Last month, Senator Scott Wiener introduced S.B. 71, a bill that seeks to streamline the state-mandated environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act for public transportation and bike and pedestrian infrastructure projects that reduce car dependency. Earlier this week, he introduced a second piece of legislation that would make it easier to build larger transit projects.
For decades, some transit projects have experienced cost overruns and months or even years-long delays. S.B. 445 addresses that by imposing deadlines on local governments, special districts, telecommunications companies, and public and private utilities to comply with the permitting process.
If the transit agency doesn’t get those permits because of these delays, they are empowered to just begin construction. The legislation also limits local governments from requiring concessions unrelated to the project as a requirement for receiving a permit.
S.B. 445 applies to a wide range of sustainable transportation projects, and will be especially helpful to the California High-Speed Rail Authority. If you live in California, you’ve doubtless been inundated with news stories about how the High Speed Rail Project is over-budget and delayed. As Streetsblog has pointed out many times, the delays caused by excessive permitting are one reason that timelines and budgets get extended.
But you don’t have to take our word for it. The California High-Speed Rail Office of the Inspector General (OIG) identified coordinating on permits with third parties as a “top risk” to the overall schedule in a report issued earlier this month.
According to a summary provided by the Senator’s office, S.B. 445 requires third-party entities to do the following:
- Acknowledge receipt and completeness of a notice by the lead agency of a need to complete specified construction activities on the right-of-way or property of the third-party entity within 30 days of receipt of the notice
- Within 30 days of acknowledging receipt and completeness of the notice and providing any comments, issue any relevant permits, approvals, or permissions needed for delivery of the scope of work identified in the notice.
For sustainable transportation projects greater than $25 million, the bill also does the following:
- Require lead agencies to provide notice to third-party entities of their intent to enter into a cooperative agreement that defines the roles and responsibilities of each entity in collaborating on design review, permitting, and other relevant aspects of project delivery
- Within 60 days of the third-party entity’s determination that such a notice is complete, require third-party entities to enter into such a cooperative agreement with the lead agency
“Public transportation is critical to California’s future, but a broken permit process has eroded Californians’ trust in transit agencies’ ability to deliver projects on time and on budget,” said Senator Wiener in a statement.
“We need to rebuild that trust to deliver the affordable transportation and pollution reductions that public transportation makes possible. That starts by fixing our Rube Goldberg permitting process.”
