Transcripts For CSPAN2 U.S. 20240703

Please all take a fiveminute break traffic in d. C. Is traffic and deceit we are running ahead of schedule because everyone is so efficient. Chat with yourselves for check the emails will be back with our programming just as soon as we possibly can. Stick close, thank you so much. [background noises] police welcome future of federal investment in infrastructure panel. Welcome we are excited to be here. After he got in the right juris yearswe are supposed to sit in. We passed the first test. Good afternoon my name is marsia i am 2024 president of the american Civil Engineers. I want to thank our distinguished guests for joining us today. We have a representative of the House Committee on transportation and infrastructure chairman of the subcommittee on aviation. And we have a representative rick larsen the Ranking Member of the House Committee on transportation infrastructure but im very excited to hear from these cheap members of congress to continue to Work Together to improve our infrastructure system. Like congress hasfr passed they are now tirelessly working to ensure implementation of the ii ja to make sure it is a success. However as outline and bridging the gap economic report republished yesterday hope everyone was able to see that. Cannot start with ii ja or other recent infrastructure packages. Continue to act on the federal Investment Infrastructure investment after the expiration of ii ja will protect u. S. Industries from m losing more tn 1 trillion in economic output over the next decade. Help to avoid more than 600 billion in lost gdp. It also gives the American Families an additional 550 billion in disposable income. I know i could use that, dont know about you guys. Save 237,000 american jobs over the same time. Each of our panel is here today has the nation on the right path for improving Critical Infrastructure but our work is not done. With that in mind, we are here to discuss where we go to keep this economic ecosystem attractive Investment Climate thriving. Ranging from the reauthorization of ii ja and other Infrastructure Investment as we move into the the 119th congress and beyond. So, house and transportation infrastructure bipartisan manner to achieve infrastructure goals. Most recently be expected i guess its expected passage of an faa bill and representative graves and maybe you can help us on that this week. Reauthorizations as well as longterm reauthorization from the project. , thank you and i really pushed to the opportunity to join you today but thank you all for being here. I appreciate the opportunity to be on the panel here with congressman larson who is been a great partner. She brings people together. She brings people together. As we look forward to try and build upon some of the successive scene for decades in the house transportation house transportationcommittee we bipartisan manner to ensure we are building roads. To ensure report in the right policies in place for Water Resources for resiliency, for airports and other m Infrastructure Investment. We also need to make sure building upon the successes and learning from some of the failed mistakes that were made. We look back over the life of the eye ij the infrastructure bill theres no question additional infrastructure is absolutely critical. We also need to look at three really important things. Number one is lucky i ij 870 or 80 to the life of the bill. Feeling executed and some are probably around 20 of the actual dollars being spent about 20 of the dollars. Understanding why it is clear we had infrastructure urgently. We project a Rough Development that reflects the urgency question tonight sevent months o get through an announcement on a project. It is seven years and eight months for an airport project five years and three months to the transit project today. We just passed last summer changes that should cap that out. Should limit it to two years. Thats an important investment for an important issue we work on. Number two is making sure we are focused on the right Infrastructure Investments for the federal government. Meaning a 10dollar problem across the country local recreation projects. A local road. A local project that does not have a federal nexus. Lets focus of the federal obligations and responsibilities are. Beautiful partner fully fund them the third component is making sure we are working with her state and local governments to build the capacity of those things that do not have a federal nexus or interest to wear those things do not fall off the radar. Fall off thel table. Those are three of the key things we need to do moving forward. Or again, looking forward to work with congressman larson in addressing those. Thank you. Thanks again for the chance to be here and answer a few questions about the next bipartisan infrastructure law it will not be called bil it will be called something else. So if you have ideas about what clever acronym we would like. We could have whole contest about it. If youre going to implement what the present calls infrastructure decade, its only five years old. And so we need to be thinking about the continued investments and keep the job creation going. It is many reasons why unemployment is below 4 for the longest stretch. One reason for that is because women and men are working and in construction all over thehe country. Certainly in my state in my district. My district as well the washington states second congressional district. If you are to come to s work iny district we are ready for you. If you want to find workers ahead of us as well. It has been implemented and half years old which is like being a toddler but for iga it is middle age. We are getting through it and you start thinking about what it was going to be. What it will look like next. We are referring to are sitting in a lot of the money is formula money goes to states. States are either programming it like my state, i know were all of those dollars are going to ao the federal formula program. Some states have not. So one thing you can do to help us is talk to your legislatures or members of congress. Get the dollars out the door for whatever reason being held in a transportation budget not being spent on the program yet get on it. We need to show looking ahead as well road and highway deaths safety continues to be a priority producing some dollars being implemented locally in order to improve safe routes to schools. Safe routes tos, anywhere. Need to rebuild and get safely for school and work in a few anw projects in mind districts on that. Transit agency at low and no admissions present electric buses for single largest investment in order to these projects. I was on a committee in 2005 to write a report. Came up with but discuss how we needed to get to vehicle miles traveled those in 2007. My math is not too good but that is like 19000 years ago and they came up withik that recommendation. And now is still call innovative. Theres nono such thing as innovative financing and transportation. It either pays for it or it doesnt pay for it. An tricky way toth do it when yu think about things the state commission is able to see aggression g oregon, utah, neva, idaho and its kind of like vehicle miles traveled for it how to implement iraq. I think thats them. Something we need to look at in addition to many other things including traditional funding but also what else weit are goig to do. The options are outfits whether or not were going to use those options to fund the trust fund into this work. Thank you both. You both hit on this. We have had historic legislation and investment andio infrastructure. He both referred to implementation. What are some of the successes and challenges that you are seeing with the state and local partners with the federal government as part of the implementation of this . Cooks i will start it and then turn it back. I think one is a people. Think about it in a couple of ways. We passed the bil we put in several many new programs the Transportation Department had te create rules around these programs. Some are getting implemented and like everyone else was a lack of people on the federal workforce to implement those programs. Seem to be over that hump. The dollar is getting out the door. That is onene reason might needo keep the while going. We do dont you lose the muscle memory to get the dollars out of the door. The second is workforce locally to challenge a lot of you a challenge to a lot of you because having people to do the work is very important. So at some of the programs that the neatlyha approved or tied to Workforce Development as well. It is in washington and my states they have a project where they have a grant for 78 chargers for the Library Commons project. The ibew s union work with their incoming students to basically how to install charging stations think of it effluent the next Generation Infrastructure we need to tie that into the workforce and infrastructure. A couple things you need to think about the challenges of the workforce. Need a job to some all for that. [laughter] workforce in regard to workforce to deliver on these projects. I think you have two problems. One of them is you do have a lack of capacity in the space of purse professional junior engineers and others. We have seen this. Its a Long Time Coming we dont have the workforce on the pipeline for the students pursuing those engineering degrees. I come from a long line of Civil Engineers and my family. I think one of the disincentives there is the long lead time to get your professional engineer. To get your stamp. Going to the engineering intern, it programs i think its five years and now to go on be on college to get that stamp. I think we really need to take a look at that a and figure out if there is a way for us to expedite that . Obviously safety and professional is key. If theres something we could be doing there to help incentivize or not make that while so far away. The second is in the Skilled Labor side. The bluecollar side. Theyre creating all these programs were literally fed federal Government Social welfare were competing with workforce. Meaning to ownrk to stay here ad stay on unemployment and other programs or am actually going to into the workforce . I think we preintroduced this whole new lifestyle to a number of people who were still trying to get over the hangover right now. There is still question of the congressman larson noted we need to make investments the Training Program into the apprenticeship programs to help to get the workforce at the workforce trained and ready to go to build the capacity. I do think the pe say we take a fresh look at what the right training and curriculum is to get to the point where they actually have that professional engineering stamp and are able toto participate in those projects. Thank you. We are seeing such a downturn in enrollment thats why we are just released the imax movie cities of the future proof got to get the fifthgraders and thirdgraders who want to become Civil Engineers. I appreciate that. Just 10 seconds also add. [laughter] soki also looking at how the redesign is. Its not the same as it was. Quick thats what that movie is yes. Resilience, we are understanding is becoming increasingly important as part of the design process. As we experienced a number of extreme events. Even our Bonding Community the projects are not lasting the length of time that the bonds are. We have severe economic social and humanitarian consequences. The resilience of project offends our roads, rails, bridges, etoa cetera can meet te extreme weather events it. 10 presented land areas10 ly the coastal counties and burros from the United States for over 40 of population lives there. We are seeing increasing challenges with living in the coastal areas and the population is continuing to migrate to those places. In fact congressman larson and i represent coastal districts. We havest got to get good. We have got to get good at living in sustainably living in coastal areas. I think one of the problems of the resilience of projects is the processing of the regulatory. It got to have important dynamic process and Say Something earlier that i said, when you Say Something again that i said earlier. Weve got to project Development Delivery project that reflects the urgency of thehe projects we are working on. Number two w is youve got insurgency with storm intensity. With the storm frequency and all of these other factors. One of things youve got to do is make m sure we are developing project solutions that do best and transcend through those in brackets of insurgency for these things we cannot totally protect and nail down with appropriate margins of error. There arere ways to do that for the most important thing youve got to incentivize adaptation by having a regulatory structure that facilitates it. Another thing on the funding side is there are a couple of funding sources. The protect grants and graves as a champion of that program. The first round of grants i know came out recently in myec state the Seaport Alliance 24 and half Million Dollars to do some work as well as he counseled the counseledgovernment again i. Just a baseline but they need to do. We have not funded people doing thesee plans. The need to know what they need to do to then go pursuit dollars to address that resiliency concerns for the second thing is we had a hearing last week i think it was last week time travels strange and congress appeared i dont know when it was. [laughter] most risky had a hearing in the Emergency Management subcommittee on the Brick Program and some of the hazards program. Get ahead of the next weather event rather than rebuild where we are is literally money available to rebuild differently through the building resilient infrastructure communities grant. That is a critical tool as well. It also means we have to be communicating a lot were not going to rebuild like we did in order to have the next extreme weather event come and do the exact same thing. In november 21 fema bureaucratically as three separate events which drives us all crazy the big long weather events administratively as three events. We are trying to reel wells after that trying to rebuild on those lessons at the same kind of for that which will the northwest. We wont have the same after these events the lower the likelihood a mind shift in the d extreme weather and resilience. Thank you we could have a whole other session on standards being adopted. I didnt want to talk about the permitting process. Deployinglo Infrastructure Investments quickly and safely means rightsizing the permitting process required to get these underway. Permitting rules seem to be the issue. Not necessarily the legislation. Could be just as easy. What are some ideas you all have, you are considering streamlining orml permitting permitting and future legislation . Yes. I do want you to save some time. An of six minutes left. [laughter] so real quick, i do want to do a little bit of a celebration for it back in june of last year despite the crazy dysfunctional divisive congress that we have seen in june of last year were reach a bipartisan agreements the National Environmental policy act which is the first time effectively that law has been amended. We amended 35 pages of text huge changes to it. Did things not a sevenyear or eightyear Environmental Impact statement that limits and lot to two years and 150 pages. Limiting eh when young 75 pages limiting the scope of Environmental Assessment or impactro statement to quote reasonably foreseeable impact. Not all these other pipe dream type things. What is realistically going to happen and how do we look at the mitigate . Looking at a future without action and ensuring positive and negative consequences really Good Progress i will make note and do some things to be more complex and longer. In terms of next level stuff, one of the key issues is judicial review. Right now we are seeing where we have attorneys awaiting the statute of limitations is about to expire coming in at five years outward filing the lawsuit five years after record decisions. On over one or 50 lawsuits and a year. Ed they take in excess of two years in the majority of them resolved in favor of the record decision the governments favorite. We have got to stop this. Fact i had at meeting a few years ago, they walked into that meeting. I did not say a word. They said youve got to address judicial review. Coming out of their mouth. Its a key, key issue of got to get judicial review. We came close to negotiate with the white house in exchange for forchange to the community engagement. Its going to be one of most important things we could do moving forward as well expanding the use of categorically exclusions weve done the exact same type of project over and over and over again. We do not need to go to this whole ridiculous process progressed to had an answer one is related to this and one has nothing to do this because of two minutes ahead of where to skip ahead as well one message i want to deliver to folks. We have made changes in 2012 and 2015 and the act, 2021 in the bil and of course 2022 the responsibility act or talk about permitting preto see that not working, not doing well, or theres always the next thing people want to do and permitting. Probably not. Were always in the permitting reform. It sort of Like Congress it goes on forever. And so certainly i am open to look at permitting reform. But at some point, when are we no longer doing permitting reform . And ii dont know the answer to that. Just a heads up. Challenges in my state i can come up with specifics but none of you can help with my problem at home. Ill take care of it. I do want in the last minute to make a note about the bill on the floor t today the federal Aviation Administration authorization act of 2024. We passed 351 69 out of the house of representatives last july. We passed unanimously out of committee before that. The senate got around to it in february and only did a committee bill. A senate bill for several months. Gthe Senate Finally got aroundo passing the agreement that we came to and so this afternoon we will be debating the bill on the faa. And then tomorrow we will be voting on it. I expect a strong bipartisan vote on that bill to pass a fiveyear reauthorization and a lot of other things going on in this bill. Its a bipartisanship that does exist on the committee. We are doing our mark up on water resource evolvement act as the end of this month going into next month. We have a coast guard bill on the floor today we vote on it bipartisan. We passed an hour. Ill Pipeline Safety bill. In december issue or something around those lines. He went to seat bipartisanship in his own action but by partisanship making action come to the committee. That is what we do. Thats what you never hear about eathe work we do what we are vey boring, very unexciting. We just trudge through things and get our work done. Felt continued to the rest of the yeares i will continue in te next session of congress. Thank you very much. I think what you both have illustrated today this is a bipartisan issue. It is about Public Safety and the Economic Growth of our country. We appreciate your time today and the efforts and the work youre all doing and congress on our behalf. Thank you foror your time. Thank you everyone. Please look up the welcome theintelligent infrastre panel. Good afternoon, everyone. Ive and partnerships are sidewalk and structure part of itis my great pleasure this afternoon to talk about a topic that is at the heart of a lot of the change innovation thats happening around the world. As we all know over here celebrating infrastructure week some put over two and half years into the infrastructure decade. But also be read the news it seems like every week is ai week. Just yesterday open ai announce a whole set of new features for their gpt floor model. 1. 5 years into ai decade. Vestment check ggp was originally there. I am thrilled to have a group of leaders across sectors and across different forms of government in the private sectors tori start to dig into both the opportunities and the challenges ahead as we think about applying technology tod infrastructure. Im joined by commissioner Eileen Higgins from Miamidade County. Thank you for being with us. Joined by athens ohio. And jeremy schaefer. There is a lot of different parts through which we can enter this conversation. How to start with mayor patterson. Both because of your leadership athens but also to the work you do in the National League of cities. How you are seeing the impacts of ai and bringing more intelligent infrastructure with the work youre doing. Whether thats a w great your recent receipt from the joint office of energy and transportation for some of the great collaboration georgia with the university of ohio and others. I will turn over to you for. Thank you and thank you for having me here. There is so much going on right now with municipalities when it comes to ai and implementation of ai in different ways. National league of cities basically represents 19000 communities across the nation. Every one of those communities whetherho your city, village, town, you have some level of ai. In some cases they dont know they have ai at their fingertips, yet they do. But the city of athens as you mentioned we were fortunate to receive substantial charging and feeling infrastructure grant which is 12. 5 million. It was really a w collaboration where we had municipalities across southern ohio partner together for this honest application its 18 communities from the city of athens in the southeast corner of thehe stateo dayton, ohio on the western side of the state. A number of small communities in between. Its not just the communities. Its schools, its universities its trailheads into recreational spaces. With all of that if you think about is going to be over 250 charge points with 50 plus charging stations. We will have have ai communicating and learning that users within two and a 50 plus charging stations. Whether it is tourism based, who is coming, who is going . But equally important for those who havent ev charging anxiety is a realie thing. Trying to figure out where is the nextt closest is not working using ai to your advantage in having that system learn what is going on is there a weak link somewhere in that system . And another thing just to share in terms of the city of athens i find very interesting that we are capitalizing on ais we were fortunate to get a congestion mitigation air quality grant federal highways association agency. Also through our Ohio Department of transportation. With that project the thing that is a fascinating is one of her major corridors into the city of athens has the largest traffic volume. It has got roughly 10 signalized intersections through this retail core door. Its got in some cases 1920s, 20yearold infrastructure sitting there using magnetic loops when it shouldnt change it. Were going to replace it. Basically that system will be the brains of this. Traffic flow through that core door. We are a college town for it Ohio University is the largest employer. We are very Seasonal Community we have ebbs and flows about traffic pattern. The system will be able toys monitor that and learn from what is happening during the summer months versus september may one or volume significantly increases in smooth out the traffic flow. Idling needlessly at a traffic light at 2 00 a. M. In the morning when things should be moving getting people from point a to point b without having to idle. Thanks. Commissioner higgins when your relationship with Miamidade County youre helping a lead one of the countrys largest counties but also one of the most diverse. You also have leadership with National County of the transportation committee. The way should the storm to make an impact today your one and a half i dont know how many times with had to figure out what is ai. I think about in two ways. One thing is to speed up basic things that have to happen every day. The other is for counties and cities in any level of government is how do we adapt . How do we use the adaptive learning capabilities of ai to enhance our services . Theres a number of ways i can think of examples national ntassociation of counties we are unveiling in july our first ever a roadmap for ai for local governments on all of the guidelines and the guardrails that go along with that. We just finished our first ai policy for ourfi county. Its the first in florida. Some of the things we are looking at for example data entry can all be automated. How do they deliver Better Services. Were here to talk about infrastructure. The service to writers as we are trying to get people to and from work on our transportation system. Ai can enhance that. First about we can look at surface transportation or reusing ai to predict what can happen at intersections so that we can adjust our schedules . Its not for Miamidade County but they did a great project on Golden Gate Bridge for us and for example were not having people when shown a ridership was. We were able tote immediately cv personal images and said this is your ridership and need more service at a particular route summer keeping our bus driver safe. Hey i is an amazing tool. I do think we need to be careful with it. There are ways we cant make wee we are really providing Better Service to the people in local government. Hopefully we can speed up to some great permitting reforms we talk about that cannot get away from that and infrastructure week. Absolutely. An example weve already been talking about is a difference in terms of application. I think in all of these there is a real need for partnerships with the private sector and where the innovation comes from but i want to start bringing the private sector into this conversation. Jeremy, i would like to turn to you next too. We are maybe a year end half in to talk about generative ai in the public consciousness. For years andnd decades. One of the terms is a digital twin given your work id love to hear your perspective on the evolution of digital twin. How you were seeing are seeingmunicipalities and otc sector entities start to draw concrete benefits from these technologies. We have been working with ai for many, many years. It is exciting to see out ai is burst the vernacular. We have always viewed that its very important to have additional twin of your infrastructure whether it is a network, a port we talk with infrastructure owners, designers, practitioners about the problems they face as they are working to plan, design, build, operate and maintain the onelectrical session earlier today. Were talking about one of the things that kept the deputy secretary up at nights was a wildfire risk. We work with our users of the infrastructure outlines a look at wildfire risk through Drone Imagery encroachment and vegetation on the water system side for example weve been work with users developing virtual digital twin water System People do not appreciate lease and the public and from 20 30 of the water put into the system is lost. Is unbillable water. When you are able to then utilize digital twin with Artificial Intelligence to see were the losses are occurring a fixed semi help improve your system and drive down costs. There are specific instances in transportation you erode the d. C. Metro system of retentive track walkers go out and look at the track there have been instances we can do that with having real geometry taking an enormous amount of data. And analyze the track, looking for this problem getting the right at the right time. There is example after example or ai applies in a reliable way on top of a digital twin could help save time, money, and safer for the workers in the field for the travelingie public. That point around safety and automation that brings up a topic. You mentioned drones as another potential application. I think when people hear it Something Like an autonomous drone or Autonomous Vehicle that has a concern around safety. Also around data and so forth. If anyone on the pennant would like to start on this topic how are you thinking about finding the right balance there . One of the things thats concern you and where you think theres still more innovation needed or are we all set to go at scale these types of g technologies . I will speak may be first to that part will work with the Minnesota Department of transportation several other dot and infrastructure owners. It is very hard as you can envision some very large complex bridges. Having to rig those and have the old way of doing it climb and inspect every part of that bridge. Drones have been a game changer allowing to apply the drones create imagery, to crack a detection focused resources on the critical parts of the structure. One concern is when youre created the digital twin we are getting all the information on this Critical Infrastructure, you also have to secure it we live in a world sometimes with our bad actors that want access to that information. So we need to secure the information. It. We also need, it does come in. There are various state laws that take an effect like if we capture imagery of people or license plates having to worry about blurring though so were not unintentionally revealing something that shouldnt be revealed. I can think of another example. Many of us i think in the transportation sector were putting in dedicated bus lanes everywhere. Sometimes they are completely protected and the car cant get in there and other times whatever, mr. Delivery trucks or whatever, Somebody Just stops there and that slows down our bus service. So ai, we can have Police Officers everywhere. They need to be, we know they need to help us enforce but we really like to looking for criminals andut just because youre stopped in the a bus lane, you probably shouldnt be arrested. Enabling our message around country to look at who is there and, of course, as its capturing the image, theres otherrp theres other passenr vehicles going by you might accidentally capture there. So the picture and so the Ai Technology is now as youre saying all of that other kind of extraneous personal identification getting down to one vehicle that really should get a citation but the ai panes not issuing the citation that is going over Law Enforcement and Law Enforcement say, yep, this is aen violation and issues of violation. So its an interesting combination where we still, you know, you sometimes need hecks and balances on all of that and that just has to be built into the system particularly as Computer Vision and advances and capabilities. To add a little bit to this especially in the drone world, within athens county, we have Water Treatment plan and there are other partners that are providing water and we are looking at, you know, a county that has 6 for thousand people who live there, the city of athens is 24,849 and of those theres probably 3,000, 4,000 water accounts give or take and we have meter readers going on and each month that reader and meanwhile out in the county theres an individual who is using on plane and flying back and forth for another supplier and hes able to capture significant portion of the county and the meters outside the city within an hour and a half to two hours and capture that and have it sent back. We are exploring that with drones in athens. We havent started there yet but we are looking to see if we can get the right gear on a drone and have the drone within an hour two through and do what its going to take somebody, you know, a week or longer to sit there and collect that data and then upload it and what not and instead of using a drone when you mentioned rail such a great point. At the core that we are talk about with ai is what . Its the electric grid, with all of the technology that is out there, a grid is strong to support all of this many on top of that green energy. Solar field, all your communities canu now access ira because you now are a community, whatever that is. Thats putting road on the grid as well, right, and using with all the supplier in athens and Southeast Ohio is convincing them to start using Drone Technology to two and inspect those hightension lines as they are coming in because all too often are experiencing blackouts and thewn way the lines are inspected now where youre literally walking, we have a significant tree canopy in Southeast Ohio, not unmonoduring highwind event where itll knock something out or all of a sudden failed or you have a line that dropped. Now having the Drone Technology going out with infrared inspecting spots as well as just being able to identify structural problems that you may see out there so for me as a mayor embracing technology and knowing this is path forward and i will speak briefly where athey said is the largest city and we have 120 municipalities, a village status so they have less that be 5,000, when you have a cityless than 5,000 that means that their workforce, village employees are are probably limited in scope of what they have the capacity to do and so using ai, leveraging where you can possibly have some and smaller municipality or waterWater Treatment plants to where making things more efficient within our smaller cities and villages. Im glad that you brought the top of the workforce. How are you thinking about the workforce implications and whether its the supply thought of the talent thats needed to deliver the solutions or what it means for the people on your communities that are and i look into the future and are thinking about what the do the jobs of the future look like. I can start if youd like. You are going to have a county commission and you do the work. On a very different perspective on on this. I actually think, all of us are going to become part of the ai and in our county, sat down particularly with educational institutions, Miami College and fiu and begin to realize ai is coming, right . Avs, they may not be 100 out there but ten years from now there are going to be rolling computers. 4 pathways of learning and twoyear program and First Institute in florida to be certified in a fouryear, launched that last with just about 600 folks in the first year has taken that. Of those 600 nearly half of them have indicated that because they are in the practitioner and ai awareness that half of them indicated they are on an ai pathway to associates or bachelors. The demand is incredible and the average age is 27 years old. 40 of the students are women. It is really recruiting folks to come in and learn new skills and i told you we in the county, you know, i worked with our it, our cio to make sure we had ai policy. What happened our county employees s needed to learn. But for many of our county employees its going to be this ai awareness and fiu at the more advanced research level. As a matter of fact, they received some grant money from usdot on cybersecurity and transportation because ai is creating new pathways to hack our systems. We have to up our game on our kind ore Security Side as well. On every stage of the infrastructure process ai can be of assistance to engineers and maintenance workers to make them more productive and help make their job even more targeted and safer for what theyre doing, its a design phase, ai can look wont design the bridge for them but it can look, it can learn from what that particular engineer has designed in the past. T based on what the user with the company or that dots perspective is and then all the way onto into operations and maintenance. Its collecting imagery on the road. Right now theres a manual sprocess of finding where maintenance problems are, safety problems are in the road, looking and if a sign is missing, those are things that can be time consuming and very hard to staff for a dot. By crowdsourcing all of the tashcam imageries you are ablea to take that, look at the digital twin requirements and very instant i will say, hey, we have a debris in the roadway. We have a line that has not been meeting standards or a sign thats been knocked down. Things that aii can assist to help target whatt most agencies we are working with has a shortage of workers, target where they need to be and keep them safe so they are not out on thedw roadway. They have a created a space and erspecializing in ai training ad applying tech cred to that as well. The largest entail chip manufacturing plant in central ohio, harnessing that and, okay, we need to be prepared for what the needs are t going to be for intel moving forward and i will share quick story with you about mayor johnson, this is pretty school, he too is learning, when it comes to ai, hes created for himself an avatar that looks exactly like him. It has five fingers on each hand and he has hes working onto becoming a messaging platform for he is the mayor. But using ai to constantly kind of monster local press and constantly update his avatar. Make sure that we have safeguards in keeping this Great Technology on the side of good as opposed to doing something nefarious. Be careful when you may come home one dayul and your avatar s going off on you and saying things that you dont want the public to say about you. One of the things that mlc has been diligent on is to put together an ai advisory committee, the mayor of savannah georgia, mayor Vance Williams or johnson has been working on this with nicky lee, Council Member nicky lee of tucson arizona and putting together 20 individual leaders from across the u. S. To sit there and, you know, make sure that we can think through how can the National League be on the front end of helping the federal government set guidelines to where we are ensuring ai is being used for ai at end of the day. We are also using our partner google for ai tool box at some point in the future and that would be great for local leaders to sit there, okay, you have one stop shop for all the things that you should be knowing, things that you should be developing in the future when it comes to harnessing those great technologies. Its hear that ai is already having tremendous impact. You cant trust everything that an i i tells you as you think about the applications particularly to infrastructure its a whole other level of security that we need and the side of it but also trustworthiness of information. Rowe couldnt go without talking about permitting. Leaving aside what wish list we might have for comprehensive federal reform. You want me to start . Apparently. All right, we come plain about the federal government and the need for process, but the reality is to get every single project we need local permits. That doesnt meann you have the Building Permits. In our county we have obviously miamidade, we have environmental permits and all of this and some of our basic public works projects that dont even involve the federal government we still have to get road permit, intersection, sometimes its the county road in the city and we have to Work Together, so we all need to be faster about permitting, right, we are all part of the process and we all need to be better. In our county about 5 years ago when i first got elected i was realizing this was Affordable Housing that was taking almost two years to get permits out for a large building and we embarked upon a pretty Technology Intensive, not so much intensive but Technology Intensive process to streamline that and im proud to say in december, we permitted a 12story building with a pedestal parking lot in 107 days, highrise, pretty dramatic improvement. So local government can get better. Im going give you an example of how we pivoted during covid. We wanted to keep some parts open whileer others were closed town. We also need today be able to provide inspections and it took us only about 3 weeks to pivot but we went to being able to do cell phone to cell phone, our inspectors rather been being at the site risking their health were able to do inspections via cell phone. All that stuff should be able to in the future be done with ai, right, so that we can keep our inspectors doing the hard stuff, the stuff that has to be but all of these basic things we just need to clearar them out of the backlog and in florida there are a cox of cities that are trying Ai Technologies particularly, the simpler permits the ones less risky, we are still learning here but the less risky basic Building Permits but do i thinknk therea real opportunity via basic technology, improving and streamlining and then, again, ai its supposed to help us do the basic stuff faster and then it has this ability, this predictability to have us learn afrom what we have seen and get better and faster and i think in permits we neede to be able to begin to do the basic stuff faster. I was just going emphasize, you know, the streamlining portion of it. Its its the stream, the lack of streamline that gets in most municipalities ways where you have layers and layers of bureaucracy and using ai to teach you, use your choke points. Rethink how youre doing this and if youre receiving federal moneys, state moneys or whatever the project is thats goingra on in your community that theres an there should be an easier and more streamline way of getting things done. I will just say from an industryt perspective weve the level of maturity amongst government spans the spectrum and so we work with firms, and develop 3d model of piece of infrastructure but the city county, dot, whatever the owner entity is, their processes are still based 40 years ago and all they want are plant sheets and stacks of plant sheets so 90 is effectively lost and owneroperator is given stack of 3d plant sheets and enters cumbersome manual approval process. And ultimately the people that reap the benefit are the municipalities but the municipalities engineering is risk adverse field and hard to get people to make changes and theres many positive examples of municipalities that have made those changes and we encourage other ones to do it as well. To be part of the growth you get some of the basics, instead of stack of 2d sheets of paper have a taken that can be improved and harnessed by some of the technologies. Ready tok as we get wrap the panel, i think i think it might be helpful to hear from each of you perspective on partnerships because weve described things that moving parts, what makes something successful whether its ai per se or technology, how do you think about striking the partnership thats needed to implement one of the big ideas that we are talking about. If youre speaking of partners, cfi grant, the cfi grant has 18 municipalities that came together to apply all in one package ashe opposed to everyone sitting there trying to apply separately and quite honestly, dot loves something Something Like that. Ive been pretty diligent as the mayor of athens in developing partnerships not just within our county but across a lot of ohio and sos for me to make connections and go, hey, who wants to jump in on this, we will find athens will become the lead or maybe if we get too big we will have to have someone be the lead on this but at the end of the day we are going the make this work and then all, you know, working really closely with our state and federal partners, youll know, all of the times you have to have those connections and youve got to bc open and so often im speaking as an elected official, you to push partisanship out of the way. That has no place when youre talking about t advancing your n community and partnering communities to be able to harness ai and all it can offer. As the mayor said it was the county that took the lead and we included some of the cities in the application. We are making dots life easier, they only have to look at one application rather than 3 for 24 of our most dangerous intersection that kill people constantly or injury them dramatically. But buried into that, so thats certainly this county city collaboration but we also received two really Interesting Technology components in there because dot is trying to encourage for innovation and making our streets safer and one of them predictive intersections. Basically now we are allowed to redesign our streets and once people have already died or been injured. We will be able to use ti to predict what the heck is going on and we deconflict those intersections so weve gotten that but thats coming with privatesector help and then the other is using, talk about crowd sourcing as you were saying, technology on peoples cell phones that will measure crazy things with cambridge, gosh, people are heartbreaking at this intersection all of the time and then you send somebody out there, oh, the stop sign is hidden by a tree. Things that are both technology in addition to just basic stuff and making our streets safer. When i look at ac firms, a lot of engineers that solve problems, exciting to see where we can take technology and solve those problems and so its great when theres a clear goal and the owneroperators establish that we can work collaboratively to solve the latest technology. So im very excited about what we are going to be able to do across all the areas of infrastructure out there. Excellent, its great to end on such a positive note and please join me in thanking our panel, its been a pleasure. Before joining the Administration Sam served in the bidenharris Transition Team and also previously served in the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority leading the development to 8 billion Capital Investment plan, sam began Public Service as president ial management fellow at the office of management and the u. S. Department of transportation, sam is also graduate of the university of virginia and with that, let me welcome sam to the stage. Sam. Thanks so much. Thank you. [applause] sam, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks, sean. So your role at the white house is to help coordinate across a variety of agencies and the department of transportation and its hard coordinate. Absolutely. For anyone who has been around President Biden and senator biden you know that infrastructure is something that he loves and believes in. We knew that we were going to put together transformational package and what was important there is both the what but also the how. His industrial strategy, this is about rebuilding our infrastructure, revitalizing our communities, restoring american competitiveness and doing that through strategic public investments so obviously in the iiga or the bill that we call, roads, bridges, transit rail, airports, waterways, water systems, clean energy, resilience, pollution and so much more and thats the what and we have great highlights an stats to talk about there but just as important as the how and the how are the values and priority that is we embedded into implications so thats equity, climate, labor and jobs made in america and resilience as well so you mentioned the complexity of one agentry much less over a dozen so we organized ourselves with the great mitch andrew when he came in november 2021 around three goals. The first to deliver results. We needed to get the money out the door, second was to build the team, this is a team sport and something the federal government isnt going toer do n its own. 90 of the funds and the law are being delivered by nonfederal partners, state and local tribal and territorial guarantees and the construction firms and everyone else who is out there doing that work and so building the team and working across the partners is critically important and the third priority was telling a story because i think youve heard about some of the advocacy moving forward. We need to show the American People that this is their tax dollars at work. We need to tell the stories both at the projects, enormous transformational ones and even more importantly the people, the communities that it benefits, so those are some of the key priorities when we thought through implementation. Thats wonderful and we are going to talk during the course of conversation. Let me ask you a question, we worked in the the president of transportation, at that time it was implementation fast act, i think, and can you give a sense of what implementation is like compared to, i mean, the fast act, large bills. Is it vastly different from implementing the previous laws . Its different both in its size but also scope. When you think of reauthorization youre talking highways an transit and some of the safety administration, here wewe are talking about so much more, right, those in the just the significant investment in highway and transit and passenger over 50 years, we have massive investments in water. We also set up brandnew programs. 42 billion. I would say im a transportation side the biggest changes and the biggest increases is biggest modes and within the dot side, significant increases and discretionary grants and opportunities and challenge that is come with that, new nontraditional guarantees and on the spoke side, working with agencies that never before had grantmaking Authority Like ntia and building up their capacity and capability to deliver. In many ways we had good lessons from reauthorizations and we alsoau drew some really good lessons where from the recovery act. One of the specific things we took from that in the recovery act in 2009 the team asked state to appoint a recovery coordinator and that was the point person for the white house on our implementation. We took it out of the playbook and asked every state and that network of folks that we help work on through nga has been tremendous resource. We have 54 across country, republican states, democratic states and real resource for us for twoway communication and also breaking through silos and barriers and getting things done. So its a lot. Its a lot. Theres a lot that you have to track. Yeah. Obviously as you begin the work you have your idea of where you want to go, right, and can you talk about you had a idea of where you want to go, highlights to have work so far from the administration and also for you . Yeah. So i got to start with the macro stat, right, where we are 2 and a half years of implementation, 2 and a half years of bill and we have over 450 billion at the door and 56,000 projects and so we are proud that we have been laser focused on getting the money out of the hands of the feds, into the hands of state and local partners so they can get projects done, you know, weve seen some really great specific stats, its all in the white house fact sheet, of course. 155 road projects, 9,000 bridge repair projects, 450 waterway projects over 1400 water projects both Drinking Water and waste water including projects to replace up to 1. 7 million lead pipes which has been area of focus for the president and meaningful work on underway by broadband, travel broadband and Rural Broadband so those are the top lines. The top lines prevent you from seeing the individual projects so weve seen both really excellent kind of mega projects move forward i think that you saw west broke down which was super exciting, that was a huge highlight. Also the fence is moving forward, their permitting was approved just last week but we have all the backyard projects and projects of smallraise projects, small brad band projects, things that are helping peoples everyday lives. There are a ton of smaller projects that are more transformative and just as important to talk about. Lets talk a little bit about some of the areas where you did have goals of what you want today accomplish but you had to make adjustments along the way. Can you talk about that and how you adjusted . I think on the big stuff we are hitting our marks but as you know implementation and execution is about a million little things. Right. And we are doing this for the first time in a lot of spaces and when we ask for feedback and we mean it and so i will give you a couple of examples of places where we listen, we learn, we made adjustments. One is in the transit industry on zero emission buses, so, you know, we are pushing, the president is pushing through both our climate goals and our investment goals to transform transit, but what we heard from some of the major manufacturers was that the huge spike in demand paired with some of the requirements on and kind of rules on payment were creating capital crunches for those agencies and we hosted a convening in the white house along with apta, the American Public Transportation Association and we had major transit agencies, major manufacturers and other key players and we worked through some of the key challenges and that resulted in fta putting some clarification about how these payments can be made but then freed up the working capital, similar issue in a Different Program is on bead, Broadband Program. First time we have done anything at this scale. We heard particularly from smaller providers and Rural Communities that some of the requirements for bead letter of credit requirements were making a barrier to industry for some of the smaller providers and so we took that back, we worked with ntaa and they were able to adjust some of the rules for other type of Risk Mitigation performance bonding. These are two in the weeds examples but this is what we to every single day, we are listening to feedback, we are problem solving and working with agencies so that we can move faster. You know, an area where we do have a lot of the engineering and construction firms are watching the action of the administration, watching the decisions that you are taking on a daily basis to understand what the next steps are going to be, right, and an area of concern that comes up, thats come up a few times with our members is system of the new sourcing requirements in the law like building our buy america requirements. We are watching, for example, you talked about the project, fra right now is considering a waiver to the buy american requirements or certain components of the project itself. Can, you know, can the Business Community watch the decisions that you are all making and whether to approve a waiver, certain buy american requirement and take comfort and understanding, okay, the way that company x made their case is a template that i can use to make my case for a similar waiver or a waiver under similar law . I know many in this audience are familiar with this but just to take a step back, so there have been buy american and buy american laws on the books since 1930s. On the buy america for grants. The bill expanded that significant. Any kind of infrastructure is now covered by buy america and also reduced a number of key loopholes. This is something that President Biden strongly supports. He knows that domestic manufacturing is critically important to restoring american competitiveness particularly on critical sectors, right, this is part of the overall industrial policy buy america does not work in a vacuum. The president is making key announcements today about other areas of strategy and all this is to say that this is a critically important part of the president s agenda. We have been quite consistent in the way we approach buy america in the last two years. So what that means is theres clear guidance that omb has posted and the communication around this is that theres a very high bar to get awaiver, whether thats a categorical waiver or these need targeted, time limited, welldocument and more possible in critical sectors. Two specific examples where we worked with industry and our agencies on very targeted and timelimited waivers and critical sectors were on ev charging and on broadband. So for charging obviously infrastructure law has significant investments in ev charging for the First Time Ever and when the bill was passed there wasnt substantial domestic industry. So we worked with highways, we worked with industry, there were multiple rounds of engagement, adjustments,h, learning adjusting, and what we landed on was a twostep waiver where first Domestic Assembly was required as of last february and then 55 of domestic content come apply withbr bye america is required later this summer june 30th and its worked. What weve seen is over 40 factories opening in the u. S. When we talk to the states and guaranties they are telling us supply, manufacturing is not an issue. Thats one and then on broadband, same idea. The ntio team did a phenomenal job getting as precise as possible in the individual components that go into a fiberoptic network that go into a Broadband Program and just several months ago finalized a waiver that, again, it was targeted, it was time limited an focused on the critical sectors where we know we need to on shore in the u. S. And there too we have seen announcements in over a dozen states. Showing where a waiver now is going to lead to Technology Transfer or domestic comistic investment as we move along and that i think, weve seen as one of the kind of avenues for success in this space . Thank you. You issued permitting rules. Can you speak a little bit more to the rules and what are the benefits of it . Sure. Rules kind of came out of our negotiation with congress in the fiscal responsibility act and do really four things. So one is, again, back on the topic of predictability, right . Require more consistent timelines and page limits. Meaningful Public Engagement and that really has two benefits, one its the right thing to do but the other is that i think we found that the earlier you bring in a community, the more youre able to move a project without they and that it gave potential conflict down the line. Wonderful. So the administration also provided data from the department of transportation showing in the first three years this administration has completed Environmental Assessments an average what do you attribute is most important for helping bring review times down . In addition to the rules that you mentioned theres a couple of other things that we are doing to really drive permitting. One is resources, you know, it takes people and resources to get these done and this administration is investing significant resources in our agencies so that include a billion dollars that we secured in the ira to support permitting, also resources through the permitting council, recently rebranded. [laughter] permitting council and then the other that i think sometimes goes unsaid but i want to put a plug in here is meaningful resources at resource agencies, right, agencies like epa and fish were gutted in the Previous Administration and making sure that those t agencies have the people and the resources that they need to review and process permits is critically important and thats been a part of the president s request year over year. We recently finalized program note with hcap that is going to allow reviews for broadband projects to move in a matter of weeks instead of months or years and then we are also expanding and sharing categorical exclusions so one of the first things that we did after the fra was enacted was allowed for sharing of ces for charging and those can move much more quickly. It has been i had the pleasure to work with the army corps and the coast guard and others doing the work. This is government at its finest that we have the army corps, navy supervisor of salvage. They are an amazing organization. Dot, the department of administration and everyone has showed up and governor has been phenomenal and unbelievable to work with. I think theres a lot of interesting lessons that we can learn from emergencies like this particularly around governance and decisionmaking, theres unified command thats governing the operation there. They are making all the decisions on the ground. We are also coordinating at the white house but we are deferring operational decisions to the folks on the ground because they are closest to decisions and fully empowered to get that done. We are also seeing in my old boss. Words, benefits of collaboration, coordination, you know, we are all working together and then the last thing i will say the importance in value of leadership support. The president was involved in this from one. He said, we are going to rebuild the bridge as quickly as possible and governor moore as well has been, again, unbelievable leader for his community but also advocating for his community. He has, i believe, now hosted over a hundred members of congress that he has brought up to baltimore to see the incident and the kind of bipartisan support that we are seeing for this project is unprecedented. On the rebuild itself, mdot are working daily hand in hand to move that forward as quickly as possible on the permitting point theres a few different options that they have for expediting permitting for an emergency like this andan rebuild like this and we are all dedicated to moving this project as quickly as possible and, again, ultimately the port will be reopened by the end of may which is unbelievable where you think where we were when it first happened and the bridge will be built as quickly as possible. A couple more questions for you. You stated at the top of the conversation, approximately 454 billion in funding over 56,000 projects. Theres a lot of discussion of seeing the projects, the administration is not getting the money out the door fast enough. To me this seems misleading. Yeah. Listen, we are working as quickly as we can in the bounds of the law while also being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. You said it, this is not the recovery act. We had the American Rescue plan which was the shortterm stimulus. This is about rebuilding our communities and reshaping our economy and this means that we are going to fund and this is secretary Pete Buttigiegs words, shovelready projects. There are some projects that have not only been funded but are issued. We funded the expansion of terminal e at logan. We funded a bridge project or several budget projects in michigan, the secondavenue bridge already pleated. We have projects that have been funded and finished and moved on. We also have projects that are historic and transformational and even on timelines are still going to take years. This audience knows and folks that are in the Construction Industry know that outlays, the actual expenditure of the money is not the best indicator of success, right, thats a lagging indicator, dollars go out the door after work actually happens which is one of the reasons that we have been focused on this aknownsed figure and also telling the story as much as we can. And so we are dedicate today moving that money as quickly as possible and i think, you know, thats why we talk about we talk about the projects that are announced, we talk about real stories and real people and we also encourage our supporters as well to get those realworld example. Thank you. One more question, look, groups like the American Society of Civil Engineers have really done excellent work of illustrating failing to invest in the nations infrastructure and makes our country and our citizens worse off which is why the chamber and other groups have been so committed to discuss of this law. What are the top two or three actions you encourage the Business Community to do to help the administration execute on the longterm success . I think i will give you 3, maybe 4 bits of homework. One is participate, invest, be part of do part of this exercise. I know many are but we want, you know, more companies and more entities to part of this great project. The other is tell the story in your communities but also give us stories, we love telling stories about individual projects, workers, ceos and others that are being meaningfully impacted by this law. We would love to hear about announcements, you know, weve got we are sending our white house principals, cabinet members, our others out all over theth country, every week for ribbon cuttings, groundbreakings, we participate in privatesector announcements regularly and so hearing about those as they come is always very welcome and meaningful and then the last piece and its kind of where we started, its shared feedback. You know, we are a learning organization and we want to hear realtime feedback, dont suffer in silence. We have an opendoor policy. I thinkia see lots of Friendly Faces here. You know we are willing and ready and eager to engage because, again, you all know whats happening on the ground and so we appreciate that feedback because itll help us do all our work better. Thank you. Let me just close up, i want to thank you for i think to this today. Very good conversation. I also want to thank the Committee Members of the infrastructure group, National Association of manufacturers, cio, brookings, north america building trade union, business round table, the National League of cities and the campaign. I want to thank our Partnership Network including h tb, sidewalk infrastructure partners, acom, stand tech, siemens and our sponsor bentley for everything that you saw s here today. Really thank you, everybody, thank you for attending today and with that, have a good rest of your day, thank you. [applause] if you ever miss any of cspans coverage you can find it, videos of key hearings and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting news worthy highlights. The points of interest markers appear on the righthand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos. This timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in washington. 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