Making Environmental Review Work for Passenger Rail

by Jim Mathews / President & CEO

The Surface Transportation Board is proposing something that sounds technical but could have very real consequences for how quickly passenger rail projects move from plans to reality: modernizing its environmental review procedures under the National Environmental Policy Act.

That may not sound like headline news. And, at 69 pages, the STB’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking isn’t exactly a brisk read. But trust me when I say it matters more than most people realize. Because right now, we sometimes find ourselves in the strange position of delaying projects designed to reduce pollution long enough that the delay itself produces even more pollution. Unlike highways and airports, most intercity passenger rail projects will find themselves in front of the Surface Transportation Board in some fashion before construction can begin, which makes the Board’s environmental review procedures especially important to whether projects move forward on schedule.

Passenger rail is one of the clearest examples. Every time a corridor upgrade gets pushed back by years — or even decades — cars stay on the road longer. Flights that could have shifted to rail keep operating. Communities continue living with congestion and emissions that modern rail service could have reduced. Environmental review is supposed to help us make better decisions about infrastructure. It’s not supposed to postpone the benefits of better infrastructure indefinitely.

That’s the paradox the Board is trying to address in its proposed updates. (You can read the entire proposal by clicking here.) The changes reflect recent statutory revisions to NEPA and court decisions clarifying how agencies should focus environmental analysis, but if all that makes your head spin, just remember their practical effect is simpler: clearer timelines, more predictable review steps, and a tighter focus on environmental effects that are actually relevant to the decision at hand.

STB has the docket open for comments on this potential rulemaking, and we’ve filed ours broadly in support of what they’re proposing. (Read our comments in the docket by clicking here.)

Among the most important changes are replacing the traditional draft-and-final Environmental Impact Statement sequence with a more focused single-document process supported by earlier scoping, clarifying when indirect impacts along existing rail lines should — and should not — be analyzed, expanding the use of categorical exclusions where impacts are minimal or already well understood, and streamlining environmental review for rail line abandonments that have little likelihood of environmental consequences. These are procedural changes, but procedural changes can make the difference between a project that moves forward on schedule and one that stalls for years.

Rail Passengers Association has been working with partners in Congress and across the rail sector to speed project delivery and to advance similar improvements as part of the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization. You can read about them in a lot more detail at www.railpassengers.org/blueprint, and I hope you’ll take a look. Those proposals include clearer timelines for environmental review, earlier determinations about application completeness, stronger coordination among federal agencies, and ensuring that the Surface Transportation Board’s environmental review staff have the resources needed to support faster project delivery. The Board’s proposal moves in the same direction, and that alignment is encouraging as Federal policymakers prepare for the next phase of passenger rail expansion.

Passenger rail projects often produce environmental benefits that are both immediate and long-term. They reduce vehicle miles traveled, cut aviation emissions on short-haul routes, and support more compact land-use patterns around stations. But those benefits don’t appear on paper. They appear when trains start running. When environmental review stretches out over long periods without improving decision quality, the result isn’t better environmental protection. It’s delayed environmental progress.

In some cases, review timelines measured in decades rather than years can postpone emissions reductions for an entire generation of travelers. That’s not what NEPA was intended to do. The law is supposed to inform and maybe improve decisions — not prevent them from happening altogether.

One area where the Board is asking for input involves how environmental conditions apply when rail lines are abandoned. Most abandonments today involve lines that have been inactive for years and present little environmental risk, and in those cases faster review makes sense. At the same time, the Board is considering changes that could affect how salvage activities, like removing track or bridges, are handled after abandonment authority is granted. That’s the kind of detail that’s important for our coalition, because the goal should be to remove unnecessary procedural steps without creating incentives to avoid environmental review where it’s actually needed. Getting that balance right is exactly what rulemakings like this are for.

These proposed changes also don’t exist in isolation. Congress updated NEPA’s timelines and structure in 2023, courts have clarified that environmental review should focus on effects agencies can reasonably evaluate and act on, and federal and state partners are now planning a new generation of intercity passenger rail corridors across the country. If those corridors are going to move from planning maps to construction sites within a realistic timeframe, environmental review has to be predictable as well as thorough.

Rail Passengers Association strongly supports environmental review that protects communities, natural resources, and historic assets. Those protections are essential. But environmental review works best when it produces clear, decision-useful analysis on a timeline that actually allows beneficial projects to move forward. Too often we hear planners proudly claiming that they can get a new route running in 20 years, on tracks that already exist, where other trains already run today. That is quite simply a policy failure. Passenger rail investments are one of the most effective tools we have for reducing transportation-sector emissions, and making sure those investments aren’t delayed longer than necessary isn’t just good project management. It’s good environmental policy.