Besides the 11 new projects, the dashboard lists 20 projects under active review and 32 whose reviews have been completed.
In a related action, the administration is setting up an interagency center, charged with helping to coordinate the improvement of infrastructure permitting.
Federal actions to speed up project reviews date back at least as far as 1998, with “streamlining” provisions contained in the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century. The focus has intensified in recent years, including language aimed at getting highway and transit projects approved more quickly.
Obama has taken earlier administrative steps to improve project approvals. In May 2013, he directed an interagency steering committee to come up with a plan to put improved permitting processes in place. That committee comprises 12 agencies, including the departments of transportation, energy and defense and the Environmental Protection Agency.
That steering committee on May 14 issued an implementation plan, which includes strategies for faster reviews—such as improving project planning, siting and quality of applications—as well as specific changes and about 100 milestones.
Obama’s announcement won praise from construction unions and industry officials.
Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trade Unions, said, “Hopefully, with positive reforms, projects will no longer languish in permitting purgatory for up to six years waiting for approval in order to put Americans back to work in middle-class wage jobs.”
Terry O’Sullivan, Laborers’ International Union of North America general president, hailed the administration’s “sense of urgency in permitting more than 50 major infrastructure projects over the past several years.”
O’Sullivan also called on Congress to expedite a long-term highway bill before new projects are halted or slowed down.
However, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office posted a blog entry criticizing Obama for failing to include the Keystone XL oil pipeline among the additions to the dashboard. McConnell and other critics have said the administration has been studying that project for too long.
Story updated on May 15 to include Senate committee's highway bill vote.
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As ENR's former Washington Bureau Chief, Tom Ichniowski wrote about the federal government since the George H.W. Bush administration, and covered at least five major highway bills. A recognized expert on government policy on infrastructure and regulation, Tom is also a Baltimore native and Orioles fan who grew up rooting for Brooks and Frank Robinson. He is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia’s graduate school of journalism, where he once used “unrelentless” in a headline.
