This month's Exclusive feature offers summaries of some of the nation's significant transportation projects – road-highway-bridge, rail-transit, port-waterway, and airport. What becomes evident in preparing this annual "Transportation Projects Roadmap" is the great patience and effort that is required today by project owners and their design and construction teams to bring a project to fruition ... and often that's just to get to the point of starting construction.

Building and maintaining public support for a project as a whole and, in some cases, public consensus on design elements; acquiring right-of-way; conducting environmental impact and archeological studies; acquiring appropriate federal, state, and local permits; and, of course, obtaining reliable, long-term funding can all take a decade or longer for a major project.

A report recently issued by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), "Accelerating Highway and Transit Project Delivery: Issues and Options for Congress," speaks to this point. The report cites Federal Highway Administration and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials estimates that completing the five main phases – planning, preliminary design and environmental review, final design, right-of-way acquisition and utility relocation, and construction – of federally financed, major new highway projects takes nine to 19 years.

Acknowledging that requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other federal environmental regulations often are blamed for delays, the CRS report authors state that available data and research indicate that environmental review is not the greatest source of delay in most transportation projects. "Developing a community consensus on what to do, securing the funding, and dealing with affected residents and businesses, including utilities and railroads, also contribute to the long timelines required to complete certain projects," the authors said.

As Congress wrangles with federal transportation funding legislation this fall, the CRS report authors suggest the following broad options to consider for accelerating project delivery:

• devolve federal surface transportation funding and the associated federal requirements back to the states (already proposed by some in Congress);
• create an office within the U.S. Department of Transportation responsible for expediting project delivery; and
• develop new initiatives for encouraging and rewarding collaboration between federal, state, and local agencies.

While funding and many regulations remain difficult political problems, it is encouraging that the civil engineering community has been stepping up to do something to shorten delays caused by public opposition and design issues through use of technologies such as laser scanning, 3D modeling, and visualization. Some firms are offering subsurface utility engineering to help reduce delays; and public relations, marketing, and e-media professionals are now often an integral part of transportation project teams (check out some of the project websites in our list). Project delivery options such as design-build, public-private partnerships, and integrated project delivery also are making inroads in the industry.

Creativity in problem solving is not confined to design.

Bob Drake,
bdrake@zweigwhite.com