High Speed Rail in the United States Jan. 2014 | Page 40

The Northeast Corridor spans 8 states and the District of Columbia (9 jurisdictions). The municipal-level juristictions complicate the problem.

schedules predictably clash with the rapid turnover of American politics. Put simply, infrastructure projects outlast the politicians that back them. Politicians do not often want to support a project if the public will not be able to see the results within their term. A 20 year investment in a new rail line does little to benefit the reelection of candidates whose terms last 2, 4, and 6 years. In backing infrastructure programs, politicians run the risk of taking large amounts of money in their term and having nothing to show for it. As a result, advocacy groups like RPA must work very hard to convince politicians of the long-term social benefits of proposed programs, and help guide them through the political ropes of supporting such programs.

In the realm of regional planning, there is the issue of proposing projects that involve multiple jurisdictions. For ultimate success, many projects require the negotiation and cooperation of multiple cities, communities, and agencies. Pork barrel politics often get in the way of easy cooperation. When many different politicians work together on a project, they can undermine the overall project goal by trying to get the most benefit for their own constituents. As politicians haggle over the specifics of a project, each vying for the greatest share of the benefits, projects can fall apart or become significantly watered down or delayed.

In today’s environmentally-conscious political atmosphere, the environmental elements of project planning become a major obstacle. The Environmental Review process, while well-intentioned and often necessary, can also be used as a political tool to shut down projects. The current process is administrative and highly legalized, providing a legal avenue for politicians to stop projects for purely political reasons under the façade of environmental concern. If a politician can find any small potential environmental problem, s/he can use it to halt project progress early on. This is not to say that many legitimate concerns are not brought up in in Environmental Review, the process is just so legally swollen that it is easy to misuse. As a result, many promising, mostly environmentally friendly projects have not made it through review. Additionally, delays in the review process extend project timelines and raise costs. In its America 2050 report "Getting Infrastructure Going: Expediating the Environmental Review Process", RPA has proposed a few alterations to the review process that may help simplify its practice in the future.

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politician tern graph created by Renae Zelmar

NEPA table from http://www.rpa.org/sites/rpa.civicactions.net/files/NEPA-Time.png

Large infrastructure projects take many years to comple, often over a decade. The lifespans of U.S. politicians do not match such long timelines. A Congressman elected every two years is unlikely to have anything to show for a project s/he initiates when it is time for relection in two years.

The above graph, created by RPA for their report "Getting Infrastructure Going: Expediating the Environmental Review Process" (Schned and Todorovich 2012), shows how cumbersome the environmental review process has become over the years. Part of the process involves the completion of an Envriomental Impact Statement, a document the outlines the pottential environmental effects of a proposed project. Since the 1970s, the time it takes for the average highway project to complete such a document has increased from a little over 2 to 8 years.

Figure 2

Figure 3