Rail-transit projects across the U.S. take longer to build and cost nearly 50% more on average than in Europe and Canada, says a new study of 180 megaprojects, including some hits and misses by Sound Transit.
The Seattle-based agency typically spends five years in the planning phase trying to please everybody, until leaders finally choose a route, the researchers learned. Los Angeles stumbles into underground utilities and methane that cause expensive construction changes. Minneapolis builds cheap and noncontroversial tracks near highways, instead of locating stations where people live.
Project delays reflect a lack of political will, concludes the report released Thursday by the nonpartisan Eno Center for Transportation, based in Washington, D.C., titled “A Blueprint for Building Transit Better.”
“The United States suffers from a political climate that does not uniformly see investment in transit infrastructure as net positive. Instead, transit project sponsors spend much of their public outreach effort simply justifying their existence and the value of transit, rather than engaging on the details of a project,” Eno says. “The lack of broad public acceptance for transit also results in communities demanding mitigation for negative construction impacts rather than demanding faster timelines.”