The White House Office of Management and Budget, Council on Environmental Quality, and US Department of Transportation announced new actions by the Obama Administration to accelerate the Nation’s critical infrastructure projects.
President Obama has been committed to building a 21st century infrastructure that will strengthen our Nation’s economy, create jobs, and improve US competitiveness in the global market, while also improving environmental and community outcomes. From taking executive action through the 2011 Presidential Memorandum and 2012 Executive Order to speed infrastructure development and improve and expand permitting reform government-wide, proposing a six-year surface transportation reauthorization, the GROW AMERICA Act, which increases investment and includes a series of legislative proposals to further expand on efforts to increase the efficiency of project delivery, to releasing the 2014 comprehensive plan to modernize infrastructure permitting, the President has worked to ensure America has a first-class infrastructure.
As part of these efforts, Federal agencies previously expedited the review and permitting of over 50 major infrastructure projects, including bridges, transit, railways, waterways, roads, and renewable energy projects, employing common sense practices like running different reviews concurrently rather than sequentially, and using the Administration’s online Dashboard to promote accountability for a shared schedule. Over half of those projects have completed the permitting process, yielding notable successes like the permitting of the Tappan Zee Bridge in just a year and a half. The Administration’s 2014 comprehensive plan offered recommendations to expand on those initial projects, and today’s actions fulfill several key recommendations from that plan.
Traditionally, the federal permitting and environmental review process can take months and, sometimes years to complete, layered with complex requirements and costing millions of taxpayer dollars. Today’s announcement takes major steps to turn best practices into common practices, building on a series of successful efforts over the past several years to modernize the infrastructure permitting process, and increase investment in US infrastructure.