DC’s Union Station debacle

Washington, D.C.’s Union Station is supposed to be the “gateway to the nation’s capital.” But after eight years and millions of dollars, it has become one of the nation’s greatest symbols of bureaucratic and regulatory dysfunction.

Nine years ago, the Federal Railroad Administration began jumping through all the legal hoops necessary to redevelop the capital’s largest train station and surrounding land. In addition to the historic main terminal that would be preserved, the new plan widens platforms and adds a new modernized train hall and an underground parking lot.

All the land is already owned by either the federal government or Amtrak, and the station is in a dense urban area with no wildlife or water nearby. Yet the Federal Railroad Administration released the project’s final environmental impact statement only this month. Now, the design phase can begin.

One hundred and fifty years ago, it took three private companies just six years to build the transcontinental railroad connecting existing East Coast railways, which ended in Council Bluffs, Iowa, with the Oakland Long Wharf on the San Francisco Bay. That’s almost 1,200 miles of track laid in three fewer years than it took today’s Federal Railroad Administration to issue one environmental report on the redevelopment of a single station.

We used to be able to build things as a country. Now, we can’t. What happened?

One huge culprit is the law requiring an environmental impact statement for every tiny action the government takes. Passed in 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act sounds like a decent idea. Every project funded by the federal government that has significant environmental effects should first undergo assessment.

But the law contains a powerful citizen suit provision that empowers environmental activists to block any federally funded infrastructure project by claiming in court that the government did not adequately study all environmental impacts. The average NEPA review takes over 4 1/2 years and costs $4.2 million. The Federal Railroad Administration is slower than most government agencies.

Perhaps more importantly, though, is the astonishing fact that there was no federal agency overseeing the construction of the transcontinental railroad. Congress just appropriated the money and granted the land to three private companies, and each built about a third of the railroad, which, when completed, was owned by the federal government. That is how our ancestors built part of the foundation of the amazing wealth we all enjoy today.

The Federal Railroad Administration was created in 1967, the same year as its parent organization, the Department of Transportation. Has our capacity to build and maintain railroads and other transportation infrastructure improved since then? Obviously not. It is far more expensive, time-consuming, and absurd than ever before.

It is unlikely, to say the least, that Congress will ever unwind the Transportation Department. But there is a movement to reform NEPA on Capitol Hill. Legislation has been introduced to streamline the process by limiting lawsuits and setting a time limit on how long federal agencies may spend complying with planning regulations.

So far, there has been little bipartisan support for reform, but projects such as the one at Union Station, which isn’t expected to be finished until 2040, confirm it is time to make our country capable of building things again. ⋆