The local news here was nattering about this over the last couple of days.
Steve
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Messing once again with States Rights… Hopefully resulting a bloody nose at the least!
That nose has poked into our CA business as well, as in the high speed rail, many years in the planning, maybe not perfect but it as to start somewhere, sometime…
In the SF Bay Area, our transit system was fought, BART in the end, happened, but they screwed up by not extending the loop to include the North Bay, either by crossing the Golden Gate or tunneling under the bay… A more local rail transit system was fought for years, should have been part of BART, but today we have it going, slowed by the pandemic, but coming along, eventually will link to events in Sacramento, but it has to have begun to ever happen, we’re way behind Europe… We’ve taken HS rail in Spain, pretty awesome, tunnels are a problem as it makes your ears pop, wake you up! 
IIRC, there are a lot more people who live south toward San Jose. It would have made more sense to complete the loop around the south end of the bay (and it would not require more tunnels under the bay).
DB2
1 Like
Caltrain connects San Francisco with San Jose.
From the first link:
“Michigan was slated to receive $110 million from the program through 2026, but so far has spent just $2.2 million.The feds have authorized Michigan to spend a total of $77.2 million, which leaves more than $30 million still unauthorized in federal coffers.”
It looks like Michigan can still spend $77 million on chargers. Has it built any so far with the $2 million?
In 2021, Congress passed and former President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, sometimes called the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The law, among many other things, created a $5 billion program to build EV chargers nationwide with federal dollars. That bill named that project the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program…
The letter [from the DoT] explains, “Effective immediately, no new obligations may occur under the NEVI Formula Program until the updated final NEVI Formula Program Guidance is issued and new State plans are submitted and approved.”
It makes clear that “Until new guidance is issued, reimbursement of existing obligations will be allowed in order to not disrupt current financial commitments.” That should allow most already-approved projects to proceed…
If NEVI funding disappears permanently, it could halt many future charger projects. However, most of the public charging network America has today was built without it. The Washington Post notes, “Just 55 charging stations have been built so far” with NEVI funds.
DB2
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If I was going to spend $77m on a new, complex project, I can see spending $2m on planning so that I knew what to do.
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I find it very surprising how slowly the states and charging companies spent this money. Did the Feds need to force them into actually building stations?
Some articles say that all of federal conditions around the charger buildout are responsible for the sluggish response – where they have to be located, who can build them, etc.
“Underserved communities” (e.g., Compton) must be included. Charging stations can be no more than one mile from an interstate exit or highway intersection along a designated Alternative Fuel Corridor (AFC). Etc.
DB2
I don’t know … consider that, after the legislation passed, a federal group to manage the installation would need to be created and staffed and then it would have to make a bunch of decisions on what it was going to do, decisions based on new studies, no doubt. Then, when the federal program was coming in to shape, the states would have to decide how they wanted to participate, create the department, staff the department, get some initial funding, do a study or two … and now how much time has passed? Could it have been done faster? Sure! I’ll bet there are a bunch of people here who know exactly what they should have done … several different versions, of course.
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That’s all part of the “myth of government inefficiency”.
I came across an article explaining/defending the slowness of the process. She starts off by asking “Slow relative to what” and then spends 12+ paragraphs describing the processes and cycles.
Getting to the point of allocating the first tranche of funding to states took nearly a year to complete, and that doesn’t include the funding solicitation cycle…
With the year of necessary startup time, some time for project solicitation and evaluation, and a typical 18 month project execution time, deployment of stations in most states is not getting into unacceptably “slow” territory yet…
I think about the NEVI Program implementation and milestones in terms of five key cycles.
The first cycle is federal guidance, of which one round was needed before the inaugural state plans were developed and submitted. This cycle includes updated guidance, minimum standards and requirements, question and answer documents, and more…
The second cycle is state planning, which states are required to do annually. States consider the statute, guidance and rules from FHWA and the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, and feedback they solicit from their constituents and communities to produce a plan that they then submit to FHWA…
The third cycle is the awards cycle. Once the state earns its funding allocation, it issues some kind of solicitation for projects, such as a request for proposal or notice of funding. The state collects project applications, evaluates them, and makes awards…
Within any of those cycles is the opportunity to engage constituents and communities to gather input and feedback…You could also see stakeholder feedback as a cycle itself that feeds into the other three cycles at various points. Either way, the process to meaningfully engage and collect community input takes time…
Upon receiving the award, project developers begin the project execution cycle, which includes steps like permitting, construction, connection to the electric grid, and official opening. This is the part that can take around 18 months, not including the potential for unexpected delays.
DB2
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And yet, when federal guidance changes, it all stops immediately.
No 5-step cycles there.
And yet, upstream we read that "It [the DOT letter] makes clear that “Until new guidance is issued, reimbursement of existing obligations will be allowed in order to not disrupt current financial commitments.”
DB2