Mister secretary, welcome. Thank you very much evan. [evan] an honor to have you here. Its great to be here. Let me ask you to grade the nations Transportation System dont grade on a curve, i want hard grading like you used to get at davidson, and at nyu law school, i want you to do elite grading here. If you had to assess the health and the well being of the nations Transportation System, what grade would you give it . Well, i think itd be about a d. [evan] itd be a d . Yeah. You run your department, really . Youre a hard selfgrader. Well, you know what, there are a lot of reasons why and frankly, none of them have to do with me. [evan] you inherited it. audience laughs is that what it is . Yeah, exactly, i inherited this problem. anthony laughing but you own it, so [anthony] i do own it. What are the reasons that you would give this system a d . Well, there are three basic reasons. One, we are underinvesting at a scale that is massive in this country. We have huge infrastructure needs, and were putting peanuts in place to try to deal with them. Secondly, in order to deal with these challenges effectively there has to be a very vigorous planning effort. We have to think about how our Transportation System evolves and the system we need for the future, not the needs of the past, and theres been a real retrospective view towards transportation for too long, we need to look ahead. And then finally, i think every level of government, this is a place where every level of government has to work in great coordination and we are increasingly seeing fractures in the old way that weve done transportation. We need to perhaps have a new reset. Well lets take those one at a time. So the issue on not investing adequate resources, is the problem that people dont want to invest in transportation, or that we just dont want to spend money period . I think theres a little bit of both, but i think my experience at the local level was that if you gave people a roster of projects that you were going to do and you told them how much it would cost, and you actually got them done. People have pretty good confidence in the government when you actually can do it that way. But you acknowledge, mister secretary, that transportation spending, while its important, is not sexy, right . [anthony] no. You spend on the military, thats sexy. You spend on public education, thats sexy. You spend on border security, may not be sexy, but from like a political issue, Campaign Issue standpoint people like to hear, boots on the ground were gonna send money and protect our border. Transportation, ehh . Yeah, well, you know what is sexy though . Is getting home to your family after a long day at work. Or being able to get your kid picked up to take him to his soccer game or Something Like that. And when people are sitting in teethgrinding traffic, it really gets their goat, and they say, well whos supposed to do this . And they blame government. I think theres a bit of a disconnect, because people dont necessarily connect that problem to the solutions were talking about. So they dont like to sit in traffic, and even if they dont have cars they have a stake in the outcome of all this. Look, you went and bought bread at the supermarket, how do you think that bread got there, right . We are all connected individually in this country. We are all connected to transportation of one form or another. So do you have to make the case, do you need to market better the magnitude of the problem, or the significance of the connection between us and it . Yeah, ive had to do that the entire time ive been in the department. Weve taken bus tours, ive met with 100 communities across this country, and we were pushing for a long term highway build, which we finally got congress to pass back in december. But that bill is still a fraction of what we need. We estimate we need about a trillion dollars between now and 2020 to deal with our needs, and the bill put about 300 billion dollars in place for a period of time. And lets acknowledge, mister secretary, that just like theres not a national election, there are 50 state elections, theres not a national Transportation System, per se, as much as there are a collection of other. And so i think that a highway build is a great example. This is like right before pork, right . Right before individual members of congress saying, yes, i support the general principle, but wheres mine . Wheres ours . Its hard to get a lot of agreement even within parties on this because everybody wants their little piece of it. In an earlier era, earmarks would have been able to give a member of congress a basis to say, i got this in my district and so im gonna vote for it. But there are no earmarks any more. And thats, frankly, made it difficult for these bills to pass because members of congress are putting money up, but they dont necessarily know how its gonna fall into their districts. Hows it going to benefit them . Forgetting about their constituents, they want to know. The planning question, the second one, is really interesting to me because you would think that what government would do naturally was look ahead, not look out a year or two years, but look out 10 and 15 and 20 and 50 years. In fact, as you say, government is not particularly good at Strategic Planning, the kinda Strategic Planning that happens in a small business. Government doesnt seem capable of doing that. No, honestly, the way were investing transportation dollars at the federal level is very stovepiped, and its very preprogrammed, and if we were actually thinking about the country were becoming, we would do it very differently. Out of every dollar in the highway trust fund, 80 cents goes into our highway system. And we need highways. But in these increasingly congested communities, the traffic is getting bigger, the lines are getting longer, the travel times are getting longer, and i dont think thats gonna go away. And the only way we can really solve for that today is a multimodal approach, a person integrates transit, even bike paths and pedestrian facilities, all these things give people choices. And our funding mechanisms dont give us those choices. Politically, is it easy to sell bike paths and pedestrian paths and rail or alternatives . They all sound so squishy politically. You get these bond issues, or you get people back home and they say, no, we dont want to do bike paths we need to build more roads. We need to augment the roads we build with private toll roads. People seem resistant to giving up the old way in favor of the new way, for political reasons. I think that is exactly the problem we have. I see where the country is going, 70 million more people over the next 30 years, 45 more pressure on our freight, volume movements, 65 more trucks on the road, and that is not a recipe for overcongestion but were not getting more land. Its like 20 pounds of rice in an 18 pound bag, right . We have a problem of shoving all these new people into a system that is already not working. Exactly. I hear arguments that say. Why do we need to have mass transit . Why should the federal government be investing in that . Well, just imagine if you take 100,000 people who use Public Transit every day in a highly congested area thats 100,000 trips that are not being taken on our roadways, which leaves greater capacity for other things. I think we need to think more holistically about our system. And the fact is, and it sort of dovetails with the third point you made, there are reasons why different areas of government should be collaborating on this problem because the benefit of doing what you just described, as an example, is not just in the transportation universe. 100,000 fewer cars on the road also means the environment is probably better for it. 100,000 fewer cars on the road means people get to work faster, means productivity goes up and therefore the economy benefits. On, and on, and on, right . Yes, no doubt about it. How many workers have i met who tell me that their commute on a train is so much better because they can actually get work done while theyre travelling as opposed to having to focus on making sure they dont hit somebody. These things, the multimodal push is something i think is so important for our country, but im telling you our federal government funding mechanisms dont recognize that as readily. I want to ask you about, on that last point, feds is a lotta things, so you have the executive branch of which youre a part, but then you have congress. Is there a tension in a general sense . We know that theres tension at the moment in this administration between congress and the administration, but is there an issue of the administration having one vision and the congress driving another, and the administration and congress cant fists collide kinda come together . Yeah, i think in transportation the challenge is that we just dont have a National Vision that everybody agrees on yet. I think the president has asserted great leadership on this issue, helping us think about better inner city passenger rail, even highspeed rail, helping our country think about a multimodal system, but honestly i think a lot of the conversations on capitol hill are 1956 discussions. They dont have a vision, or at least a vision aligned with the reality of today, and tomorrow. Right, i think thats right. What about the feds versus the states . I alluded to the fact that we really have 50 different systems, in fact we dont, but you certainly have to work with individual legislatures, individual governors, on these problems, and it probably differs, the willingness to work with you all. In a state like texas, where we sit today, the hatingongovernment capital of the western world, anything that the feds do we just oppose on principle. Probably harder to work here than it might be with new york or california. Heres another place where i think our system is antiquated, we pay for infrastructure on a jurisdictional basis, we have a federal funding formula states get x amount of money, they use that money for transportation purposes, but our economy actually doesnt recognize state boundaries. I come from a city, charlotte, North Carolina, that sits about 10 miles north of South Carolina, and South Carolina, the upper state of South Carolina, was part of our economic region. I think we should be thinking more about breaking up some of this jurisdictional focus, and focusing more on where our economy goes, because our transportation assets need to track those lines. So then in fact, if youre working with North Carolina to solve the problems of transportation to and from charlotte, you really need to be working with South Carolina as much, right . Exactly, and theres almost no incentive built around doing that. Lets stay with rail for a second. Theres a lot of discussion of highspeed rail in this country, im interested as a traveler, occasionally overseas, and the opportunity to take rail from point to point as opposed to flying. Its a very appealing thing, it saves time, it saves money, and theres a nice experience that you create. Why are people so opposed to rail in this country, or seemingly so opposed . Why havent we risen as other places have risen, europe and elsewhere, to make rail part of our lives . Two big reasons. One is that people cant envision it. In so many instances in transportation, when youre putting a new type of asset in place that people dont experience every day, its hard for them to imagine it until its actually there. So i think thats part of it. Of course, weve all ridden trains, its not like a train thing as a concept. But the concept of highspeed rail, i think, is hard for most americans to imagine. They think of a train is a train is a train is a train. But the idea that you can shorten the travel times and be competitive with getting on an airplane or driving in your own car, is something that we havent really gotten our heads around. The other thing is just the expense, it is expensive, but the payoff is huge in terms of giving people more choices. And i suspect that a third aspect of this, mister secretary, is eminent domain. Often the creation of any of these highspeed rail systems require wading into the Property Rights fight. Moreso than other kinds of transportation. Certainly one of the biggest expenses in building a highspeed rail network is right away, acquisition, which is what youre talking about. Were not likely to solve this problem any time soon. Well, no, but i do think the country is gonna have city pairs that are connected by highspeed rail. [evan] youve been an advocate for this. Absolutely, so youre going to see the california piece, youve got some efforts in texas and in florida. I think these efforts are going to start a momentum that well see happen over a long time. Can i ask you about aviation . How has that system evolved as part of the overall matrix of potential ways to get from point to point, where does that fit into your calculation of where we need to go . Well, i think probably the most innovative thing were doing in aviation is nextgen. This is a technology thats gonna move us from world war ii radar systems, to 21st century gps. If you think about the way that our airspace is organized, we basically track planes on a five or six second pointbypoint basis, so we have to allow much more room between planes to account for variations that may be on the path the plane is flying on. If we can track a plane instantaneously, moment by moment, we can actually have our planes flying closer together and realize a lot more efficiency in our routes. Were already seeing airlines, by virtue of some of our deployments, saving millions of dollars on fuel because theyre not being tracked around a route, theyre actually being able to go much more directly. And then we as passengers are benefiting because were getting from place to place more reliably and more quickly. Yes, we think that 48 of the delays youve experienced to this point will be eliminated by nextgen. So lets talk about city specific innovation in Transportation Planning and implementation. I think innovation is a word that has almost come to have no meaning, its such a buzzword, right . But in fact, youre very focused on cities that are willing to think beyond the traditional ways of approaching this kind of a problem. You have a competition, or a challenge out, called the smart city challenge. Talk a little bit about that, youve now narrowed 78 different cities that have applied to be part of this program down to seven finalists. What are you intending to see these cities do . Well, let me start by saying that this challenge really comes out of a study i asked our department to do to look at our longterm transportation needs. Ive talked about some of what weve found, the growth in population, the growth in freight volumes, Climate Change, there are a lot of issues that we saw. The question that i started to ask later was, well how do we get our country grappling with those issues most effectively . And the smart city challenge is what came out of that. What weve done is basically taken that report and weve asked cities across the country to tell us how they would purport to use technology and innovation to address those issues, to address the population growth theyre facing, to address the freight volume increases theyre gonna face, to face down Climate Change and other challenges. And what we got was surprisingly 78 cities submitted applications to us, and that means 78 cities have actually taken the time and the resources to think about this. And even those that didnt make it as finalists have now at least gone through, as you say, the exercise of redesigning how they think about this stuff. And hopefully that will be useful to them. Yes, we intend to work with each of those cities to help them get those plans done. Basically, at the end of the day, were gonna pick one city. Its gonna receive 40 Million Dollars of federal dollars to implement their plan. Weve also got other partners like the Vulcan Foundation thats putting 10 Million Dollars on top of that, and several other partnerships that are gonna add value to help them implement their plans. And so the kinds of ways in which technology, were not talking about jetsons stuff like pods flying through the air. We are talking about congestion easing, right . Were talking about ways to redirect people from using their traditional methods of getting from pointtopoint, to address the environmental consequences of the old ways. Yes, to put it in plain terms, i think were going from the feather pen, to the computer in transportation. If you think about the fact that we use analytics in transportation to try to figure out why a particular road is congested today, and it wasnt congested yesterday, but the possibility the analytics will actually tell us why, and actually give us a range of options for how to solve for that predicatively. I think those are the types of things that technology and innovation are gonna give cities to be able to deal with all this growth so youre not getting any pushback from the states that resist being told what to do by the federal government, this is more of a city relationship with the department and the cities can choose to optin or not optin to be part of this and theyre gonna set their own course, youre not gonna give them direction, theyre gonna give you direction. No, its their vision. [evan] and your money. So i alluded earlier to the fact, and you alluded earlier mister secretary, to the fact that you were mayor of charlotte, North Carolina so you understand in a broader sense than just transportation, the challenges that big cities in this country have right now. I want to ask you to give us, off line from your secretary role, put back on your mayor hat for a second. How do you think cities in this country are doing . There seems to be so much more tumult in the big cities of this country around race, but around a lot of other issues, poverty, and income, and equality, poor access to a quality public education. Almost every big problem that we face at the federal level, that we face at the state level, really the rubber hits the road at the city level. Can you give us a perspective on how cities are grappling with some of these challenges now . Well, first of all what i would say is that i think a lot of the things that are coming out publicly today have been boiling under the surface for