DOT's underused buildings cost $370M a year. The fix has no plan

DOT and FAA headquarters run at about a third full.▸ A GAO audit released July 15⧉ found that 89% of the Department of Transportation's 189 office buildings -- including its own and the FAA's headquarters complexes -- fall below the federal occupancy standard, at a combined cost of $370 million a year in rent, operations, and maintenance. DOT's fix is already underway: moving FAA headquarters staff into DOT headquarters. But as of June 2026 the agency still doesn't know where 950 of those employees will go, or how much the move will actually save.

The Utilizing Space Efficiently and Improving Technologies (USE IT) Act⧉, a law enacted in January 2025, set the federal government's first hard occupancy benchmark: 60% utilization, measured by dividing a building's usable square footage by a 150-square-feet-per-person standard.▸ GAO measured DOT's real attendance -- badge swipes and timecards over a four-week span in August and September 2025 -- against that benchmark for all 189 DOT office buildings nationwide. It found 168 of them, 89%, underutilized. Owned buildings averaged 37% occupancy and leased buildings 41%. This isn't a surprise finding: managing federal real property has sat on GAO's High-Risk List for 23 years⧉, and a 2023 GAO report found DOT's and other federal agencies' headquarters buildings underutilized and recommended a utilization benchmark be developed -- the recommendation the USE IT Act's 60% threshold fulfilled when it became law in January 2025.

DOT headquarters, split across East and West towers in Washington, has room for 6,894 people at the USE IT Act's space standard; average daily attendance was 2,312, for 34% utilization, at an annual cost of $56.1 million in rent plus $16 million in operations and maintenance⧉ -- about $72 million a year, by our own addition of GAO's two published cost lines.▸ FAA headquarters, across town, has capacity for 5,298; average daily attendance was 1,732, for 33% utilization, at roughly $56.3 million a year in rent and upkeep. Both buildings rank among DOT's 10 most expensive to rent⧉ -- a list that also includes an underutilized FAA southwest regional headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas (36%) and an FAA building in El Segundo, California (27%), plus offices in Anchorage, Alaska (32%) and Springfield Gardens, New York (13%).

DOT's answer is to consolidate: move FAA headquarters staff into the DOT headquarters complex and, eventually, fully vacate the FAA buildings by summer 2027⧉.▸ The agency estimates the whole consolidation will cost $91 million; it had already spent $12 million as of the report, and separately requested $60 million for the effort in its fiscal 2027 budget. If it succeeds, officials say DOT would stop paying about $56 million a year in rent and upkeep on the vacated FAA complex, and GSA could separately avoid an estimated $131 million in deferred-maintenance costs by disposing of the empty building.

Neither savings figure is locked in: both depend on a relocation plan DOT doesn't have yet.▸ As of June 2026, the agency still hadn't determined where 950 FAA headquarters employees would move⧉ once their building is vacated. GAO spells out what that gap risks in plain terms: without a placement plan, DOT 'may be forced to retain an FAA headquarters complex that is neither well-utilized nor vacant enough to dispose of, potentially offsetting any savings from the consolidation' -- the empty building keeps costing money either way, occupied or not, until someone decides where its people go.

Even a fully successful consolidation would leave DOT short of its own standard.▸ Combining both headquarters' measured attendance -- 2,312 plus 1,732, or 4,044 people -- against DOT headquarters' 6,894-person capacity works out to 59% utilization⧉, still one point under the 60% threshold. And the headquarters project is the only consolidation DOT has underway: as of March 2026, the department had no plan to consolidate space anywhere else⧉, even though 89% of its buildings qualify. Separately, DOT and GSA have trimmed nine field-office leases in Alabama, Arizona, Wisconsin, and other states -- $3.6 million in annual rent, about 93,000 square feet -- a rounding error against the $370 million problem GAO measured.

GAO also found DOT hasn't adopted basic space-saving tools like desk-sharing, even though officials told auditors that many DOT employees, who spend their days on field inspections and investigations, are away from their desks roughly half the time.▸ DOT's own explanation: its policy reserves a dedicated desk for anyone in the office six or more days per pay period, and officials said a shared-desk system doesn't fit alongside the federal return-to-office mandate requiring daily in-person attendance.

GAO issued two recommendations: that the Transportation Secretary complete a headquarters consolidation plan⧉ that names where every relocated FAA employee will sit and what the move will actually save, and that DOT build a department-wide consolidation plan using space-maximizing strategies.▸ DOT agreed with both. Neither recommendation carries a GAO-set deadline; the only date on record is DOT's own target of fully vacating FAA headquarters by summer 2027, roughly a year from this report. GAO's recommendation-tracking system is the mechanism that will show whether that target holds -- both recommendations remain open as of publication, with no closure date yet set.