By Eric Murphy
Earlier this month, the US Department of Transportation announced a “first of its kind” agreement between several federal agencies and the Connecticut DOT to speed up review for transportation projects. That agreement took years of relationship building with federal partners and other state agencies to complete, as well as adding specialized skills to the DOT’s staff over time.
“This newly signed agreement will help speed up historic preservation reviews so we can deliver projects more efficiently,” Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto told SSTI. “There are dozens of projects that are going to benefit from this new agreement, including several rail projects on the Northeast Corridor.”
Among those projects are upgrades to the New Haven Line commuter rail system that serves tens of millions of riders. The agency expects that faster delivery will save millions of dollars in materials and labor costs, as the agreement is expected to speed up delivery of almost every rail project and most transit projects in the state.
Connecticut’s agreement with USDOT will allow the agency to perform its own reviews on transportation projects that may impact historic properties, which the federal government typically reviews under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. This process sometimes leads to considerable delays, even on projects like repaving and replacing traffic signals. Some other states have programmatic agreements about Section 106 with FHWA, but Connecticut’s recent agreement was the first to incorporate the Federal Railroad Administration and the Federal Transit Administration in a unified agreement.
Under the agreement, reviews to preserve historic and cultural resources will still happen, but at a more local level for rail and transit projects. Rather than waiting six months or more for a federal review, the agency’s own architectural historians and archaeologists on staff will be able to assess any impact of projects to historical properties, consulting with the State Historic Preservation Office, Native American tribes, and the public.
Connecticut DOT’s effort started more than a decade ago, by building strong relationships with the State Historic Preservation Office and with federal partners. A pilot partnership with the Federal Highway Administration allowed the agency to hire an architectural historian and archaeologist, who eventually became state staff—not every DOT has this expertise and capacity for historical review available to them on staff.
Working with FHWA helped Connecticut create a programmatic agreement to speed up reviews of projects impacting historical properties under FHWA’s purview. Continuing that collaboration and long-term relationship building across multiple administrations made expanding that agreement possible. Eucalitto said other agencies could follow in Connecticut’s footsteps and streamline federal reviews for rail and transit, telling SSTI:
“We believe other state departments of transportation and transportation agencies could benefit from this type of agreement with USDOT.”
Photo credit: Gunnar Ridderström via Unsplash. License.