This issue of infrastructure which really not only the facts and figures about what was happening in america and a sad state of much of our infrastructure i was stuck on traffic. Sad stories. They could not get to are had to take two or three buses and the subway. That plus going abroad and riding a train in shanghai where we went to another city 1st of all subway connections to the train the trainer so fast we went to another city in 20 minutes. So all those things together made me feel this is an important issue. I have been talking to you. About the need for a knew vision for america. Just at the end of the Clinton Administration when you are leaving office and then unfortunately the world changed in the 2,000s. A lot of defense spending and preoccupations and the financial crisis. The kind of investments we need to make heaven been done. This is so important to the future of the country and im part of the us competitiveness project. We really care about making sure america is strong and the American Economy and quality of life are as excellent as they could possibly be that we are once again leaders in the world. I put aside what i thought was my leadership. Then it was interesting that i ended up concluding it is all about leadership. Many of the details but its all about leadership in the leadership for innovation, collaboration big vision is as important as the engineering. We have the technical skill in america and the technology we leave the world. We just arent always applying our strength. Leaders need to step up. I started out saying the sorry state of our infrastructure but there are many reasons for hope. We see many great projects. Enough public agitation and discussion. We can get leaders to step up. Not always suggests is the title of his book about transportation infrastructure we have to move. And we have to leave again. The the subtitle of the book talks about putting america back in the leadership position. Let me just say i want us to come back to this issue. You have a lot to say about that as far as Going Forward but lets unpack it a bit. You do Something Interesting you talk about transportation has more than concrete asphalt and steel. You talk about it as a family concerned, business concern. Let me ask you about allison, natalie jacob. How you dedicate the vote to them. You tell us to think about it. Their perspective. Thank you through a little children we need to think about this issue not only for business and the economy but also for the children were growing up now i have the privilege of reading books and those children including some of their favorites and some of my favorites which are really great metaphors for what we need to do. Will get to that. This is a familyfriendly issue. A high proportion of Household Budgets for an average family of four is spent on transportation. But they like variants very inspirational. In the middle of that book i was starting to see that the characters bopping around get to a place where there waiting for the trains to go bus to come. It was all about transportation. The rest of the book says you have to get out of the waiting place. It is inspirational. You can do it. We have to do it for them. The other is the little engine that could. Thats my favorite. Truly a metaphor for america. I cant imagine that book having been written other places the generosity of spirit. A little engine was the one that stepped and to carry toys for kids when all the big engines were too busy, important the establishment was not listening. To me that is a signal we have to count on little engines, Entrepreneurs Community people to Push Congress and to do some of the work. That was why i started the book but it is their future that we are talking about. It is interesting. You mentioned the congress and the president. We can get into the policy. Yesterday you were part of the kickoff of infrastructure week with the Vice President. As we get to the end of the month where congress is once again extending the transportation bill this time for the 32nd time if they have to extended again it will be 33 times. And the clarion call was will we need a longterm plan for infrastructure investment. Do you think that is important as we think about moving america back into the leadership post . We definitely need that. The small engines will produce many innovations that will help but we do need the big engines and we do the longterm funding. One funding is subject to shortterm fixes then no one can plan. You cant plan to upgrade. Maybe you can patch some potholes but you cannot plan projects that reinvented. For all of us this is a shortterm issue because of the amount of time. The time in traffic, frustration the 1st responders that move on the roads. Longterm funding would reduce the Political Uncertainty and attract more investors which would be helpful to the Public Sector if we had more private sector investors they were not all have to come out of public money. They wont necessarily invest if the public side they think will run out immediately. They are looking for longterm commitments. This is both us private equity looking at infrastructure sovereign wealth from other country, infrastructure investment. There is money out there that would like to invest but it is not simply politics but the uncertainty when it is shortterm fixes were not something we want to authorize yearbyyear. I feel the same way about traffic control. We are not subject to congressional budget cycles. They cannot also make investments longterm even intellectual investments in new technology that is experimental because they might start something. Sure. You mentioned the issue of cost. I thought immediately about how you started off the book where you say stuck on the way to the future. This 1st paragraph a couple of sentences are worth reading. The average American Commuter wastes a total of 38 hours in traffic per year this is the average. Some would be even higher. This amounts to 5. 5 billion hours of lost us productivity annually. Those are staggering figures we all. Cost when the system is not working effectively. We do. And that is just commuting to work. What about people who are trying to buy groceries are going to healthcare appointments are trying to get to school. Sure. School buses get stuck in traffic also. When you when you get to High School Students they often are using the public system. So this really is a huge cost. And the Health Care Cost a lot are burning fuel unnecessarily. Pollution pollution from those idling cars, there was a study in brooklyn that said 45 percent of all pollution is caused by idling cars were driving around to find parking. So we have adjusted to some of that although people complain. There is a way in which the human mind will not realize there is something we can do about it. Normalizing. The new normal. And so we verily come home late dont see the family. There are so many costs and consequences. That is an immediate problem that requires longterm investment. If we did was repair the road or the train tracks we still wouldnt be heading for the future. We are growing in population and need to do something. Just in that paragraph i was reading you said we lose about 121 billion in cost for fuel and lost time just congestion annually over 70 billion more people just stuck in traffic. What about the person who says but in that tape, idisk, listen to a book on tape. As i said we are good at making sense of something are making it seem normal. You could listen to that book on tape in your office or at home. Exactly. We were not meant to live in our cars but even if we were Auto Companies might the cars henry ford. He did. The cup holder was one of the biggest innovations. Cars have become dining rooms. We dont want them to become living rooms. Its also the fuel the time the frustration and what about bad whether. Really severe weather. And there was a time in 2014 in atlanta workers could not move. For 20 hours. Thats really scary. Aside from cramped space people could die. These are the dire consequences. It does not have to be that way. We dont have to accept this and there are Solutions Many of them are already in place. Its interesting. We dont have to accept it. We have never really accepted the normal. This is a country that has always thought that tomorrow could be better than today. You mentioned the intercontinental railroad, the interstate system. It isnt like we have not dreamed big and produced big in the past. What do you think at this moment now going back to the question of leadership but what are your thoughts . You touch on many of these in the book. In the history, you have to look at the transcontinental railroad. The glorious path. It wasnt so glorious visited decades of discussion and no one did it until Abraham Lincoln forced to through. Even during time of war is. And that was, there was, there were a lot of compromises that had to be made that did not work perfectly. The track started to be laid from the east coast and west coast and did not meet in the middle. That took extra money. There were tales of corruption. J. P. Morgan and John D Rockefeller made their fortunes. We can envision that project because we were envisioning growth of the us from coasttocoast. How you use that territory you not going to connected by stagecoach. The railroad connected it and made it possible for farmers to ship their products east. It made it possible for settlements to spring up. You know that is read every time you put into transit stop you get economic growth. So we didnt them. There wasnt all that easy. Its a a leader to forge the coalition and get the political we will. Interstate highways that really big like the commonwealth. The 41000mile highway it helped the American Economy after the war it helped settlements. The suburbs were there for could grow more green suburbs supposedly and get to work in cities. Kind of abandoned. For all of our big projects. The cold war investments some of them ares furious because president eisenhower who wanted the interstate highway conservative move troops and evacuate cities. In Hurricane Katrina in new orleans in 2005 it was clear you cant evacuate cities by everyone piling in their car and heading to the interstate. While they were great rationales at the time i also say were stuck in the past. We have not had big visions or big enough visions is the 1950s maybe the early 1960s about the role that these projects of played. We have some beautiful infrastructure developments. I gorgeous bridge and boston. Its like a peace of sculpture that people admire there are fantastic bridges the golden gate bridge. The beautiful works of art that they are not envision for what we need to do to connect people and help them move across as bridges. We needed time for a big new vision that takes into account the 21st century. And you mentioned that earlier. One thought before we leave your. It is interesting that fdr during his administration thought of this National System and youre right it took a few years of gestation and then this emphasis on defense during the eisenhower years to move it forward. The question may be is there a way for the issue of competitiveness and i need to be competitive globally might that replace what has been the driver of defense and security to some degree . That is certainly a rationale that resonates with the business community. We could sell it a little bit to the American Public but i am not sure by itself is enough. People know china has invested a great deal. But it is a little remote to say we want to be number one my thought what i want to say to the people who are elected leaders, many of us can be leaders. Im trying to be a thought leader. We need a vision about mobility. Mobility is so essential. You talk about transportation is a circulatory system. We have to be able to move goods move ourselves to get where we want to go. Other countries are moving faster. We can use it metaphorically we also have to continue to be the land of opportunity. We have gone from the land of opportunity to being the state of delay. We have to get that back. This is all about building a middleclass command reducing inequality. One of the things that keeps people poorer is they cant get to jobs. We have to make things affordable and accessible. If we wrap mobility and competitiveness together we have a shot. We should all be starting the conversation and figuring out a way to talk about it. They were never actually called the National Defense highway act that everyone the frigid in that way. The space race by itself was inspiring to people. All of those. And this picture of people landing on the moon. Its powerful. If we dont arouse peoples imagination about the future and this is such an exciting area. We have entrepreneurs dreaming of all kinds of things. It is inspiring. It is. You mentioned china and japan. As you know china is promoting its one built one Road Initiative where they are trying to bring uptodate the up to date the old silk road all about trade in participating in the global economy. As you know, you know about this as well. I was recently in japan. I wrote the bullet train. They were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the bullet train. Now they are looking at advanced technology clearly beyond that and there are discussions between the us and japan on this for matlab but that is the future. And that since it is not because we necessarily want to beat them. But this i have been in japan and written those trains. A flight in tokyo. I had a colleague was going to escort me to osaka. I was not sure exactly how to get there. He met me as i exited security. We walked a few steps 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 . It may be a hundred miles away but we are there. Easily and seamlessly. It is impressive. The bullet train has only on average in the last three years deviated from schedule 32 seconds on average. Try telling that to anyone who is taking amtrak and the northeast corridor. I know. And the pres. Of amtrak amtrak knows this and is trying to get it going again. I know your good friend former governor Michael Dukakis is interested along with the Vice President of amtrak. I no they are trying. 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 by if only am your 20 Miles Per Hour enough to make a lot of people abandon their cars to take the train to commute instead. It was just enough time saved. We could start by doing those things. And people have faith in trains again then maybe they will see the power. As you know besides this idea is of the corridor which would take many decades there are private companies who are investing in highspeed rail in texas, texas, Texas Central between houston and dallas, florida, all aboard america. What is exciting about that private companies with the vision that would benefit from federal loans for matching funds but they are willing to invest. And miami where there is a desperate need for light rail there is now talk that if all aboard america is building a terminal on the northern side of the city that could be a place where we could connect light rail. The private company would jumpstart what would then become a public investment. That is exciting. It is. This idea we all have we play with the vehicles as toys. Think about how many times i have spun the wheels. This should excite peoples imagination. People people have given up and dont think about it. And a little bit thats been the story of america. It should be highly desirable and people could write and block. Theyve deteriorated so badly. Its interesting the way we sometimes noted its not quite as it used to be. Youve referred to some of the work we did in our time in office but part of that was introducing highspeed rail. The good thing is weve seen a increase in the northeast corridor but we need to see that across the system and envisioned a envision the highspeed rail corridors around the country. Vice president gore were very interested in that. One reason that we came forth we called it the changing face of transportation and we looked from the year 2000 to 2025 and weve been successful passing the legislation that was before us. But the recognition was that with the growing economy and interface with markets around the globe, with peace and prosperity to be enjoyed we needed to think boldly about the future and attempt that in this work. I am excited about secretary fox and his report. You make some reference to that and also in your book because you this is great. You dont say the president has to be accepted. You bring everyone into focus about what can be so lets talk about that. You talked about the cities, but you also have a very significant revelation in the book about cities that are prospering and the presence of transit. Why dont you tell us a little bit about that . That has been a great thing but the problem is it is limited by aging infrastructure and purchased 100 years or so ago and it cant go can go up to speed. It has to slow down and there are aging tracks that have to be repaired so i would say i want the vision of the future and we have to get to that but i also believe in repair, renew and reinvent. So we also have to understand that it is needed even the benefits that we have now. This is known to people in various regions around the u. S. It is hard to understand how we could get so bogged down in partisan gridlock. For example denver, the city in which fewer than the statistics i have in the book but Something Like 6 of commuters use anything other than a car its very car centric and yes they are putting in light Rail Companies refurbished Union Station in washington or chicago is in the way. But it hasnt happened yet. When you do that it also becomes the terminal for other things. The neighborhood around it is better. Its easier to get everything because theres better access t