Green rules and green tape: Streamlining the environmental review for transportation projects

Abstract

• Streamlining rules and procedures using green tape improves performance. • Programmatic Categorical Exclusions create substantial time savings for infrastructure project delivery. • Streamlining project sub-disciplines creates performance gains for the entire project. • Green tape theory can be applied to diverse project teams in the outsourced environment. The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) implemented a programmatic agreement as green tape to streamline environmental review and decrease project durations. We investigate the implementation and outcomes associated with this streamlining initiative to examine whether it functions as green tape and investigate whether it improves performance by reducing project durations. We use a mixed-methods approach, using qualitative analysis to explore green tape perceptions of project team members and a quasi-experimental, instrumental variable approach to estimate the time-savings the created for a sample of 397 infrastructure projects. Our results reveal the streamlining initiative operates as green tape and demonstrate the substantial performance gains green tape can yield. These findings suggest that streamlining one project discipline impacts performance across the entire project, creating substantial time savings. Furthermore, they demonstrate how green tape functions in diverse project teams and can be applied in public agencies to create performance gains in infrastructure project delivery.