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Contrary to popular belief, we are not approaching a perfect storm involving this country’s transportation infrastructure troubles. The storm is already here and we need to fix the ship now.   In the next federal transportation bill, additional funding will grab the spotlight, but we must also focus on the wasteful federal processes which spends transportation funds.

How inefficient is the federal process? A recent national transportation commission provides the system’s crimes against reason and pocketbook: 

• 60 month average to complete environmental requirements

• 13 years to complete major highway projects

• Ruinous revisiting of rejected project alternatives

• Duplicative environmental analyses

• A process so compromised that long delays due to fear of litigation are de rigueur. 

The Brent Spence Bridge suffers this awful process.  The BSB, a vital national commercial pipeline that is congested and unsafe, is at midpoint in the two decades it will take to replace it. The region is working with state and federal partners to shorten this nightmare but it an arduous task.

Two perspectives are relevant:   The federal interstate system was built in 35 years but the current process ensures failure to build one bridge in half that time.  Another startling perspective is the process can move like lightening when you consider the Oklahoma Highway 40 bridge was rebuilt in 59 days after its tragic collapse.  There were great differences between that bridge’s circumstances and the BSB, but, certainly there must be a logical compromise between two decades and 59 days.

What makes the inefficient process murderous is its lethal combining with inflation.  As building material inflation ramps due to world demand, delays cause a sinister reduction in the buying power of dollars spent on infrastructure.  Every year of delay means tens of billions of dollars are lost.  If the process were streamlined to reduce the time to build the BSB by just 30 percent, it could save $1 billion.  That is one project in one region of the country.   Imagine the additional revenue we would have if a more efficient process were applied to every infrastructure project in the country.    

Because the economic stakes are rising along with inflation, the inefficient process must be addressed before or at least concomitantly with the search for new funding.  We must place efficiency on the same level as safety as a new process is designed.  If that sounds harsh, I maintain that such a process is far more protective to citizens than the current system that allows dangerous conditions on our roads and bridges to exist for decades while we plod through a Byzantine federal process. 

Unless the process is fixed, there is no reasonably expected amount of federal dollars that will yield a competitive infrastructure grid.  We will be wasting most of any new infrastructure funds.  And, we will continue to expose citizens to unsafe transportation.

As the perfect storm swirls, we will need a bigger boat. However, it will do us no good if the boat’s design ensures we sink.