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BONUS: Abundance in transportation

 August 12, 2025 at 7:00 AM PDT

AB: Hey listeners. By now you've probably heard the news: Congress has clawed back federal funding for public media. KPBS is losing $4.3 million, or about 12% of our budget. I'll be honest, it's scary times for me and some of my colleagues. But our work continues. And we need your help. Show your support for independent, nonprofit journalism and this podcast by making a donation at KPBS.org. And thanks.

CP: We say that we want high speed rail, we say that we want public transit, we even allocate money for it, like a lot of money.

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CP: But we're not seeing the outcomes that we ought to have. And so for an abundant view of public transit is like, how do we allow for more of the things that we say that we want and get rid of some of the barriers that we've been putting in the way of those things.

AB: From KPBS in San Diego, this is Freeway Exit. I'm Andrew Bowen. If you were to take a poll of everyone sitting in traffic on a highway, I'm willing to bet a good number of those people would rather be sitting on a train. When it's fast and convenient, public transit can offer a much more pleasant experience than driving alone. But too often, transit is neither fast nor convenient. And to meet the moment on climate change, California has to get better at building better transit. Colin Parent has some ideas. He's the CEO of Circulate San Diego and the lead author of the new report "Powerless Brokers: Why California can't build transit." The report tackles a very specific phase of transit projects β€” one in which cities, counties, utility companies, even irrigation districts can derail the infrastructure that we desperately need. My interview with Colin Parent… after a short break.

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AB: We're back with my interview with Colin Parent, author of the report Powerless Brokers: Why California can't build transit.

AB: There are a lot of things that make it expensive and difficult to build public transit. The labor costs are high. The engineering can often be quite complicated and expensive. Your report focuses on third party permitting. First of all, what does that mean exactly? And why is it so important for us to pay attention to.

CP: Yeah, so this is an area of public transit costs that is oftentimes under examined and not thought about. So I think in the public imagination, people can imagine, like a public transit agency, they think about a project, they do the design work, they do the environmental review, they contract with a developer or a construction firm, and then their board of directors votes on the project, and then they can go ahead and start building that project after all that stuff is completed. But that's actually not how it works. Once they do all of those things, then they have to go into this new different process called permitting, where they have to get permission from a bunch of different local governments, irrigation districts, public and private utilities to receive permission to build. Those are the third parties in the permitting process. And those transportation authorities, transit authorities, have to seek permission from them. And that can be a very difficult, very expensive, very time consuming process that can add not only cost costs, but also delays and certainly uncertainty.

AB: So what are some examples of permits that a transit agency would actually need in order to build a project?

CP: Yeah, so like a classic one is a right of way permit. So maybe a transit agency wants to build across a road that they don't own, or they want to cross below or above a freeway. And those are things that are owned the right of way for that, which means like the ability and the legal right to be able to pass that in that direction and is owned by Caltrans or in the case of a local road, a local city. And so the transportation authority will have to seek permission from some entity to be able to do that. And sometimes those entities have a routine process. They're supporters of the transit, they're supporters of expanding those kinds of projects and will issue those permits in a fairly quick way and in good faith. Sometimes those third parties are operating in bad faith and they want to hold up that project either because they don't like it or because they want to use that as leverage to extract something from the transit project, like some ancillary piece of infrastructure or some payment. And those are some of the things that can really trip up a project and create problems.

AB: And the bigger that a transit project gets, the more agencies end up having to get involved and the more opportunity there is for these excessive or arbitrary demands from a third Party that may not have an interest in the project getting done. Tell me about the Purple Line subway project in Los Angeles and some of the permitting challenges that it faced.

CP: Yes, that's a great example of a transit agency, the LA Metro, who had the political support from the city of Los Angeles, where most of this project was going to happen, and still faced a ton of problems on the permitting side from the city of Los Angeles in particular. What oftentimes would happen is that the transportation authority would propose some piece of the route, some sort of infrastructure, submit the permit application and then the engineering designs to the Department of Public Works or the Department of Water and Power, and those city agencies would respond and say, no, no, you have to do it totally differently. You have to completely redesign this at substantially additional cost. Then the transportation agency is like, okay, I guess we have to do that and have to redesign their project in that one in particular. That's like a multi billion dollar project. It's going to open later this year. As they're expecting, three years before the project was even slated to be finished, they ran out of their contingency budget and they had to put in another $200 million in, in that project to pay for all of these surprises that they got from third parties.

And again, this is not an example where the city of la. There's no indication that the city of LA is trying to stop the project. There actually are supporters of the project, but the process of applying for and issuing those permits is just very bureaucratic, it's very indirect, and it's driving a lot of these costs for that agency.

AB: So this report focuses on public transit. But I'm wondering, do all public works projects, all infrastructure projects, face these same kinds of challenges? Would a highway or road project have permitting issues or is this something unique to public transit?

CP: Yeah, it's not necessarily unique to transit, but what the issue is, if a city wants to build a road, the same city who wants to build the road is also the same city that gets to decide whether or not they build the road. So you don't have the public works department going to the public works department and not getting a permit. They actually issue the permit themselves. So it's fine, right? It is. Also, it may be the case where there's some more challenges if, like Caltrans wants to build a state highway through a local government. But in California, and this is actually true nationwide, state transportation departments have special powers and are able to supersede these local governments in a lot of ways. What's different about transit is that in a lot of circumstances, not all, but in a lot of circumstances, the agency that wants to build the transit is not the agency from whom they have to receive these permits. In the San Diego context, oftentimes it's sandag, our regional transportation agency that's building transit projects. And if they want to do that in our region, they will oftentimes need to seek and receive permits from all kinds of different bodies in government that are not Sandag. Maybe they're constituents of Sandag, but it's different staff and different decision makers.

AB: California's high speed rail project comes up a lot in this report. I remember voting on the bonds to start this big mega project in California in 2008. I think there was a lot of excitement about it at that time and, and since then, it's really become the poster child for California's dysfunction for its inability to deliver on big infrastructure projects. What are some of the examples of really egregious or unfair permitting challenges that were faced by the High Speed Rail Authority?

CP: Yeah, so these third party permitting challenges are major issues for high speed rail. And in fact, it was the High Speed Rail Authority's office of Inspector General issued a report earlier this year that said third party permitting challenges were the biggest issue facing the agency and facing that project. So this is an enormously important issue for that project. But so what's happening here is we have this multi billion dollar project that is being run by a state agency that has to go through the rights of way of a whole bunch of different jurisdictions and irrigation districts and all sorts of other things. And in our report we detailed some examples in different cities and counties in the central part of California where you had public sector leaders, city managers and the like being very explicit that what they were going to do is they were going to hold up that project in exchange for money to build infrastructure that they couldn't otherwise afford, things that they were planning, wanted to build, but they didn't have the resources to. And so they were just being extremely, I mean, I guess to their credit, transparent about holding this project hostage to extract tens of millions of dollars.

That's something that we as taxpayers here in San Diego are paying for. And it's a completely disjointed process. And the High Speed Rail Authority really just lacks the leverage in those negotiations to get a fair deal. And a lot of these cities and counties understand that and are taking it to their advantage.

AB: So a city or a government agency will demand a change to a transit project in exchange for, you know, them agreeing to Issue a permit. And that adds time. And time adds cost, of course, but the cost can also increase because the construction contract has to change. Right. So explain how change orders work in these transit projects and why that is such an expensive problem.

CP: So oftentimes, when a big transit project is being decided to be built, the transit authority will. They don't necessarily build it themselves. Usually they don't. What they do instead is they issue a request for proposals. They get proposals from construction firms, and they hire a large construction firm to do that project. A part of that contract award is there's a certain price tag. We're going to do these sorts of features. You've got to build it according to this. And there's usually a contingency budget because there's an expectation that there's going to be some surprises. But what change orders are is that when there are enough changes to the scope of the project that the construction firm has to come back to the board of the transportation authority and say, listen, we thought this was going to be a $200 million project, but turns out it's $250 million because there's this new thing that we have to build that you didn't think you had to build, but turns out that this other third party says we have to, and so now we have to get more money. So the total price of that project goes up.

And I think relatedly, it's difficult for the transit authority to constrain those costs because they're not actually the ones making the decision about those costs. It's some third party who's adding some additional feature or requirement to that project, and that results in the transit being more expensive than it otherwise would be, costing the taxpayers and the public agencies more, sometimes to the benefit of either the third party or the construction firm.

AB: You cite the Blue Line trolley extension here in San Diego as an example of a relatively smooth permitting process. This project opened in 2021. It added nine stations to the Blue Line and took that route up to University City. What about this project made it easier to build?

CP: This is an interesting one. Most of the examples in our report were about problematic projects that had a lot of permitting issues. And the Mid coast extension didn't really. Not that there were zero, but compared to others, it was pretty smooth sailing. We credit it for a couple of reasons. One is that we have a relatively collegial environment between transportation agencies and governments in the San Diego area. That's due to a lot of reasons, but one is that we have two transit operators and one county in our region, whereas in the Bay area, they have nine counties and 27 transit operators. The county of Los Angeles also has 27 transit operators, depending on how you count it. And so in San Diego, there's just fewer people to know in that space, fewer decision makers. And so it tends to be. It's a little easier for people to kind of know each other and to work well with each other. Another factor is that I think this is sort of related to that because these folks knew who each other were, they had good working relationships, they were able to plan ahead better. They can kind of imagine or discuss with one another what the likely challenges were for those projects. Kind of work out the details in advance before they went to hiring a construction firm and picking a price tag on the project. And then I think the third biggest component was that SANDAG has some authorities under state law that not every transit authority has. And so, for example, Sandag doesn't need to follow the zoning or the building code requirements of the jurisdictions in which it's building. It also has the authority to use the right of way of any jurisdiction or public agency within its boundaries. And those powers, plus the good working relationships meant that when there were some issues that maybe needed to be transcended, instead of having this big, ugly fight, Sandag was able to try to get it resolved in a relatively quick and relatively affordable way. And that helped the project move forward. Now, I want to clarify too, that that project's been in the works for like 20 years. So it's not like it happened like in a blink of an eye. But what we're talking about here is that after the design was done, after the environmental review was done, after the contract was awarded, then in that permitting process, the project went pretty smoothly.

And so that's the part that our reports focused on. And that's just one of the elements of building transit. But it's an important one that, and also one where we can't do much about interest rates, or there's only limited to how much funding is available, et cetera, et cetera. There's only so much we can do about that in public policy, locally and in California. We absolutely have control over our permitting process. And so those are the areas where we can make the most change and do the most good.

AB: Yeah, those rules are all self imposed. I can recall riding the midcoast trolley on a media preview ride, and I was chatting with the chief engineer of the project, and I asked her why she thinks it takes so long and, and costs so much money to build Transit. And the first thing that she mentioned was ceqa. This is the California Environmental Quality act. And it, generally speaking, it requires a government to analyze the environmental impacts of a project that it's building and to mitigate for those impacts. And this can create delays. There can be lawsuits. Where would you rank CEQA in the list of things that make it hard to build transit?

CP: Yeah, I mean, CEQA historically has been a challenge for public transit projects, but it's diminished very much in the last few years of its relevance to transit delays. And in part, that's because there's been some reforms that have basically said for smart, clean transit projects that meet certain criteria, that generate good jobs and that are likely to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they can be exempted from CEQA review. The rationale for this is just that these are projects that are by definition good for the environment, and so we don't have to have them go through the same process as a nuclear power plant might. As a result of that, a lot of projects, I think almost 100 projects in the last few years, transit projects, have been exempted from ceqa, CEQA review. And so they're not subject to those kinds of delays in litigation. And so I think that's positive. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't have CEQA for big scary things that have an environmental impact, but an electric bus is not one of those things. Like a bicycle lane is not one of those things. And so I think it's really been a diminishing part.

But also, I just want to clarify too, that our report is focused on what happens after. After CEQA is done, after environmental review is done. So when we're talking about permitting reform, we're not talking about changes to CEQA or exempting more types of projects or anything like that. We're talking about for the projects that have already gone through environmental review, if they have to do it, to what extent do we allow those projects to continue going forward? I just want to clarify for that, because CEQA can be kind of a dicey issue for a lot of people. If you're really, oh, I really care about CEQA so much. Okay, great. This is actually not getting in the way of those. Those sorts of considerations.

AB: After the break, the legacy of urban planning's greatest boogeyman, Robert Moses. And how transit fits into the movement for abundance. Stay tuned.

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AB: We're back with the rest of my interview with Circulate San Diego CEO Colin Parent.

AB: The title of your report, Powerless Brokers, is a reference to the Power Broker, which was the seminal biography of Robert Moses. He was an urban planner who built much of New York's highways and bridges. Moses was really notorious for getting projects done fast and with very little regard for public input or democratic checks and balances. Why is the story of Robert Moses relevant here?

CP: Yeah, I mean, it's relevant for a number of reasons. I mean, one is that Robert Moses was. He was this unstoppable, irascible, very problematic figure. But he did get things done. Right. And he got a bunch of things done, like highways that, like, displaced a lot of people, destroyed neighborhoods, really kind of bad stuff. And then fast forward to today, where we have transit authorities that we're trying to empower to do good things like build transit instead of dividing neighborhoods, stitching them back together, but instead of giving them the same kind of powers that we gave to Robert Moses, we're rendering them effectively powerless. Right. And there's this real stark divide here. Notably, too, Robert Moses famously refused to build transit. Right. And so it's just this strange dynamic that we're trying to do different, better things with public policy. We're trying to solve some of the problems that were created from these errors in the past, but we're actually not empowering the public agencies, the transit authorities, to be able to do what needs to get done. And so we thought it was just kind of a clever way to sort of illustrate that distinction between what had happened in the past and where we find ourselves today.

AB: We've spent a lot of time diagnosing the problem. What's the solution? What are your recommendations in this report?

CP: Yeah, so we have about a third of the report is with recommendations, and there are a variety of them, but the big component of them are really about how do we assign more responsibility to transit authorities to do the things that we say that we want them to do. So right now, we tell transit authorities, we want you to build transit, but you're actually not allowed to do it. As a result, we don't get as much transit as we might like, or it's much slower or more expensive. And so there's a variety of things we can do to give them the authority to do the things that we say that we want. And so a robust reform might be to grant them the ability to issue permits themselves so they don't have to ask for those permissions. And I think that might be the right choice, especially for large and important projects. But there's other stuff that we could do that is maybe a little more modest. So, for example, it's a tool that's oftentimes called a shot clock, where you say to the transit agency, they can apply for a permit from a local government, and that local government still gets to decide.

The transit agency doesn't get the self permit, but the local government has to make a decision within 60 days, yes or no. And if they don't, then the transit agency can move ahead as though they got that permit. And those are some things that already exist in the law in other contexts. So internationally, in Quebec, that's how transit authorities work. But domestically, we use that stuff too. Caltrans actually has to issue rights of way permits now within 60 days when transit authorities apply. And we've been doing this for over a decade for broadband companies. So broadband companies apply for a permit. This is a federal law. They apply for a permit. Local governments, third party agencies have to make that decision within 60 days. It just seems sort of obvious to me that if we're giving those authorities to telecom communication companies, like, why wouldn't we give that to public agencies who are trying to do things for the public interest?

AB: Your report mentions the current national discourse we're having around abundance. And the argument that's made in this book called Abundance is essentially that the United States has created too many barriers to building all of the things that we need to survive and thrive in the 21st century. Things like clean energy, housing. What does abundance look like in the context of transportation?

CP: Yeah, I think what it means is we get more miles per dollar spent and it happens faster. And what we're having now is that we say that we want high speed rail, we say that we want public transit, we even allocate money for it, like a lot of money. Like there's a lot of money going into high speed rail, but we're not seeing the outcomes that we ought to have. And so that abundance for an abundant view of public transit is like, how do we allow for more of the things that we say that we want and get rid of some of the barriers that we've been putting in the way of those things. And these things don't have to be changes that abandon our commitments to workers rights or environmental review or these other things. Those are really substantive and useful and are trying to advance important public policy goals. But things like having public works directors of one agency having a fight with the public works director of another agency and just adding $10 million of costs without any sort of substantive benefit to the public, or these other issues just doesn't make a lot of sense.

And so if instead we had clearer rules reallocating the authority, the transit authorities themselves, those are sort of things that we can do to allow for more of the things that we say that we want faster and more affordably.

AB: What are the stakes here? What happens if we just continue with the status quo and California just doesn't get better at building public transit.

CP: Well, I mean, you definitely got the climate crisis. I believe in climate change. Most of your listeners do. If we're going to be able to do something about that, we're going to have to exp ability and access for public transit. So that's certainly one. But let's talk about something very concrete and near term. So the federal government, President Trump said that he's going to take away federal resources from California's high speed rail project. And their stated reasons is they don't see a path forward to getting that project actually completed. And their reasons for this are the reasons that we identify in the report that there is just all kinds of barriers that we have created for doing this. And so I don't think we should take that lying down. I think we ought to prove them wrong. But in order to do that, we're going to have to make some changes about the policies that we have in place so that the monies that we do generate locally in our state and also from the federal government are in fact being used to build the projects that we say that we want.

AB: That's it for this bonus episode. If you're a first time listener, thank you and welcome. If you liked what you heard, I highly recommend you go back to the first episode and start listening from there. Thanks to everyone who has subscribed to this podcast and left us a rating and review. Thanks to everyone who's told a friend about Freeway Exit. And a huge heartfelt thank you to everyone who donates to KPBS. I'll see you next time.

California needs better public transit. But building new bus and rail lines is difficult and expensive here. A new report says to make things easier, the state needs to get out of its own way.

California needs better public transit. Trains and buses are critical not just to our economy β€” they're also a cornerstone of the fight against climate change. But improving transit is difficult and expensive here. A new report says to make it easier, the state needs to get out of its own way. Circulate San Diego CEO Colin Parent joins the podcast to discuss his report "Powerless Brokers: Why California can't build transit."