Environmental Policy – National Environmental Policy Act & Permitting

Overview

Transportation infrastructure systems should be economically efficient while socially and environmentally sustainable. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) plays an important role integrating relevant environmental regulations and natural resource protections, as well as addressing stakeholder concerns relating to the planning, design, and delivery of transportation projects. However, the NEPA process has grown inefficient, requiring an average of five to seven years for completion. Therefore, ARTBA supports the following improvements:

• Linking the planning and environmental processes by identifying potential project challenges and developing mitigation strategies before initiating NEPA will save time and money during project development.
• Allowing use of the project sponsor’s statement of purpose and need for all federal approvals and directing permitting agencies to give that document substantial deference during the approval process.
• Minimizing harm to disadvantaged communities and promoting greater connectivity and opportunity as part of the transportation planning process.
• Ensuring appropriate consideration of potential capacity improvements, as well as multi-modal opportunities, when evaluating project alternatives during planning and environmental reviews.
• Enabling meaningful stakeholder participation by email, phone, virtual communication and meetings platforms, social media or other technologies in meeting environmental review and community engagement requirements.
• Easing inter-agency coordination and stakeholder involvement by migrating the development of NEPA documents from static PDFs to interactive, cloud-based digital platforms where possible.
• Supporting increased delegation of NEPA reviews to states.