The Perverse Reason It’s Easier to Build New Highways Than New Subways
More than two years have passed since the New York State Legislature approved congestion pricing for New York City, a policy to charge drivers entering the Manhattan core. If they want to know the environmental impact, I’ll tell them: It will reduce congestion, it will reduce pollution.” The mayor’s logic will sound familiar to anyone who has followed the construction of an American mass transit project, where you practically have to pulp a California redwood just to print the environmental impact statement required by the National Environmental Policy Act. Transportation is the country’s largest source of carbon emissions, but ideas that aim to reduce dependence on planes, cars, and trucks have even more trouble gaining environmental approval than highways. In Seattle, for example, the final environmental impact statement for Sound Transit’s East Link light rail project included a study of what it would be like to build 24 alternative routes! “A transit agency is designed to operate transit, not build transit projects,” said Paul Lewis, the Eno Center’s director of policy.
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