Environmental Impact Studies...A Waste of Money?

The question must be asked... Are Environmental Impact Studies a Waste of Money?

Arguably there is a solid principal of counting the cost of any project and investigating the impacts that planned projects may have, such as economic, engineering, social, mobility, property, and environmental impacts. Yet in some states these seem to have become a way to significantly delay—or even completely derail—new transportation projects from coming to fruition in the first place. Why? Because of the red tape involved in the process of new projects. Looking at California as the definitive text case for this type of thing are organizations whose sole mission is to circumvent progress in the state towards addressing congestion and improving transportation. Targeted mainly at projects that are seen as car-dependent. Yet these efforts have also been used to delay and prevent even mass transit projects from going forward. Not to mention the immense costs of the studies and the preparation of EIS/EIR reports. And after all of that cost invested by state departments of transportation, project stakeholders, study firms, the project could be stopped completely in its tracks resulting in a complete waste of taxpayer dollars. For successfully completed transportation projects however these can range from a respectable 10% of the overall cost of the project to in some cases more than 25% depending on the issues identified, and the impacts addressed. This is a huge cost.

Environmental Red tape

California is perhaps the most glaring example. Numerous organizations exist with the explicit goal of slowing or stopping projects they view as 'car‑dependent', and their efforts at obstruction have extended even to mass‑transit proposals. The price tag for preparing EIS/EIR documents is enormous, and after millions of taxpayer dollars are spent by transportation departments, consultants, and stakeholders, a project can still be halted entirely wasting all that money. For projects that do move forward, environmental review can account for anywhere from 10% to more than 25% of total project cost—a staggering share.

In many cases, particularly in California, EIS/EIR reviews appear to overly prioritize ecological concerns above all else, pushing economic and social impact considerations to the margins. Groups such as the Sierra Club have also turned to the courts to block projects on environmental grounds, tying much needed projects up in months or years of court proceedings adding further delays, substantially increasing costs, and lending greater uncertainty as to whether these projects will ever be completed.

High Speed Rail Boondoggle

The ongoing saga of California’s High‑Speed Rail project illustrates the tension. As many have been seeing in the news, there has been intense scrutiny on the California High Speed rail project, which would be the first of its kind in the nation to bring true high-speed rail—with speeds up to 220MPH (or 350 km/h)—to the United States. It could serve as a national model for future rail corridors, serving as an important milestone in seeing other similar high-speed projects around the US. Environmentalists and politicians alike seem to consistently lament America's love affair with automobiles and desire to see alternative methods of transportation developed that will bring people out of their cars and into other modes of transportation. While high speed rail and mass transit will not 'fix' this issue, they could go a long way toward providing viable alternatives to nationwide travel and commuting which could potentially reduce the time that some people spend driving in their cars.

Arguably HSR California's critics are not just fighting on ecological grounds, the issue has drawn national attention for the billions and billions of dollars spent to address legal battles over property rights, construction contracts, and alleged fraud and waste. But the battles have resulted in several key segments of the project being severely delayed and even significantly downgraded in areas where they would be most important. In fact the sections going up the Peninsula which was originally going to be high-speed will instead be constructed mostly at-grade and at lower track speeds, all over environmental concerns. Additionally, the segment to be built over the Tehachapi mountains to feed into Los Angeles and the Southland is questionable at best at this point. Lawsuits and improperly forecasted cost estimates have all but killed this project, and now in this politically charged environment, with the Trump administration pulling key funding, the overall project is in Jeopardy.

But let's not kid ourselves. In our vast nation there is little likelihood that automobiles will ever go away aside from "Scotty" beaming us from one place to another using transporters, like in Star Trek, Sure autonomous vehicles are coming, and that requires all new infrastructure to make that happen, but individual methods of conveyance via passenger vehicles are not going anywhere anytime soon.

A Balanced Solution

I am not arguing that we should do away with EIS/EIR studies, but that they be reformed or revamped in such a way that they cannot be used to inequitably tie up projects in so much red tape that they die. In Portland, Oregon for instance, the new Columbia River Crossing to Vancouver, replacing the aging and outdated Interstate Bridge from Hayden Island was nearly killed, only to be resurrected at the last minute. Yet we must also remember the days when Transportation planners acted carte blanche, bulldozing through neighborhoods and environmentally sensitive areas to build expressways. Many of these neighborhoods were economically depressed or had large ethnic minority populations. Leading to the famous Freeway revolts that happened in many cities in the US, Including Portland, OR and San Fransisco. Ultimately this is why the EPA was created, which instituted the EIS/EIR process. It was a safety net to stop what would have been unnecessary or destructive transportation projects from being built. Just look at old planning maps for Portland and San Francisco from the 50's and 60's and you can see how ambitious the planners were. Even transportation visionaries like Robert Moses became highway crazed and went to far with their ambitious plans, in some cases creating highways to nowhere.

Arguably some areas are better without the planned expressways that would have littered the landscape especially in San Francisco and Portland which would have been carved up into pieces with the numerous freeways that were proposed. Most everyone was glad to see the Embarcadero and Central Freeways come down in San Francisco following the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, However this left the Golden Gate forever severed from the rest of the regional highway system, forcing interstate and regional traffic to negotiate city streets in one of the most densely compacted cities in America. Not Ideal.

So where is the happy medium? Where can both sides agree? Is there a way to still have the safeguards that impact studies provide while still allowing needed transportation projects to go forward, while also keeping costs low? I certainly hope so.