Ethan Elkind

As the Eno Center has documented, U.S. taxpayers pay a premium of nearly 50 percent on a per-mile basis to build rail transit compared to our global peers. In addition, tunneled projects take nearly a year and a half longer to build than abroad

In a piece published by the author for Smerconish.com, key requirements were laid out that federal leaders should consider including as conditions on these “Biden bucks” to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. To summarize the piece, federal transit dollars should:

• Include measures that prevent local transit agencies from “over-designing” projects to appease narrow interests with counter-productive and costly concessions;
• Ensure local leaders choose optimal rail transit routes to boost ridership and overall utility and cost-effectiveness;
• Streamline federal permitting, including ia multi-agency coordination and expedited environmental reviews, with exemptions from analysis on impacts not all that relevant to environmentally beneficial rail – like traffic, air quality, and noise;
• Incentivize smart procurement of contractors, including a maximum on contract size to break up the work on large projects among smaller and more competitive firms;
• Give transit agency staff more flexibility on construction oversight, including ability to make basic decisions on project implementation to speed construction; and
• Require 24/7 construction to shave potentially years off construction timelines.

With a challenge this complex, no single solution will cure the United States of its poor track record on rail transit project delivery. But the infrastructure bill now gives Congress and the Biden Administration an opportunity to start fixing the problem — delivering climate-friendly infrastructure quickly and effectively to more people.