SAVING TIME AND MAKING CENTS: A Blueprint for Building Transit Better A Blueprint for Building Transit Better 1 AUTHORS Romic Aevaz Policy Analyst, Eno Center for Transportation Brianne Eby Senior Policy Analyst, Eno Center for Transportation Paul Lewis Vice President of Policy and Finance, Eno Center for Transportation Robert Puentes President and CEO, Eno Center for Transportation A Blueprint for Building Transit Better 2 Acknowledgments The authors would like to express gratitude to Alice Grossman, Jeff Davis, and Katherine Idziorek for their research assistance, as well as Katie Donahue and Caroline Marete for their help reviewing and editing this report. Karen Price and Madeline Gorman also provided invaluable assistance preparing this report and accompanying digital materials for publication. The Eno Center for Transportation would like to thank the following individuals for contributing their expertise, constructive feedback, and support as members of the advisory panel convened for this research initiative: Adjo Amekudzi-Kennedy Hani Mahmassani Professor and Associate Chair, Global Director, Northwestern University Engineering Leadership and Entrepreneurship, Transportation Center School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology Beth Osborne Director, Transportation for America Rabinder Bains Chief Economist, Federal Transit Administration Stephanie Pollack former Secretary and CEO, Massachusetts Andrew Bata Department of Transportation Regional Manager, North America UITP Thomas Prendergast Allison Black Americas Transit Leader, AECOM Senior Vice President & Chief Economist, American Road & Transportation Builders Edwina Smallwood Association Economist, Federal Transit Administration David Carol Christof Spieler Chief Operating Officer, American Public Senior Lecturer, Rice University Transportation Association Raj Srinath Aileen Carrigan Former Deputy General Manager/Chief Principal & Founder, Bespoke Transit Solutions Financial Officer, Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority Richard Clarke Former Chief Program Management Officer, Ali Touran Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northeastern University College of Engineering Nuria Fernandez former General Manager/CEO, Santa Clara Mia Veltri Valley Transportation Authority Program Analyst, Federal Transit Administration Eric Goldwyn Carole Voulgaris Research Scholar, New York University’s Marron Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Institute on Cities and the Urban Environment Harvard Graduate School of Design Tracy Gordon Charlie Zelle Senior Fellow, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center Chairman, Metropolitan Council A Blueprint for Building Transit Better 3 The Eno Center for Transportation also wishes to thank the Merck Family Fund, TransitCenter, the Barr Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the John Merck Fund for their generous support of this initiative. The Federal Transit Administration also provided financial support for this and future related work on transit costs and project delivery. About the Eno Center for Transportation The Eno Center for Transportation is an independent, nonpartisan think tank whose vision is for an American transportation system that fosters economic vitality, advances social equity, and improves the quality of life for all. The mission of Eno is to shape public debate on critical multimodal transportation issues and build a network of innovative transportation professionals. As an organization, Eno values independence, collaboration, relevance, excellence, and entrepreneurialism. These core values are reflected in everything we do. A Blueprint for Building Transit Better 4 Executive Summary Cities, states, and metropolitan areas across the United States are looking to invest in a range of public transit projects in order to connect people to jobs and economic opportunity, reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, and shape development patterns. According to one estimate, the United States invested about $50 billion in new transit projects in just the last decade.1 These include underground subways in Los Angeles, commuter rail lines along the Front Range near Denver, a streetcar in downtown Atlanta, light rail lines in suburban Phoenix, and bus rapid transit in Richmond, Virginia, among many others. While these projects are as diverse as the country itself, they all have one thing in common: increased scrutiny over their costs and timelines to build. A few very visible projects have reinforced the narrative that rail transit investments have systemic issues that are endemic to the United States. This all begs the questions: Is this true? If so, why? And what should we do about it? These are precisely the questions Eno set out to answer through this research, policy, and communications project to analyze current and historical trends in public transit project delivery. We convened a set of advisors and conducted in-depth interviews with key stakeholders to understand the drivers behind mass transit construction, cost, and delivery in the United States. A comprehensive database of rail transit projects was created and curated to compare costs and timelines among U.S. cities and peer metropolitan areas in Western Europe and Canada. Through this quantitative and qualitative approach, we developed actionable recommendations for policy changes at all levels of government as well as best practices for the public and private sectors. UNDERSTANDING COSTS AND TIMELINES Eno’s Construction Cost Database of 180 domestic and international public transit projects completed since 2000 shows that the United States pays a premium of nearly 50 percent on a per-mile basis to build transit for both primarily at-grade and primarily tunneled projects. The tunneling premium in the United States rises to roughly 250 percent when New York City’s disproportionately expensive projects are included. Tunneled projects are not only less expensive abroad, but also more common. Just under 12 percent of U.S. rail transit projects represented in our database were constructed primarily below ground, compared to 37 percent of non-U.S. projects. In fact, many international projects constructed below grade have similar costs to those that are at-grade in the United States. For example, Toulouse, France’s 9.3 mile Metro Line B was built entirely underground at a cost of about $176 million per mile while Houston Metro’s 3.2 mile Green Line is all at-grade and cost $223 million per mile. A Blueprint for Building Transit Better 5 Despite their lower construction costs, international projects are often more complex than similar lines in the United States. They tend to have more stations that are built closer together than U.S. projects, often run through crowded historic city centers, and usually share street space with cars and other vehicles. Rail projects in the United States tend to be routed along “paths of least resistance” such as freight rail or highway corridors, rather than dense areas where transit would make the most sense for riders or communities. Of course, this is not always the case. Seattle’s 1 Line corridor traverses well-developed urban areas and operates in a tunnel between the University of Washington and downtown. But many U.S. transit projects resemble Minneapolis’ Blue Line, whose mostly at-grade alignment along existing right-of-way was specifically intended to limit impacts on the local community and minimize the need to acquire private property. Even with more straightforward alignments, U.S. projects with minimal tunneling still take about six months longer to construct than similar non-U.S. projects. U.S. projects that are almost all underground take nearly a year and a half longer to build than abroad. The time it takes to construct a transit project is also highly correlated with its cost, reinforcing the aphorism “time is money.” RESEARCH METHODS With an understanding that transit projects in the United States do suffer from high costs and take longer to complete than they do abroad, it is important to investigate the “why.” To do so, we conducted a thorough examination of existing literature and research and interviewed 117 professionals with both intimate knowledge of specific projects or regions and transit project delivery expertise generally. We also conducted detailed case studies of project delivery in four domestic regions (Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, and Minneapolis) and four international regions (Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris, and Toronto) to help identify real-world examples of cost and timeline drivers for transit projects as well as best practices. We also compared a transit project to a highway project in Virginia to compare how regulatory processes, project delivery practices, institutional support, and governance differ across modes. Through our literature review and case studies, one clear finding emerged: there is not one, easily identifiable reason for high costs or delivery delays. Rather, we identified a dozen drivers of transit construction costs and timelines that fall into three overlapping and interrelated categories: governance, processes, and standards. These findings form the basis of our resulting recommendations and best practices to deliver transit projects quicker and more cost-effectively. A Blueprint for Building Transit Better 6 POLICY AND PRACTICE RECOMMENDATIONS The responsibility for cutting costs and timelines for transit projects does not rest solely on federal reforms, fixes at the agency