Share the Truth About Transit Project Failures | IFP

Content

This piece is part of IFP’s Transit Abundance Playbook, a collection of proposals for reducing American transit construction costs.

Summary

Transit agencies do not adequately document the lessons they learn from managing large projects because of perceived reputational, funding, and legal risks. Without this knowledge sharing, agencies repeat costly mistakes, leading to delays, cost overruns, and public distrust. This piece proposes a three-part solution: (1) the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) should create a confidential repository where anonymized lessons from agencies and contractors are collected and analyzed; (2) FTA regional offices should reinvigorate their work convening in-person exchanges so transit agency peers can candidly share their challenges; and (3) FTA should add peer review to its oversight program, turning the current compliance process into two-way learning that spreads best practices across the industry.

Problem

As noted in the Eno Center for Transportation’s recent report, transit agencies are failing to adequately document the lessons they learn from managing large projects.

Because agencies do not share candid accounts of how issues were (or were not) addressed in past transit projects, valuable insights and lessons are not incorporated into project management training or project planning. As a result, transit agencies across the country repeat costly mistakes, which slows project delivery, inflates budgets, and erodes public trust.

Interviews with current and former transit industry leaders emphasize the importance of sharing lessons learned to preserve institutional knowledge and avoid the same pitfalls. Bruce Podwal, former board member and president of several subsidiaries of the engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff, said, “Good project managers learn from their mistakes; excellent project managers also learn from the mistakes of others.” And Bill Goodrich, who directed the first phase of the New York City Second Avenue subway and Long Island Rail Road’s East Side Access projects, endorses documenting lessons learned through the design, construction, testing, and commissioning processes, noting that documentation enables them to be incorporated into future training.

This knowledge gap persists for several reasons. Transit agencies are reluctant to air their dirty laundry because it might reflect poorly on staff, supervisors, and institutions, or raise doubts about an agency’s ability to effectively manage projects. Transparent documentation could also be used against the agency in litigation with contractors. Some agencies fear that spotlighting their own missteps might jeopardize their ability to secure future local and federal funds. Beyond the transit agencies themselves, FTA employees overseeing projects may be loath to share mistakes because it could jeopardize federal funding for other proposals and imply that FTA did not properly monitor projects.

One transit agency official acknowledged that while his agency did release documents on lessons learned, they were so sanitized that they became “worthless.” He explained that a candid report would lead journalists, elected officials, and the general public to question whether the agency was spending its money wisely. The agency did not even create an unvarnished version of its report for internal use, fearing disclosure through public records requests.

Excessive caution is rampant. According to Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) officials who have worked on New York’s Second Avenue Subway, the design criteria and standards for the project’s second phase reflect knowledge gained from the first. But while various efforts to document lessons from the first phase were initiated, the findings were never formally compiled because the MTA was hesitant to record its mistakes — one senior MTA official said, “You want to show that you’re improving, but don’t want to show that you did it wrong.” He cited a concern that some lessons could be taken out of context, misinterpreted, and misused.

Henry Stopplecamp, who oversaw the Denver Regional Transportation District’s FasTracks program and managed more than 350 employees and consultants, noted that agencies and contractors are fallible, adding, “Getting into how the sausage is made can detract from the enjoyment of eating the sausage. But we all need to learn from mistakes and develop a method for sharing this information.” By Stopplecamp’s account, agencies are sensitive about documenting failures, such as criticizing a contractor’s work, because of potential liability. On the other hand, praising a contractor’s performance might be interpreted as an endorsement of every task undertaken. Toward the end of his career at RTD, Stopplecamp revealed, “I don’t keep notes anymore; notes are discoverable and the only official record should be meeting minutes or official correspondence.” In his telling, “The best way to gain insight on a project is by talking directly with the team and relating your needs and concerns.”

This industry-wide reluctance to share information limits the ability to learn from past failures and build on prior experience.

Solution

FTA has facilitated transit agencies sharing lessons learned in the past, but shifting priorities and insufficient resources limited the effort’s utility. Between 1995 and 1999, FTA periodically prepared Project Management Oversight Lessons Learned documents, publishing an average of 6.4 documents per year. In the years since, it has published only 1.4 annually.¹

These few reports provide limited information. For example, the takeaways from the construction of New Jersey Transit’s $450 million Secaucus train station project identified “diligent” interagency coordination efforts as the central lesson learned from preliminary engineering and final design efforts, but the report only describes this coordination in a few sentences. Moreover, because the report was published three years before the station’s 2003 opening, it failed to capture lessons that emerged when design and engineering problems arose during construction.

A more important lesson from the Secaucus project is the need for design to consider later maintenance requirements, but neither the FTA nor New Jersey Transit publicly documented that. When the lights at the top of the new station’s 75-foot-high rotunda had to be changed for the first time in 2006, the engineers realized that the only way to reach the fixtures was to cut a hole in the roof and hoist a crane into the station. It took the transit agency two weeks and thousands of dollars to change the lightbulbs.

The United Kingdom documents learnings from transit projects much more thoroughly than the US does, providing guidance for public officials on the best ways to appraise policies, programs, and projects. While the guidance recognizes the need to manage disclosure and legal risk, it does not promote sanitizing or curating lessons learned to protect institutional reputation; instead, it treats candid evaluation as critical to good public governance.

The UK’s Crossrail Learning Legacy website, which documents insights from the Crossrail megaproject, contains more than 800 documents, organized into 12 themes. These lessons have informed how the UK managed later megaprojects — such as High Speed 2, the Transpennine Route Upgrade, and the Lower Thames Crossing — strengthening cost control and reducing delivery risk across the nation’s portfolio of large transportation projects (though cost challenges remain for UK projects).

Three initiatives would help US transit agencies share lessons learned in a comprehensive, systematic, and ongoing manner:

Build a knowledge repository

FTA should require agencies receiving major capital grants to contribute to a “lessons learned” repository. Challenges, resolutions, and outcomes should be collected in a way that preserves anonymity. To mitigate reputational risk, FTA should publish only aggregated findings, highlighting recurring themes and issues, rather than singling out individual failures. This approach promotes industry-wide transparency without discouraging candor.

To make the repository even more robust, FTA should invite contractors, consultants, and other private partners to anonymously share their perspectives. This input would provide a more complete picture of what worked, what didn’t, and how future projects could be improved. To avoid disclosure that might be subject to state public records laws, federal legislation should create a specific Freedom of Information Act exemption for this program, overriding state-level open records laws.

The US Department of Transportation (DOT) already manages several programs that show how confidential reporting can work effectively. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), for example, collects “service difficulty” reports from pilots and mechanics about maintenance incidents. By identifying patterns in these reports, the FAA can prevent recurring defects or malfunctions and act before they become systemic problems. Similarly, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) sponsors a voluntary, confidential program that allows railroad employers and their employees to report close calls without fear of reprisal. These programs offer examples of confidential reporting systems that enhance accountability while protecting the individuals and organizations who participate. A lessons-learned repository for transit projects could build on these USDOT precedents.

Congress should enact legislation to protect both the anonymity of information and its use in civil litigation, as it has done for these two programs. Under 49 U.S. Code § 40123, voluntarily-provided safety or security-related FAA information cannot be disclosed if doing so “would inhibit the voluntary provision of that type of information.” Per 49 U.S. Code § 20903, information submitted to the FRA’s close call reporting system may not “be admitted into evidence or used in a civil action for damages.” As in these other contexts, FTA should be empowered and required to protect sensitive information from public disclosure to ensure transit agencies remain willing to honestly self-report problems without fear of legal or professional repercussions.
Facilitate in-person knowledge sharing

Every FTA regional office should convene in-person sessions where agencies can learn from one another about the challenges encountered before, during, and after undertaking major transit projects. The in-person component is critical because people are more candid in small group settings, such as conversations on the sidelines of an event or over a meal. Regional meetings would increase the likelihood that participants would continue meeting in person as projects progress, while minimizing travel time and costs. The regional offices could choose to also invite agencies from outside the region who have relevant expertise and experience.

The need for in-person programs is greater than ever because virtual courses and conferences have been replacing many in-person educational programs. For instance, the National Transit Institute (NTI) offers approximately 40 online training courses to help transit agencies develop the skills and knowledge needed to manage large projects and comply with FTA requirements. While these courses provide valuable technical knowledge, they do not create the same space for the open, trust-based conversations that can emerge when peers meet in person.

Regional sessions would be especially valuable for transit agencies embarking on their first major project. Inexperienced agencies often underestimate the challenges of navigating environmental reviews, coordinating multiple contractors, and hiring skilled project managers. Hearing firsthand from peers who have faced — and solved — these challenges could save on project costs and ensure more timely delivery. To ensure these sessions provide practical value, FTA should require agencies that have completed large federally funded projects to participate, share lessons in informal settings, and host visiting teams from other agencies. FTA convened similar construction roundtables with sponsors of large capital projects in the past, but none are currently scheduled due to budget cuts.
Implement and require peer review of projects

FTA should incorporate a peer-review component into its Project Management Oversight (PMO) program. PMO consultants now monitor and evaluate major capital projects to ensure that sponsors have the processes and capacity to deliver promised benefits on time, within budget, and in compliance with federal requirements. By encouraging transit agencies to periodically contribute staff to the PMO program, FTA could transform oversight into a two-way learning process. Congress should fund FTA to pay the travel expenses of an agency staff member assigned to work alongside PMO consultants for up to two weeks on a project review, providing sufficient time for a project manager to learn and contribute without taking them away from their transit agency’s portfolio of projects for too long.

Peer review helps both the reviewer and the reviewed. Agencies under review gain practical insights from professionals who understand their challenges, while reviewers gain exposure to different management approaches that they can bring back to their own organizations. According to one transportation executive, reviewing another agency’s project helps managers identify best practices worth adopting — and recognize bad habits they may have fallen into on their own projects.

Together, these three initiatives would strengthen institutional learning across the transit industry. Congress should direct FTA to implement these programs and provide dedicated funding to support them. An allocation for a small addition of staff to FTA’s Office of Program Management and related travel expenses for sessions would likely cost less than one-tenth of 1% of FTA’s $4.6 billion annual Capital Investment Grants (CIG) program. Congress should require agencies to engage in these efforts by tying CIG funding eligibility to participation.

Preserving and disseminating knowledge will help reduce costly repeated mistakes. Based on a calculation by the megaproject scholar Bent Flyvbjerg, avoiding a one-month delay on New York’s Second Avenue subway’s latest phase of construction would save nearly $30 million.² Although the unpredictable nature of project failures and mistakes makes it impossible to know the savings from these initiatives in advance, a single lesson learned could conceivably pay for all three initiatives.

Summary

Problem

Solution

Further reading