The US is terrible at building public transit. Here's how to get better.

The United States faces significant challenges in public transit development, with costs soaring and project timelines extending far beyond international norms. Experts argue that the disjointed nature of transit governance, coupled with outdated federal regulations, hampers efficient project delivery. The recently released Transit Abundance Playbook proposes a series of reforms aimed at streamlining processes and reducing costs, emphasizing the need for both federal and agency-level changes.

Key recommendations include empowering transit agencies with greater autonomy, adopting a best-value procurement model instead of the current lowest-bid requirement, and implementing a single decision-maker system akin to Italy's Conference of Services. This approach would facilitate coordination among various stakeholders, reducing the number of veto points that often delay projects. Additionally, the playbook suggests that transit agencies should be allowed to conduct their own environmental reviews, similar to practices in highway construction, to expedite project timelines.

Experts Will Poff-Webster and Stephanie Pollack highlight that the cultural and operational differences between transit and highway agencies contribute to inefficiencies. They advocate for a shift in focus from compliance to project delivery, arguing that a more flexible regulatory environment could lead to significant improvements in transit infrastructure. As public support for transit remains strong, the upcoming federal surface transportation reauthorization presents a critical opportunity for lawmakers to implement these changes and enhance the effectiveness of public transit systems across the country.

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America once led the world in building transit and now leads the world in what transit costs, roughly three times the international average per mile, measured not against authoritarian megaprojects but against Italy, Spain, and Japan. On this episode of Volts, David Roberts talks with Will Poff-Webster of the Institute for Progress, who put together the new Transit Abundance Playbook, and Stephanie Pollack, former head of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and former acting administrator of the Federal Highway Administration. Their argument is that the costs are a policy choice: federal funding rules teach transit agencies to plan on a napkin and do the real work years later, to hire the lowest bidder over the one they know will deliver, and to defer to anyone holding a veto, while highways operate under looser versions of the same rules. As Pollack puts it, "if you hate transit, you should spend less on it." A surface transportation reauthorization bill is coming, and two of the playbook's proposals have already reached the House version. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction: why cars work against cities 03:25 Agency culture or federal law: where does the fix come from 11:31 Planning: how federal funding enforces bad habits 20:10 Overdesign: the Green Line stations and the frequency-first test 23:40 Buses: why every agency orders a custom fleet 26:53 Procurement: lowest bid versus best value 32:56 Veto points and Italy’s conference of services 39:56 Permitting: environmental review as a NIMBY tool 45:28 State capacity: why consultant brain took over 51:46 Labor costs, automation, and Section 13(c) 56:19 Is any of this politically achievable? 1:03:28 Final question: one reform each