Change but i was also tripping on potholes like everybody is. I was stuck in traffic. I was hearing sad stories of innercity people who couldnt get jobs or had to take two or three buses and the subway to get to school. So that was going abroad and writing a maglev train in shanghai where we went to another city. Subway connections to the train. The train was so fast we went to another city in 20 minutes that otherwise took an hour and a half by bus. So all of those things together made me feel this is a really Important Mission and i had already been talking to you. You were such a help in this whole project. I had already been talking to you about the need for a new vision for america because you have been putting forth a vision just at the end of the Clinton Administration when you are leaving office. Unfortunately the world changed in the 2000s. We have a lot of defense spending. We have a lot of other preoccupations and a financial crisis so we havent made the kinds of investments we need to make. So i thought this is so important to the future of the country and im i am part of the u. S. Competitiveness project at Harvard Business school. We really care about making sure that america is strong and also the American Economy and quality of life are as excellent as they could possibly be. They were once again leaders in the world so ive put aside what i thought was my leadership book to write this and then it was really interesting that i ended up concluding it is all about leadership. There are many other details but its all about leadership and the leadership for innovation and collaboration the visions is as important as the engineering. Thisthis is a technical issue. We could do this. We have the Technical Skills in america and in fact and technology we lead the world. Its just that we are not always applying our own strength so leaders need to step up to this and i started out saying you know the start the sorry state of our infrastructure but in fact there are many reasons for hope. We see many great ride checks and with enough public agitation and discussion which you have also been so active and involved in then we could really get leaders to step up. Thats why wrote a book and so move is a title not only suggests a book about transportation infrastructure but also suggests what we have to do in america which is we have to move. We have to get moving. Host we do and we have to leave again in the subtitle of the book actually talks about putting america back in the leadership position when it comes to Infrastructure Investment and let me just say this. I want us to actually come back to this issue of leadership because you have got a lot to say about that as far as Going Forward but lets just unpack it a bit and you do something very interesting. You talk about transportation as more than concrete, asphalt and steel. You talk about it as a family concern, as a business concern. Lets do that a little bit but let me also ask you about allison, natalie and jacob and how you actually dedicate the book to them and then you really tell us to think about it in some degree from their perspective meaning Infrastructure Investment and its importance. Thank you. It fell as the natalie and jacob or three lovely little children and we need to think about this issue not only for business and the economy but also for the children who are growing up now and i have had the privilege of reading books to those children including some of their favorites and some of my favorites which i think are really great metaphors for what we need to do. I know we will get to the real industry policy in all of that. I wanted to also signaled this is a family issue so a high proportion of Household Budgets, up to 20 of Household Budgets for an average family ford spent on transportation is a big deal but Allison Natalie and jacob like books like dr. Seuss oh the places youll go, very inspirational and in the middle of that look as i was reading it i was startled to see that the characters bopping around in dr. Seuss like ways and then gets to a place in the metal called the waiting place waiting for the trains to go the bus to come the planes to go, it was all about transportation and so the rest of the book says you got to get out of the waiting place and its inspirational for kids who can do it. We have to do it for them now. The other one is the little engine that could. Host thats my favorite. Guess though that is truly a metaphor for america. I can imagine that look ever been written other places although other places have a generosity of spirit like the little engine but the little engine was the woman stepped in to carry toys for kids when all the big engines were too busy too important. The establishment wasnt listening and so to me thats a signal that we also have to count on the little engines entrepreneurs, Community People to Push Congress and to do some of the work. So that was why i started the book dedicated to them but its their future that we are really talking about. Its interesting you mentioned the congress and the president and now we can get a little bit into the policy. I know that yesterday you were part of the kick off of infrastructure with the Vice President and also with secretary fox. As we get to the end of the month were congress has once again extended the transportation bill this time for the 30second time, if they have to extend it again i will be 33 times that they have extended it a month or two or six months or whatever and a clarion call was we need a longterm plan for Infrastructure Investment. Do you think that thats important as we think about moving america back into the leadership post . We definitely need longterm. We are going to count on the small engines and the small engines will produce many innovations that will help, but we do need the big engines and we do need longterm funding. When funding is subject to short term fixes, then nobody can plan plan. You cant really plan to upgrade. Maybe you can patch some of the potholes on the roads but you cant plan projects that reinvent it in for Allison Natalie and jacob he would refer the longterm but for all of us by the way this is also a shortterm pain issue because of the amount of time we lose productive time stuck in traffic, the frustrations. The First Responders i cant get places quickly enough because they cant move on the roads so longterm funding would reduce some of the political uncertainty. That would attract more investors. That would be helpful to the Public Sector because if we had more privatesector investors they wouldnt all have to come out of public money. They wont necessarily invest if they think its the public site will run out and maybe there is no public will. They are looking for longterm commitments. This is both the u. S. Private equity which is now looking at infrastructure and its sovereign wealth funds from other countries Infrastructure Investment firms. There is money out there they would like to invest but its not simply politics. Its banned certainty with shortterm fixes. Its not something we want to authorize and i feel the same way about air traffic control. When not subject to congressional budget cycles they cant also make investments even intellectual investments in new technology thats experimental because they might start something and its cut off. Its interesting you mentioned the issue of cost and i thought immediately about how you started off where you say stuck on the way to the future. Thats the first chapter but this first paragraph and im not going to read it all but a couple of sentences are worth reading for sure. The average American Commuter wasted total of 38 hours in traffic per year. This is the average so some would be even higher. This amounts to five. 5 billion hours of lost u. S. Productivity annually. These are staggering figure so you are saying that we all pay a cost when the system is not working effectively. We do we all do and thats just commuter stuart. What about people who are trying to buy groceries are going to Health Care Appointments were trying to get to school . School buses get stuck in traffic too but when you get to High School Students they often are using the public system so this really is a huge cost in the Health Care Cost because being stuck in traffic means they are burning fuel unnecessarily and pollution from those idling cars. There was a study in brooklyn that said 45 of all air pollution is caused by idling cars or driving around to find parking once you are in a city. So we have adjusted to some of that although people complain. We should complain that theres a way in which the human mind will not realize theyre something you can do about it and we call it normalizing. Thats normal. Lets build and extra hour in and so leave early, come home late and dont see the family. There are so many costs and consequences and so we have to solve. Thats an immediate problem that also requires longterm investment because if all we did was repair the roads or repair the train tracks which really needed we still wouldnt be heading for the future. Because we are growing in population. We need to do something. Host right, right. In that paragraph that i was reading you said we lose about 121 billion in cost for fuel and lost time and just congestion annually and thats over 70 billion for people just stuck in traffic. What about the person who says okay put in a disk disc and listen to a book on tapes. Guess who sa said we are very good at making sense of something or making it seem normal and working around it. But you could listen to that look on tape in your office or at home with the kids. We werent meant to live in our cars but even if we were even if we were because Auto Companies might like to have people. The cars became is the Henry Ford Health to build the middle class with the automobile. Just do he did and cars have become dining rooms for many people but we dont want them to become living rooms. But its also the fuel, the time time, the frustration and what about bad weather . We have had some really Severe Weather and there was a time think it was in 2014 in atlanta where cars couldnt move. Host the ice storm. Just go for 20 hours and people were stuck in their cars. Thats really scary because aside from cramped space people could die. These are the dire stories, the dire consequences and it doesnt have to be that way. Thats the other message of move that we dont have to accept this and their solutions. Many of them are already in place and the rest of the country. Host its interesting you say we dont have to expect it. We have actually never really accepted the normal. This is a country that has always thought that tomorrow could be a better than today. You mentioned the intercontinental railroad. You mentioned the interstate system. Its not like we havent dreamed big and produce pig in the past. What do you think of this moment now and this is going back to the question of leadership i think but what are your thoughts there . You touched on many of these in the book. Just go in the history of braille you have to look at the Transcontinental Railroad and many people point to that as the glorious past and why could it be like that today but when i dug into the history which was fascinating it wasnt so glorious as it took decades of discussion and no one really did did it until Abrahan Lincoln forced it through. Host even at a time of war. Guess who the civil war. Isnt that amazing . There were a lot of compromises that have to be made. It didnt work perfectly. The track started to be laid from the east coast of the west coast and they didnt mean the metal so that take extra money to fix fix it. There were tales of corruption. That was how jpmorgan and john d. Rockefeller made their fortunes and started monopolies but we could do it. We could envision that big project because we were envisioning the growth from coast to coast and how do you use that coasttocoast territory . You are not going to connected by stagecoach. The railroad connected it and made it possible for farmers to ship their products east to get goods coming back west and it made it possible for settlements to spring up there yet you know that well from your time as secretary of transportation that every time you put in a transit stop you get economic growth. People build around that so we did it then but thats always going to say it has lessons for today because i wasnt all that easy. It did take a leader who managed to forge the coalition to get the political will. We have had other interstate highways was really big like the Transcontinental Railroad. Have a defense rationale and it was a big old project. It was 1000 miles of highways and the huge price tag. Opened up all kinds of opportunities and has held the American Economy after the work. It helps settlements because the suburbs were already there but they could grow even more because people could live in the bucolic, idyllic green suburbs supposedly and get to work in cities. Cities were kind of abandoned at that time and we can get back to that later but this defense rationale that we have had for all of our big projects including sputnik the space race race, the cold war those investments on defense grounds, some of them are levels. Its because president who wanted the interstate highways said we could move troops and we could evacuate cities. In Hurricane Katrina in new orleans in 2005 it was clear you cant evacuate cities by everyone having their cars and heading to the interstate. It doesnt work so well those were really great rationale for the time i also say we are stuck in the past. We havent had big visions are big enough visions since the 1950s, maybe the early 1960s about the role that these projects play our future. We have some beautiful infrastructure, or gorgeous bridge in boston signature rage. Its like a piece of sculpture that people admire. There are other fantastic ridges. The golden gate bridge. They are beautiful works of art but they also are not a vision for what we need to do to connect people and help them move across those bridges so we need its time for a really big new vision that takes into account the 21st century. Does what you were trying to do in your vision 2000. Host yes it is and you mentioned that earlier and i wanted to come back to it though one thought before we moved here and i think its very interesting that really fdr during his administration thought of this National System of roads and you are right it really took a few years of gestation if you will but then this emphasis on defense during the eisenhower years to move it forward. I think the question may be is there are way for maybe the issue of competitiveness and our need to be competitive globally. Might that replace what has been the driver of defense and security to some degree . I think thats certainly a rationale that resonates with the Business Community and with officials. Local, state, federal etc. And we could sell it a little bit to the American Public jobs but im not sure that by itself its enough to sell the public i mean. People know that china has invested a great deal and that japan had already invested. It was part of their rebuilding after world war ii but its a little bit more remote just to say we want to be number one on making 10 indicators but if it doesnt translate to things that improve peoples lives. So my thought is and what ive been saying in this book and want to say to the people who are elected leaders, i feel many of us could be leaders whether we are Holding Office or not. Im trying to be a thought leader here. What im trying to say to them in move is we need a vision about mobility. Mobility is so essential youve talked about transportation is a signatory system of the nation. Mobility, we have to be able to move goods. We have to be able to move ourselves and we have to be able to get where we want to go. Other countries are moving faster. We can use it metaphorically to talk about catching up or getting into the lead as we compete with other countries but we also have to continue to be the land of opportunity. I say we have gone from a land of opportunity to a state of delays but we have to get that back so this is all about holding the middle class restoring the middle class. It is all about reducing inequality because one of the things that keeps people poor as they can get to jobs. We have to make things affordable for people, accessible to people so if we wrapped mobility and competitors together then we have a shot and i think we should all be starting the conversation figuring out a good way to talk about it. Because it was all National Defense or the interstate highways when i looked at the history they were never actually called the National Defense highway act but everybody referred to them that way. Everyone knew sputnik was about eating russia but the space race by itself was also inspiring to people. Astronauts. Mad science, all of those. Yeah and this picture of people actually landed on the moon. Its powerful. We dont arouse peoples imagination about the future and this is such an exciting area to excite imagination. We have entrepreneurs dreaming up all kinds of things that sound while but its inspiring. It is, you mentioned both china and japan. As you know china now is promoting its one belts, one Road Initiative where they are trying to bring up to date the old silk road and its all about trade and its all about participating in the global economy. Dinesh noi recently and you know about this as well but i was recently in japan and i rode the bullet train and they were celebrating their 50th anniversary now of the bullet train. Now they are looking at advanced technology clearly beyond that and there are discussions for lab but thats the future and we have got to be a part of it. In that sense being competitive isnt because we necessarily want to beat them. We could learn from them although we are not always as good at that but yes i have been in japan and britain those trains. I landed on the flight in tokyo and i had a colleague who is going to escort me to osaka and i wasnt sure exactly how we were going to get there. If you met me as i exited from security we walked a few steps and we were on the train to osaka faster than you could get from any city in the United States to downtown. We are in the city. How far is osaka osaka . At maybe 100 miles away but we are there and seamlessly easily and seamlessly. When i found out that the bullet train has only an average in the last few years deviated from schedule 32 seconds on average try telling that to anybody who is taking amtrak in the northeast corridor. Or a flight. Host the president of amtrak gnosis and hes trying to get it going again. I know your good friend former governor michael to caucus is very interested along with the Vice President of amtrak and hopefully we can get it. Guest i know they are trying and i tell a great story in the book about amtrak being innovative and getting the government regulators to be a little more flexible and nimble and raising the speed in pennsylvania on the keystone corridor, raising the speed by only a mere 20 Miles Per Hour but it was enough to make a lot of people abandon their cars to take the train to commute instead. It was just enough time saved so they could start by doing those things. Then when people have faith in trains again and thats what i mean by small things, then maybe they will see the power of things. As you know besides this idea may be a maglev for the northeast corridor which would take many decades but we could start there are private companies who are investing in highspeed rail in texas, Texas Central between houston and dallas and florida all aboard america and whats exciting about that, so these are private companies with the vision. They certainly would benefit from some federal loans or matching funds but they are willing to invest and in miami where there is a desperate need for light rail for an expansion of what there is but for more there is now talk that hey if all aboard america is building a terminal on the northern side of the city gee that could have place where we could connect light rail and again the private company would jumpstart what would then become a public investment. Thats exciting and then this idea we all are loved trains and away even though we may not write them. We played with these vehicles at that toys. When i think about how many times i have sang the wheels on the bus goround and round, this should excite peoples imagination but again people have given up and i dont think about it. Again thats why would a book that tells the story but what i thought was interesting when you told me that you were going for the 50th anniversary of the bullet train and i started thinking about you know that was postworld war. They had good trains but they introduced highspeed rail around 1980. Our speed is nothing compared to theirs. We could celebrate the 100th anniversary of the overhead wiring. We have antiques in our system and they worked really well. What happens is we all know. Host we need to improve them. Guess that we know this from our personal lives. Maintenance is in the vision. We put off maintenance. We had a beautiful new shiny house or new shiny apartment and i have friends who every time they needed repainting they would think about moving rather than repainting. A little bit that has been the story of america. You abandon it so we have hollowed out parts of cities. There are now should the highly desirable because they are close to jobs and people could write likes or walk. They had deteriorated so badly. Host yes, yes. You know its interesting the way we sometimes as you have noted turn from that which is not quite as iffy as it used to be. Ill tell you and you have referred to some of the work we did during our time in office. A part of that was trying to introduce highspeed rail. The good thing is we have seen a significant increase in ridership in the northeast corridor but we need to see that across the system. I remember going to new orleans and actually unveiling a vision for highspeed rail corridors around the country. Both president clinton and Vice President gore were very interested in that. One reason we came forth with the vision piece you mentioned the called it the changing face of transportation we looked from the year 2000 to 2025 was because we had been successful in passing the legislation that was before us. The recognition was that with a growing economy with an opening of our borders and an interface with markets around the globe with peace and prosperity to be enjoyed that we really needed to think boldly about the future and we attempted that in this work. Im excited about secretary fox and his beyond traffic report. You made some reference to that and also europe look because you, this is great, you dont say the president has to be accepted. You actually start to needle us and bring everyone into focus about what can be. So lets talk about that. You talked about the citys howling out but you also have a very significant revelation in the book about cities that are prospering and the presence of transit and good infrastructure. What you tell us a little bit about that. Guest i would love to and i comment on the excel or because that was a great thing and it has been very important to people in the northeast corridor. The problem is its limited by aging infrastructure. A lot of right of ways that were purchased 100 years or more ago have curves in them that mean that it cant go up to speed. It has to slow down and there are tracks that need to be repaired. I want the vision of the future and we will get to that but i believe in the 3rs repair, renew and reinvent so i love the random part but we also have to understand that repair is needed even to get the benefits we have now. You know this is known to people in various regions around the u. S. And those visions that you had when you were in office, they were really rate. It is hard to understand how we could get so loud down and partisan gridlock at the national level. For example denver, a city in which fewer than the statistics i have an look is Something Like only 6 of commuters use anything other than a car. Its very car centric and yet they are putting in light rail. They have refurbished to Union Station which also like Union Station in washington or Union Station in chicago is on the way way. Hasnt happened yet but when you do that also becomes autonomous for other things. It becomes a city center. The neighborhood around it is better. Its easier to get everything from taxis if you do happen to use uber oprah because of better access to it. Other cities have seen it and have had plans and i think you can get collaboration and consensus a lot that are at the regional level. People see the benefits of the projects to them and it isnt as though that means everyone is selfish. They only wanted if its for their neighborhood and also they dont want in their neighborhood is going to be disruptive. Theres a streak of people and with visionary leaders and with lots of different parts of the community at the table give you that supported. People think sometimes its not officials, its not the Business Community. They are against whatever, they dont like taxes whatever it is but in fact in houston this was really striking to me. In houston there was a boat several decades ago in favor of a light rail system a Transit System and then a second was taken in general public support but then a second was taken about specifics and it was shot down and it was the poor communities to work instead. They had been left out of the process. Host the discussion. Guest they didnt feel is necessarily good for them because all of the parking places for it were in the server room areas. So was not part of the comprehensive vision about what to do about houston. And it was 20 years later that houston finally got light rail. So when i say its all about leadership you can call of politics but its leadership. When they do that they will get real support. This support. The Business Committee would like to see public transportation. It gets their employees to work and have often pushed public officials. In chicago they have pushed mayor daley to think about doing something with a hare airport and a new runway so if we can get that support regionally that doesnt mean states have to pay for it themselves or cities because all these things stand states. Regions are much broader and we need National Standards and National Vision and National Strategy and National Funding which doesnt pay for it all but it jumpstarts its the accelerator. This is the rationale so i do believe that to your earlier question and longterm funding and the federal role, but we can add the regions as the dreamers and implementors. We can have the private sector as potential investors and we can add every mode of transportation into the plan. I know a big part of your vision was intermodal connections. We should be connected. Host almost most people dont care which motive is as long as they can get there. Guess kosovo did their regionally than entrepreneurs would get excited. They are at it are but they are inhibited in its too limited. So yes there are cities that are doing great things and there are cities that have had real problems and they are trying to fix the problems. That often spans political administrations. In chicago there were three great things going on in chicago chicago, for great things in chicago that i love. One mayor in manual and heritage and wants to accelerate. Stand tangling this is something everybody who is watching will identify with because everybody has been stuck at a train crossing where they train tracks across the road you are on. Host i thought you were going there. Guest there are a lot of unnecessary deaths in america. I just got a startling new statistic because people in cars dont believe that dates try to go around them thinking they can beat the train suicide from i dont want to talk about only depressing things, suicide by train they were also policies. In chicago this has been a particular problem because a quarter of all rail and america goes to chicago and its old system. It also dates back to a time when the u. S. Didnt have a system. They had lunch at separate railroads putting tracks wherever they wanted. Host wherever they wanted. Guest wherever they wanted so they were all crossing at angles sometimes multiple in the commuter trains are using the same tracks. They have priorities. Commuter passenger light rail, commuter passenger and freight. But a long Freight Train could tie up traffic for 20 minutes. More dire details. Host and let me ask this. This is just what you are talking about. You have a segment called the slowest six miles in america. This is in chicago, right . Guest it was a Freight Train that could get from l. A. To chicago in 30 hours and could take 24 hours just across a short stretch in chicago. When there is a problem like there was bad weather. This was the then recent bad weather. When there was a problem the delay in cargo moving affected the whole country for a month. Host thats the thing we dont really recognize her fully appreciate. Guest on right now the types of the ports in los angeles, the same thing. You cant get goods who have been ordered from other places or get art goods out to sell to other places. Host but its changing. Guest the mayor is changing that but he inherited that project because in the late 90s a new administration was noticed. It stands for chicago rail block block block. This feel there are so many acronyms. So finally it got federal funding for the first days. 72 different projects to build overpasses, to build underpasses and to straighten us out. And so a lot of them have been completed but there are a lot left to do. I was there watching a particularly tough one are halfway maybe more and they have done a lot of it. Chicago would have lost the plant and all their jobs if they hadnt done that because the cars go out by rail. Or by trucks some of them and they are now because of a tank they used in some bridges. There is an instant bridge there. I know that sounds like maybe its flimsy but its not. And we did this in massachusetts. We had instant riches for 14 weekends over 14 weekends, 14 different bridges were rolled into place in a weekend. It was really great. Theyre not going to be hugely long bridges but they have dad and i saw this a real green space developed in the neighborhood nearby which is and on top of me but its nearby. Its going to be a more vibrant neighborhood. There are all kinds of suppliers that also have their factories there are so a lot of jobs are at stake besides those jobs. Some impressive projects underway but its taken time and its going to run out of money. Host and thats the big fear fear. Guest there are still a lot of projects in their projects left to go so thats one that is very promising. I believe that we out to get rid of every place in america where train tracks cross streets or roads, every place area that will take a long time. Host it will come at will and i know that was the big issue with the federal highway demonstrations also the federal runner Road Administration during my years at the department. Thats the kind of thing, i mean look at bridges is an innovation. Thats the kind of thing that if we have the will be could make that a goal and anyway thats only one. Go ahead and i will tell you chicago stories. I wanted you to go into some of the other things that mayor emanuel is doing financing and infrastructure of funds. Tell us a bit more about that. Guest infrastructures on the list for enlightened governors and mayors and sometimes when theyre making speeches based infrastructure and everybody starts nodding off in the audience so they go on to something else. Its really quite exciting. The finance thing is a part of it because this issue of longerterm bonds that are attached from political positions so we created essentially an Infrastructure Bank for the city of chicago. There has been much talk of a a National Structure bank that hasnt gone anywhere in congress. Other countries have Infrastructure Banks. Big funds, china has it but also other countries. Brazil has one so it set aside and certainly subject to oversight but you can get professionals in the community looking at the projects without thinking about political porkbarrel stuff or whatever and you can have a longerterm vision and you can do a lot of things. You can have loans as part of it. Doesnt all have to be just giving money. So he did that. States have Infrastructure Banks banks. About 36 states but they are not old using them. That was very visionary and of course he was bringing in National Perspective to the mayor of chicago. Two other things that i really love in chicago that are happening now. One you can call it but its making a big difference. Its called bus Rapid Transit which isnt really rapid for anybody whos listening who might say a few seconds here are a few seconds there but it adds up. What it is its essentially dedicated lanes with platforms preferably the platforms. It doesnt count as less Rapid Transit. Its just a dedicated lane. What the platform does is it means that first of all people can wait on the platform and can board at the level of the bus. Theres a lot of great things it does and it can go a little faster here and there. It can have implications across the whole line. This is not a u. S. Invasion although many cities now have it. This is one where we learned it from i mean the first one i think was in brazil. Host it was, ive actually visited there during my tenure. Guess that was a long time ago because the mayor who got that, we had to speak at harvard. Host i remember him. Guess who he made a green city well before was fashionable but now paris has this. Istanbul, i was in istanbul watching the russ is speed bias i was struck in traffic in the car. So its good and we can be visionary and we can do Great Committee things with it so that something chicago but heres the other thing. Because theyre trying to think comprehensively they call a complete streets which is also a phrase by some other places. Complete streets means they are trying to not only help the process go faster but open the streets for bikes, pedestrians have them all coexist with cars and modernize the whole thing. In digging up some downtown streets to put in the platforms they are also fixing the water pipes and since send chicago has some really aging water pipes we heard about some that were hollowed out tree trunks more than 100 years old. I know because the technology in chicago was using some of the old pipes that are paying used, was using them for fiber optics. So by having a complete vision you can do everything. And so one of the other cool things of course and chicago isnt the first, but bike sharing. It has its political moments to map but bike sharing its really being used. Host boston, washington d. C. And new york. Guest i think in some places you take your life in your hands when you ride a bike and people are wearing all black. How can they do that . What are they thinking . You cant see them but ill tell you thats a serious point. Host we have to work on that. Just go we have to work on that because what we have in america is we have cars and we all love our cars but actually the millennials dont love their cars so much. He used to be that every time you gettogether and the guys would always talk about their cars. Now guys talk about their smart bombs in the technology. Millennials are getting drivers licenses at the same rate. So thats my modification. And im not going to go on about cars but to say we have been car centric and now we have to be complete streets. We have to have the cars move over so we dont yet have a white culture. We know how to be polite sort of driver to driver although we do have road rage but we dont have a culture of bikes so what chicago had to do, they put in traffic lights with a light bike symbol on it so the bikes would know to stop. Cars have to know not to feel that you are wanting to cut off a bike. It takes time to develop that culture. When amsterdam which leads the world in bikes and bike sharing was first put in bike sharing it was a disaster at first because people stole bikes and they didnt ring them back. It took a little while for people to learn. I feel right now we are on the cusp of change in how we think about transportation infrastructure and the technology to do it. Host i agree and thats exciting part and i would like for us to maybe focus on that as we move to a close here but as soon as you touched on it i read the chapter 4 the book where it talks about smart roads meet the smartphone and you were all over that in your comments. Lets talk about it a little bit more. Lets unwrap it a bit more. You start off this chapter saying that transportation by road must get smarter. Developments in the past decade smartphones, sophisticated sensors, gps, Cloud ComputingBig Data Analytics are challenging Business Models and causing industries to collide. Now that is you putting on your leadership had and also your Harvard Business hat. Lets talk a bit more about that that. You mentioned millennials and lets face it they are definitely changing the way we see things and do things and frankly the way we are changing the way we are going to have to live Going Forward. Lets talk about it a little bit more. Thats very exciting. Just go its exciting and even before that we were beginning to use sensors for Traffic Management and a lot of stuff that wasnt visible to the consumer yet. But the smart on which is really not that old the apple iphone 2007 and also full disclosure we both love verizon. Verizon Wireless Networks the wireless business has been growing dramatically but as mary barra of General Motors pointed out she said you know the cell phone was originally referred to in america is the carphone. I remember having a very clunky carphone. She was right and she said the Auto Industry by not really jumping on it. They jumped on it a bit from wireless connected Emergency Services but didnt really jump on it and now i think they are jumping because everybody is now in the transportation business. We are transporting data more than people. Google is in the auto business and sample google actually build the car . Apple doesnt actually make the iphones. They make the software. Google software but google is colliding with nearly every industry. They are also trying to get collaboration because as amazon and facebook. Guest opaque data so we dont know but roads are getting smarter. We are putting in sensors permitting things like electronic towing trolling. Host dynamic tolling. Guest dynamic tolling which will change the price of people make the decision. Will i pay a little more to go with this or not and its hard to talk about. Steve goldsmith former mayor of indianapolis said to me we cant talk about congestion pricing because it puts together two words that americans dont like to hear. But the fact is we do that and its very handy. We now have transponders in cars. We still and have a National System so the transponder the northeast states have started cooperating so i can use what used to be called fast lane lane in new york city from boston to new york city. This is all happening faster than we can catch up with but roads are going to be able to sense potholes so theres an app that the city of boston created city working with entrepreneurs, tech entrepreneurs to build these things. Theyre app called street phone is in your car or you are connected to your smartphone it detects potholes from the vibrations in the car. You dont even have to report it. The car reports it for you. Thats a smart car on a smart road. I hope they dont get smarter than we are. Thats my only fear but thats the future vision. Then we have all these new services. Sharing cars, such a great idea. They have had to deal with local permission where they can park and stuff but they are working it out. All of it this Technology Enables because thats how you get into the car remotely. It uber you summoned a lyft other similar services, they will be more for you summoned it on demand or you get information about exactly where to meet the private van thats going to take a whole bunch of people on a common route and no more than a fiveminute walk they will tell you when to be there. This will revolutionize how we get around and it is very exciting. Aviation technology will help glide to a landing. Host its exciting. Just a couple of things on that i have often said that possibly the most important thing to happen during our term in office meaning during the Clinton Administration may not have been the passage of the major pieces of legislation. They were significant and big that but it was really through an executive order that president clinton allowed for the commercial and the civilian use of gps in its most sophisticated form and that is what really enhance the capability of fedex to basic lycee i can have it to you a certain time because i know how to get there. I know how much time its going to take a break and read the congestion maps that are being developed by google. All of that is now coming into play and it was that executive order thats it basically what was a military defense type apparatus, technology and applied it to the Business Community. Guest that is so right. So right that made a huge difference. Also that was defense. The internet was defense. And around the same time the internet open to public use and it was visionary members of congress that understood that there needs to be some regulation but you left it open. Gps really huge and its striking to me you see today that there are now these little experiments because of uber that pizza hut says we will track your delivery for you with an app and im thinking wait a minute, i tracked my fedex packages and my ups shipments all the time. We can do it. We have been doing it and consumers havent seen it or seen the possibilities. Host now they are going to. Just go they are going to and theres no reason why they cant. These technologies often were coming from defense. Its a little worried if we are not spending r d in the same way. Therefore we had to spend directly. I know how much defense spending invented the microwave oven. Host thats true but youre you are also the Major Research institution in clearly these institutions harvard and others, have given us the benefit of that intellectual muscle that creates and then applies that creation to our everyday experience so as to give us greater enjoyment, greater fulfillment Greater Transparency and so we have to continue to invest in our research and development and thats mine. Guest thank you. Host let me and im finding this conversation fascinating from another vantage point. I was recently reading, i believe that was a wall street journal article but it had a map of the state of california and attach all of the locations some of the companies that we have mentioned. We have mentioned google and others. And that id have the location of automotive facilities and they were all along that same track meaning they are moving from the midwest and from the south and its their technology apparatus and they are placing it at the center of a lot of activity in the Silicon Valley area like that given the along route 128 in the boston area as well. A lot of automotive presence in that area. Guest this is really a big change and in fact one of the things that killed kodak as the company was that stayed in rochester new york, its headquarters and it was a really Great Technology company, but all the work was happening with digital and that was all in Silicon Valley. I think thats exciting and ive mentioned mary barra social i should mention mark field one of our alums and i know him well. He believes in connection and i think the executives get it, that they are no longer in the metal bending business although its a part of it. They there are now and the mobility business and mobility what we said before his opportunity and mobility is a big part of our future and mobility is now dependent on Wireless Networks and other devices by which we control data information. He wants to be where the innovators are innovators are in those fields. So its a big change and people will live differently and work differently in the future. So i hope we can get the national will to have the conversation to make this optimistic scenario come true. Host well, lets move in with this book we will. Thank you dr. Cantor. Guest cantor. Guest thank you very much secretary slater