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Tune in to The Extra Mile presented by the Mississippi Department of Transportation. Co-hosts Paul Katool and Will Craft take listeners inside the world of transportation infrastructure in Mississippi.
The Extra Mile Podcast
Coast Transit Authority Executive Director Kevin Coggin
(Paul) Welcome in to another edition of The Extra Mile Podcast, presented by the Mississippi Department of Transportation. I'm MDOT Deputy Director of Public Affairs Paul Katool, and, as always, I'm joined by my co-host Will Craft. He is the Director of Public Affairs at the Mississippi Department of Transportation, and it's been several months since we've taken the show on the road.
After a long legislative session, we decided we want to get down to the Mississippi Gulf Coast -
(Will) Oh yeah.
(Paul) - and we are, we are at the Gulfport Transit Center, and we are here to speak with Kevin Coggin, who is the Executive Director of the Coast Transit Authority. Kevin, thank you so much for hosting us today.
(Kevin) It's my pleasure.
(Will) Absolutely.
(Paul) Awesome. So, before the show, we were kind of talking a little bit about this building, so can you kind of tell us where we're at?
(Kevin) Very interesting building…, was built in 1966. There is architectural historical significance, heavily damaged in Katrina, and we invested $10 million of U.S. DOT money and rebuilt this building. And, um, it's called adaptive reuse. It was the headquarters building of the Harrison County library system, and we converted it over to the hub of Transit operations in Gulfport and we've got some lease space upstairs. A beautiful building. The community was really happy that we restored it, and it is now on the U.S. Park Service list of historic places.
(Paul) That's awesome.
(Will) And it is beautiful. Yeah. I know you guys are real proud of it. Just walking around, first time I've ever been in here and it is incredible. It's a good-looking facility. Loads and loads of history. Um, you guys got the walls decorated with, with lots of things going on. What was the right out front here that you mentioned? Captain Jones, I think? Is that right?
(Kevin) Yeah, Captain Jones was the founder of City of Gulfport. He was a big businessman – big in, um, lumber – and you can see some renderings, murals and whatnot over there. He was a benefactor and, and actually he donated this piece of property –
(Will) Oh, wow.
(Kevin) – to the City of Gulfport that this building was built on. So, he and his wife were tremendous and, um, supporting people in, in helping found Gulfport.
(Will) And they're still contributing. Yeah, you know.
(Kevin) Absolutely.
(Will) Indirectly, by all means, and beautiful. Just to keep talking about the building and the history of it so, again, there's loads of history on the walls - paintings and beautiful works of art that kind of detail a lot of these things. And then when we take a look behind the director here, and there's this beautiful background for us of the - what's the word I'm looking for? The Marine facility over there.
(Kevin) Yeah. Mississippi Aquarium.
(Will) Aquarium. Could not think of that. Aquarium. Yeah, we got the dolphins spouting out some water right here behind us and it's like an open invitation to go explore that direction right now. We're gonna go check it out as soon as we wrap up for sure, but –
(Paul) Absolutely.
(Will) – Yeah, awesome building. It's very nice down here.
(Paul) For sure. So, do you just want to tell us what is the Coast Transit Authority? We'll, we'll get right to it.
(Kevin) We've been serving the Gulf Coast with public transit services since 1972. Do a lot of things – we’re evolving as time goes on and the community evolves. We do fixed-route bus service. We do a lot of, categorizes demand response - that's kind of a catch-all Senior Citizen Services, services for people with disabilities. , we bring Senior Center seniors to centers every day, grocery shopping once a week, doctor's appointments three times a week. , we're really starting to do a lot of Access to Health Care Transportation, both physical and mental health care - that's really taken off like a rocket –
(Will) Sure.
(Kevin) – with, with, with the amount of money that's being pumped into, especially mental health care as part of the federal gun control bill, believe it or not. , there was a lot of focus on mental health, and they're really pumping a lot of money into mental health, which should be, so -
(Will) Sure.
(Kevin) – we’re helping people access that. We do van pool transportation, work transportation on the I-10 Corridor – a lot of people don't realize we do that, that's significant. We're operating in the panhandle of Florida, lower counties of Alabama, lower counties of Mississippi, and the New Orleans Chalmette area - Slidell in Louisiana bringing people to work in Mississippi every day. So, we do a lot of things, basically - I've talked about how we've evolved over time. Whatever the community needs us to do we try and position ourselves to do that.
(Will) ¬¬ And I did not realize so you guys are actually offering services across state lines, so y'all have done something right apparently to grow to that nature over the years.
(Kevin) We like to think so. We're not, we don't have geographical boundaries, typically we’re an urban transit system. They're owned operated by cities, counties, states. For instance Jackson Transit is operated by the city of Jackson, and Hattiesburg the same. We're a true independent regional transportation service, so we're set up kind of like a public utility. We're a commission so we really have a lot of flexibility in the things that we can that, we are able to do.
(Will) That's really neat, yeah. I didn't realize that at all. And the van pool, so that's just two to and from work, right?
(Kevin) Right. We have a private company that does that, Enterprise Commute, they do a great job, so. There's a lot of things that the private sector can, and do, much better than we can, and we realized that early on. It was a result of Hurricane Katrina working with Huntington Ingalls. We were asked to work with them to help them re-establish their Workforce, so we had the pleasure of working with the largest single employer in the state of Mississippi to start our vanpool program. I was talking to a consultant about it, and he really highly recommended we look at letting the private sector do that and it works great. That's all they do, they're experts in it, and it's our brand. It's Coast Commuter and we pay them for it. It's very successful.
(Will) That's awesome.
(Paul) That's good stuff. So at MDOT we touched public transit obviously you provide public transit, so how do you kind of interact/interface with the Mississippi Department of Transportation?
(Kevin) So we have had historically a very good working relationship with MDOT public transit. They have been very helpful. The short version is, we’re of a size where we work directly with Federal Transit Administration. Region four is the largest FTA region in the Atlanta office. We’re what's called a direct recipient, so money is programmed through FTA directly to us. And so, we're not under the umbrella of MDOT public transit, and so they really don't have to be involved in urban transit systems. But they do, and it has been a really great working relationship and I appreciate the MDOT, the board, and executive management. And I'm not just saying this because I've been executive director at CTA since 2003, a long time –
(Will) Wow.
(Kevin) - where Charles Carr is phenomenal. The director of the Intermodal planning office and it just, we have CTA, and the Gulf Coast has been a good great beneficiary of MDOT to help with, you know, making sure we provide a good Urban system for the Gulf Coast all these years. I really appreciate their help and their friendship.
(Will) Absolutely. Yeah, and we appreciate the kind words. Speaking of that, kind of the crossover and work between us, public transit has been something that as you've mentioned, you guys have been working on for a long time and have obviously built such a great Enterprise and reputation. But it seems like it's even picking up more steam with the legislator this past session putting an additional $30 million into MDOT's multimodal fund of which public transit, you know, operations. I know you guys talked about, um, you're so large your kind of a direct recipient from the federal. But you know hey, I think it what is that they say, ‘all a rising tide races all ships’ so?
(Kevin) Yeah, we're very appreciative of the the Gulf Coast delegation. And they saw the need to really invest in intermodalism, and a lot of states don't do that, and MDOT is one of the few states that funds public transit directly. And the legislature is now coming in and providing additional funding. Well, historically MDOT took 10 million dollars out of their general money –
(Will) Right.
(Kevin) - and funded the multimodal funding program, which is airports, seaports, railroads, and public transit. And we've been a beneficiary of that, and it's been a long time since there has been an increase in investment in that. For the legislature to come up this time and put that additional funding is really significant and we really appreciate it.
(Will) Absolutely.
(Paul) That's awesome that we can all kind of work together for a really good thing. So, you mentioned it you've been executive director since 2003 and I have in my notes that you know, two years in Hurricane Katrina hit. I know that's not a really pleasant thing to talk about, but kind of what was it like back then when Katrina hit the coast?
(Kevin) So I've been with Coast Transit since 1989, and I was appointed executive director in 2003. You know, I used to do these all these lengthy bios, when I go speak. Or people ask me for my bio, and my bio simply says now that I'm a veteran of Hurricane's, oil spills, pandemics, and economic strikes.
(Will) It's true.
(Kevin) And you just have to work at it and it's a lot of Crisis management. Especially living here with hurricanes and Devastation, and um you know when I was appointed in 2003 there was, you know, we had some political issues and some financial issues. And I'm blessed to have a really good, dedicated Board of Commissioners who are mission oriented. We work together and stabilize the local political support and financial support in 2003 and in 2005 comes and just you know washes all that off the map, literally. Our best route was right here on Highway 90, we were carrying about I think that it was like, you know, 250, 000 passengers a year on Highway 90. And Highway 90 was wiped out. But, you know, we used that as an opportunity to rebuild the system, and get the money, and went in our federal delegation was tremendous, and MDOT was tremendous in helping us. And we totally rebuilt the entire system which set the stage for where we are today, with rebuilding our main facility, which was in bad shape, and all new buses and just kind of refreshed our business model. We had some really smart people come in and consultant and help us reconfigure what the service looked like. So, all of that, and that period from 2005 to 2007, since it's set the stage for, you know, the success we have today, and of course, you know, then you had the Great Recession in 2008, and oil spills, and then the pandemic.
(Will) To be honest with you, Shell Oil will be glad to hear this, but I mean I almost forgot about the oil spill with everything else.
(Kevin) Yeah, I mean it's, you know, we we've benefited from that. So yeah.
(Will) And I forget the BP, I said Shell, I guess BP. You know, we got settlement and that is still being invested back into the state, but Lord I almost forgot about it with everything else that's happened.
(Kevin) That's right.
(Will) Um, well and then you know Katrina obviously been one of the worst of the worst, but hurricane season something we deal with annually. I know MDOT work is kind of in the middle of our hurricane prep campaign right now. Getting the word out. What does that kind of look like for you right now as far as transit is concerned?
(Kevin) Well unfortunately, we have a lot of experience. We don't do tabletop exercises because of, you know, however you want to look at it, probably fortunately, we have a lot of these little low-level events like tropical storms, so we're constantly testing our system, and what we do. And we're actually ESF1 emergency support function one at the Harrison County Emergency Management agency. We have a seat in the Emergency Operations Center, and when they activate it, and we're there managing all ground transportation needs for Harrison County, we're committed to providing evacuation Transportation when the EMA calls for evacuation. And there's five big shelters that are self-contained shelters that they use. People can stay long term as they need to, so we transport to the shelters and then after the event we transport people back. And so, what we learned in Katrina, that was different, we used to be kind of stressed out when there was an evacuation, but in Katrina the community was devastated and people lost their houses, their cars, their jobs, and so we devised a bunch of different new routes specific for those people. You know they were living in schools and whatnot to connect them to recovery efforts, you know, they got to go get FEMA and MEMA and the government, and you know get back on their feet. So that is an unknown that you can't really plan for because every storm is different, so you don't know what it's going to do to the community. but we learned that, and now when we do these evacuations, which is usually you bring them to a shelter one day and bring them home the next day, that's not a big deal.
(Will) Right.
(Kevin) But it could be a lot worse. And we learned a lot of things from Katrina. The most important thing I learned personally was to communicate to the community what we're doing, and what we can do, and be more helpful. And we weren't in the Emergency Management Agency Group prior to Katrina, but we are now and that's another good thing that came out of it. They saw what we did, and they realized how important it is. And so, you know as a community we learn from these things.
(Will) I bet so.
(Paul) Absolutely. So, we have a subject matter expert here, and you know, one of our main messages, or our main message during, you know, hurricane season is you know have a plan. Know your way out. So, we have a subject matter expert here, can you kind of tell everybody the importance of having a plan and knowing your way out?
(Kevin) Yeah, absolutely. We tell people to have a plan, and we tell them where the resources are to develop that. And, we're here to help get people out of harm's way as a last resort. We encourage people to leave, and that's where the MDOT highway system comes in place. So, our message is not, you know, we're going to take care of you, it's okay to stay here. If they tell you to leave, you need to leave and have a plan. There's a lot, you know, MDOT has resources and there's a ton of resources out there. What to do, what to take, and you know, just get in your car and leave. But if you're going to stay, we don't want you to stay. If you're going to stay, we're going to bring you to a shelter. What people need to understand is, especially in a devastating event like Hurricane Katrina, it's really a strain on the system to take care of people in that kind of catastrophic event, where you literally lost everything and now, you're dependent on the government and we're now responsible for taking care of you.
(Will) That's true.
(Kevin) And you know, our ability to do that depends on the event and then it's up to local people. They don't understand how these emergency management agencies work. They think the Federal government's going to come swooping in and take care of everything, and it doesn't work that way. It's local Harrison County and MDOT and MEMA and we need to be prepared to take care of ourselves for a week basically, sustain life, and we are. We have that experience. We don't want people to have the perception that's like ‘I'm just going to stay here and if there's another cat five Katrina, FEMA is going to come swooping in’ and after a CAT5 event FEMA sends one guy originally to the Emergency Management agency and he's point of contact for what the county needs. It's not like the federal government's coming in here, building you a new house.
(Will) That's right.
(Kevin) It's just tough on local governments to respond.
(Will) Well even the notion, or I guess, the possibility that I could be totally dependent upon the government to save me in a situation like that, because it could be such that you just said storm comes in that it may wipe out everything. Just kind of knowing that I want to have some type of plan in place. Folks depend on you to make those decisions in situations of crisis like that, and getting that plan together is not necessarily just for you but even folks your dependents that are counting on you to get them out, too. So, by all means spend some time and think about what happens when the storms come in, and put a little plan together, sit down with the folks in the family, and get that all out. I mean I can even remember doing fire emergencies at school. Fire happening, you knew where to go, or situations. Why not in your own personal life at home.
(Kevin) So the problem with people locally, like myself, we've been through so much of this, and depending on the severity, how concerned you get, if it's a one or two or three, that don't get your attention, but three and up it gets your attention. You never really know where they're going to go. They're getting really good, the weather services, predicting landfall within two days, so it's much better than it used to be. But we have a lot of people that kind of get caught up in it. They misjudge it. It's like ‘I don't want to leave,’ and then oh well, cat5's coming tomorrow and they can't get on the highway because everybody waited to the last minute. Y'all know that. And it's happened in Florida, in a lot of places, and you just got to have your plan like we're talking about, and your resources, and make every decision ahead of time. In this situation I'm going to leave, I can tell you personally I've already talked to my wife. I'm going to retire in two years, and we're leaving.
(Will) Gonna hit the Coast?
(Kevin) We're leaving. I'm not, I mean I got insurance on my house, I have family. I'm going to get my wife and my dog, and we're leaving. I'm not going through that.
(Will) Go explore and see what else, yeah.
(Kevin) I mean cat five when I don't have to, no.
(Will) That's right. Well, hey, you've been here through all of them. It's very similar to this, kind of just a funny point on that, one of my best friends in the world he said, ‘I've been riding dirt bikes for 10 years, but I never had an accident until I wasn't scared of it anymore.’ He was not afraid, and it was no big deal, he only broke his leg. I'm sure it's a little bit of a similar situation.
(Kevin) That’s right.
(Paul) Yeah, well don't just take it from MDOT, take it from Kevin at the Coast Transit Authority. Have a plan and get out when you need to get out.
(Kevin) That's right.
(Will) So wrapping up a last couple of things here, you got future goals, challenges you guys are facing or dealing with? It really may not be anything as far as challenges, I'm sure there are future goals that you guys want to incorporate or expand upon.
(Kevin) Well, things are really changing in the transit arena in terms of the type of services we're providing. Some of the stuff we've done historically, like fixed route, is not what we need to be doing. People are looking at multiple forms of transportation and so we're like every other transit system, what type of service do we need to provide to continue to be relevant? Meaning people are using it right, so we're analyzing what type of service we need to be providing for the next 15/20 years and looking at modernizing and bringing in some technologies. And of course, that's always challenging, and that's probably our biggest challenge is getting it right when we make our next 15/20-year plan. Getting that right, especially if you're going to invest money in it.
(Will) Sure. I guess a small side question on there. Have you guys looked at any, or is that a conversation even happening, autonomous and EV type vehicles for transit?
(Kevin) We are. We're operating the first pure battery electric vehicle in the state and public transit in the state of Mississippi.
(Paul) Oh yeah.
(Kevin) We're running a lot of propane, so long-term our small buses and medium-sized buses we're going to run propane. We're phasing out all diesel engines now and going to gas propane. We're looking at EV vehicles for bigger buses. They're very expensive.
(Will) I'm sure.
(Kevin) And they're reliable. They're not experimental anymore, but they're very expensive to buy up front. You save a lot of money operating, but there's a lot of range issues now and we're actually looking at some hydrogen.
(Will) Oh wow, really?
(Kevin) We may have a hydrogen fuel cell project. We're talking to a company about possibly doing hydrogen, so we're kind of taking a wait and see attitude towards evolution and the heavy-duty EV vehicle; whether it's going to be pure battery or hydrogen and see. And so, we're doing a pure battery electric now, and looking at some hybrids, so some hydrogen hybrid which is hybrid. So, we're pretty much on the cutting edge of technology, looking at things here.
(Will) I've mentioned before on the podcast, I think we've seen some of these autonomous, but I've never ridden in one. I don't, I don't know how comfortable I feel just yet, and I mean, I know the technology is getting there and there are e-lines on top of them, but it still makes me nervous.
(Paul) There you go. Will you want to take us home?
(Will) Yeah, that's right, let's do it. We love to get out and see the town, see the Mississippi, and go check out places. We had a great meal today at Shaggy's local establishment over here. Paul got a cheeseburger; see I'll give them grief. But we want to know, is there, do you have a favorite? And I know it may be easier said than, or thought than said, to identify a favorite around here locally. But maybe even not right around here, is there a hole in the wall, somewhere in the state that you don't get to go by very often, you got a favorite food spot?
(Kevin) Well there's a little bed and breakfast right over here that's really good, locally owned, that we go to. And a lot of good food here. A lot of different restaurants. Don't really have a favorite restaurant. We got, call it the circuit, that's -
(Will) True
(Kevin) - but a lot of locally owned places people that do it really well. Like Salutes is one of the favorite places we go to. That's not a hole in the wall, but it seemed like Italian themed, but they have a very diverse menu and very good food. But I mean I could go on and on. This is a food place and that -
(Will) That's right.
(Kevin) - this is a, you know, it's not just Seafood. It's good food.
(Will) When I think about seafood, I just honestly, that's the coast as a whole to me. It's either the actual seafood, or just, I look at food down here and want to eat. Because to me, you can get on a balcony, and it doesn't really matter which dish you're eating or being served when I'm overlooking the ocean and the waves and the beach out there it's a great meal.
(Kevin) So if you come to Gulfport, and you eat lunch, and you eat a cheeseburger that's not good.
(Will) It's okay we're gonna make him drive home.
(Paul) Never again, never again.
(Kevin) You really, you're missing out.
(Will) His punishment is he has to drive home.
(Paul) All right.
(Will) What if we ask here, so let's see, if you must, if you guys are in a hurry you got to hit a fast-food spot what's your go-to fast food?
(Kevin) Uh, Popeye's Fried Chicken.
(Will) There you go.
(Paul) Oh yeah. We can agree on that.
(Will) Can't beat it. We talked about eating Popeyes on the way today actually. And then, last fun one for you. We talked a little bit about some music, and growing up, and different things to listen to. If you had to pick maybe desert island or remote island, you're gonna be on it, you had to pick one, who's your?
(Kevin) I'll listen to a lot of different genres. Like we talked about, I grew up on heavy metal and still listen to that. I would say my all-time favorite band was probably Led Zeppelin.
(Will) That's awesome.
(Paul) I love Led Zeppelin.
(Will) Mikey flood in our division would love these answers very much.
(Kevin) Can't go wrong with Led Zeppelin.
(Will) He is a rocker. Mikey would love that. That's awesome man. For sure. Well, Paul?
(Paul) That’s some good stuff. Yeah, let’s wrap things up. Kevin, thank you so much for hosting us. And so, we usually do kind of a standard outro. I'll include our hurricane evacuation information, so visit gomdot.com forward slash hurricanes. You can download a hurricane evacuation guide. It's been updated for 2023. You can also check out a hurricane evacuation checklist for everything you need to have before you get out of town. So, we'll just wrap things up there. Thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in to the Extra Mile Podcast, you can watch and listen to episodes by visiting goMDOT.com/theextramile. Thank you to our editor Drew Hall. Katey Hornsby has left the building. Thank you Drew Hall, and remember to follow us on social media. Facebook and Twitter is @MississippiDOT is the handle, and remember to drive smart out there on Mississippi highways.