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The fourth episode of "The Extra Mile" Podcast introduces MDOT's new Northern District Public Information Officer, David Kenney. The show also features a conversation with MDOT Director of Intermodal Planning Charles Carr and the role his office plays in the state's transportation network.
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.
MDOT presents “The Extra Mile” with Paul and Waverly.
Welcome in to another episode of the Extra Mile podcast presented by the Mississippi Department of Transportation. I’m your host Paul Katool joined by my cohost Waverly McCarthy. The weather’s great out there, guys. Everybody’s getting out and about hitting up college football games, right? Yeah, they’re all getting out on the road and enjoying the nice weather. Everyone’s going somewhere getting in their vehicles on our wonderful roads and bridges in Mississippi.
However did you know that MDOT is way more than roads and bridges? What do we have? We’ve got planes, trains, buses. There’s lots of things that MDOT’s involved in that you wouldn’t necessarily think about. We learned all about that today in our interview. We talked with Charles Carr who is the Director of the Intermodal Planning Division here at MDOT. Waverly, I think this is really one of our best interviews we’ve ever done. Charles gave us a lot of great information on the Intermodal Division and we’re excited for you guys to listen in. Yeah, absolutely we learned a lot about what MDOT does outside of our roads and bridges and think y ’all are really going to enjoy it.
Along with Charles Carr, we actually are introducing you to our newest Public Information Officer David Kenney. David has spent over 20 years in the Jackson area in the media. We actually worked together at my last job and now we’re back together here at MDOT. He’s gonna be the PIO for the northern districts and so we just wanted to introduce y’all to him first.
Alright, so we’ve got David Kenney here. He is the newest member of the MDOT Public Affairs team. He covers the Northern District for us. Before then though he worked, I’m sure a lot of people know the name, worked in the news at WLBT. David spent a lot of time there. How many years? I was at WLBT for over 24 years. So talk about your time at WLBT. Yeah, well I came here fairly a green reporter. I worked in Mason City, Iowa right out of college for a couple years and then got the job down here in the south. So, yes. I’m a Yankee. I’m from Minneapolis, MN originally. But it was a great experience. I learned a lot. I learned a lot about the state I had never been to or even traveled to or even visited to. It was a great learning process. Learned about the state, state government and everything that goes on here in Mississippi. Met a lot of fantastic people, formed some great relationships, friendships and it was a great time working as a reporter.
And so now you have made this transition from journalism to public relations. How do you think that is going to help you communicate the key things that we need to get out to the public here at MDOT? Right. As a reporter that was my job and that was my craft to be able to take information, disseminate it and then provide it to the public in a way that they could understand it. There was always this rule in journalism when you do a story that it has to be for something an eighth grader or someone eight years old could understand. So everything is simplified and understandable, clear, concise and to the point. That is what I had done as a reporter and it’s really prepared me I guess for this job because providing the public with the information about the projects that MDOT is doing is pretty much the same thing. You want people to understand what’s going on. This is taxpayer’s monies being spent around the state on projects to provide safe transportation for the people. So you want them to know exactly what’s going on and how it’s being done.
So you’ve been here for a few weeks. Like what have you learned about MDOT that you weren’t expecting? Well, I kind of had an idea of what to expect and a lot of those things have turned out to be true. There’s an immense amount of things going on in all different places which is kind of overwhelming to try to wrap your head around that. I’m in charge of providing people with information from the Northern District and there’s a lot going on there. I was able to visit there for the first time and see exactly what is transpiring on some of these road projects. We’re getting some of that information out now. But I guess to answer your question I didn’t know there were so many moving parts and different levels to MDOT. I think I’m learning that there’s a lot of different levels and different areas in the department of transportation that everyone serves a certain purpose in making everything come together and making these huge multimillion dollar road projects come together. And it’s interesting to see how all these different parts work together to make things happen.
As someone who covered MDOT and now is working for MDOT pretty sure you have a good idea of this. Why is transportation infrastructure so important to Mississippians? Well in my mind it impacts everyone whether you’re from Mississippi or even if you’re visiting Mississippi. It’s extremely important for people visiting Mississippi because I think that leads to economic development. If you don’t have a good infrastructure and a good road map for the future you’re not going to be able to turn the corner and get new businesses here, new industry so transportation is key. And it’s key to keep people, you know in the state also. If you don’t have a good transportation system it makes it difficult for people to have a good quality of life. If they don’t have that they’re gonna go live elsewhere.
And so when you were at WLBT there were lots of statewide stories but mainly you covered Central MS. Are you excited to get to another part of the state? You’ve lived here for 25 years but now you’re covering a new part. It’s kind of interesting. That is exciting and that’s one thing I’m looking forward to you know the northern district. I’ve been all over the state of Mississippi. I’ve been to the Gulf Coast but that is one area and part of the state that I have never been to. Tupelo area which is in district one and Corinth I’ve never been to that part of the state. And as a reporter that was one of the things that I liked and looked forward to is seeing different areas, meeting different people, learning about different things here in the state of Mississippi and now I’ll be able to continue to do that. Absolutely and we’re real excited to have you on board. If anyone has any questions for David about the northern district you can always reach out to him. You can get his information on our website and we’ll put it in the show notes as well. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, David.
Welcome back in to The Extra Mile podcast. You know before I got to MDOT I really did think MDOT was just roads and bridges. That’s not the case. Today we’ve got a very special guest a member of our leadership team here at MDOT Charles Carr the Director of Intermodal Planning. Yeah, and we’re gonna talk all about the Intermodal division and what all that’s involved but first we wanted to get to know you a little better and tell us about how you got your start here at MDOT. Well I’m fortunate enough that I predate MDOT and I’ll have to explain that because it sounds kind of strange. Remember MDOT was for a number of years the highway department. We became, my staff and I became a part of MDOT when MDOT was created in 1996. So that all of the modes that we have now were brought into the highway department. So I’ve been with the Mississippi Department of Transportation since 1996.
And so you are the Director of the Intermodal Planning Division. And so can you explain a little bit about what intermodals role is here at MDOT and what all is involved and falls under that umbrella? Okay. I think what would help if we kind of define two terms that often times get confused or interchangeably used and they’re not necessarily the same. Intermodal and multimodal. And that’s something that people often times just don’t differentiate between. The Office of Intermodal Planning was designed to do the kind of planning and management of the non-highway side of the DOT functions. And in the Office of Intermodal Planning we have the Public Transit Division, the Aeronautics Division, we also have Ports and Waterways Division and now we’re bringing back the Rails Division. So those non highway modes are what make up our Office of Intermodal Planning. My responsibilities are to oversee those but to primarily do the kind of coordination and the leadership so that we can develop cohesive plans for intermodal components or intermodal modes that will support the mission of the department overall.
Charles, so there’s a lot of different things that go into your division but a lot of it has to do with funding, correct? Well, yes. Funding is a direct function of the responsibilities that we have okay? My office has as I said those various modes that we cover so we’ve got those divisions that I just named and what we have to look at is intermodal is about connectivity. Multimodal is about various modes. So when we’re speaking of intermodal, we’re talking about how do we manage, support and contribute to the movement of goods and people with various modes usually in one trip. So multimodal is we would have a number of different modes at any given time that may impact a transportation trip or impact the transportation experience itself. But that I think is probably the cleanest way to give the layman’s explanation. Now your question about funding. We are
pretty much a federally funded office. We have a limited amount of state dollars but most of our dollars that we use for the various modes come from various federal grant programs that we have to administer.
And so you talked about all of the different areas of your department. Why are those important to create a safe and efficient transportation network? Well I would say it’s essential to understand that the network when we look at the transportation network that MDOT supports, plans, develops and supports we have to have those individual components because the highway side of the transportation network is not the only side it is the central piece to moving people and goods throughout our state and connectivity throughout the region and into the nation.
But you also have those necessary components that feed into using the highway, constructing the highway and then we have an important role to play because we can help remove traffic, wear and tear or minimize wear and tear on the old highway system. So when you look at airports and you look at rail, you look at even public transit each one has its own individual emphasis and primary let’s say service that they provide to a constitute group but it all plays together. And we are going to look at our network as a network of connectivity where we connect people with the services and the destinations that they need. We have to use various modes to get that done efficiently and safely.
So besides getting people where they need to be safely and efficiently a big thing with transportation infrastructure is the economic growth and development element. How does your department help with that? How do some of the modes help with economic growth and development in the state? Well it varies. Each one of our modes has a unique role that it can play. When we look at that we try to project the economic impact. When we look at how we pass along funds to entities be it a city, county or nonprofit. One of the primary elements that we look at is what is the economic impact of our investment of funds into that entity that we can see a return on that investment?
So I’ll give you an illustration. The airports in the state most people don’t recognize that we have over 20,000 airport jobs that are supported by the aeronautics industry. And our investment in helping to modernize those airports by equipment infrastructure development it plays into generating over five billion dollars’ worth of economic impact just from the aeronautics field. So it’s an integral part of our overall economy. That’s definitely not something you think about, you know the average person would think when they think MDOT. Well of course most folks really across the country departments of transportation evolved from highway departments per say and highway departments have a long history and have done quite a job, a banner job in creating that network of roads and bridges are the backbone of how we move people. But we had to move into elements that could be better or more efficiently utilized to take advantage of that basic infrastructure.
Let’s talk a little bit about public transit. Public transit, you know helps people to get really everywhere you know from the grocery store to pick up prescriptions, lots of different places. Why is public transit so important? Why is it so important to have such a strong public transit network across the state of Mississippi? Well let’s look at from the perspective well we can even go global but I’ll come back to Mississippi. Bear with me just a minute. Sure. The national perspective and indeed the international perspective is we have to worry about climate change. And public transportation is a significant element in helping to reduce our carbon footprint. Public transportation often times gets confused with a service that is either the Chicago rail line or the local bus or van system in Shubuta, MS.
People don’t wrap their minds around it is not one size that will fit all. Here in Jackson we have a public transportation system the JATRAN system. And by the way DOT does not directly fund them. We provide some support for capital improvement. But getting back to my original point, we’re looking at how that public transportation service can impact the wellbeing of the community. It’s about quality of life. So whether we’re going to as you mentioned prescription pickups or whether we’re going to school, we’re going to the doctor’s office one of the things that folks don’t normally consider is that public transportation is used primarily for folks to get to jobs in most of the country. And our public transportation network here in Mississippi is growing in that direction.
As a matter of fact our numbers show, most recent numbers show that we provide over three million passenger trips for education related purposes annually. And that means that you’ve got folks being prepared to go out into the community getting the education to become contributing members of society. But we also are working with major employers like FedEx and some of the other major logistics companies. So that we can get employees from using the delta is something that comes to mind. Employees who are in areas where are economically depressed now have access on a daily basis safely and economically to where those really good paying jobs are. So that’s something we’re really building and working on now and we’ve got a lot of folks behind us. We’re trying to work to develop that kind of network.
We think about the national and regional perspective. People often tell me well when I was in Atlanta we did this or when I was in New York we did that. But we have to microcosm. We are not those cities. We don’t have massive rail systems. We can’t support that right now but we still have people who need to get to work, people who need to get to the doctor’s offices. We’re building that network of systems across the state.
Can you speak a little what MDOT’s exact role is in public transit? Our role is essentially two-fold in public transit. We are the primary funding source for rural transportation services in the state and often times some folks get taken aback when we say rural but this is a federal classification. Any area of 50,000 population or less is considered rural by the federal definition so when we say Hattiesburg qualifies it’s right on the cuff now but I’ll use Meridian as a better example or Natchez. They don’t consider themselves rural but by that population number that you use to award grants they are. But it is one of those things that we have to consider when we put money into those regions we go after every available federal grant opportunity we can. So that is to provide monies for vehicles, buses, vans and some rare cases cedent (?) the money to pay the drivers, purchase the fuel. We’ve even built transit facilities in Natchez, the Mississippi Choctaw Indians up in Coahoma County, in Clarksdale so that we can create a transit network in that region that can be self-sustaining.
Our other role on public transportation is with all federal money comes federal requirements. And we have a litany of requirements that we have to make sure Safety by America, DBE (Disadvantage Business Enterprise) programs. It’s a whole list of things that we have to monitor them for and provide technical assistance. So we’re not going out to audit you to say “Gotcha.” We’re helping them to develop programs that are economically sound and safe and effective. And we’ve got a whole array of monitoring tools that we use and plus technical assistance that we provide.
And real quick can you talk about MDOT’s role helping to coordinate with the vaccination transportation? We are not a provider of vaccine transportation. Sometimes those things get confused to folks as to the way it’s being presented. We support vaccine transportation as a part of the overall transportation, the access to transportation initiative that we have. And we have worked with our transportation providers across the state through a network of regional groups to provide access to individuals within communities so that they by their choice can choose to go and get local vaccinations or even testing. We are continuing to provide that in concert with local public health offices and community health centers and those folks who say we have a need can you help us fill that need. But again we don’t provide it. We help to coordinate it.
Charles, we’ve gotten an overview of your office and gotten into a lot of different things but what’s kind of coming on the horizon? Is there anything in the future that you would like to talk about when it comes to your office and its different functions? One of the major emphasis areas that we’re going to be moving towards as I indicated we do have rails and ports and airports and transit of course.
Logistics not only connectivity as it relates to people but goods and services from a global to a regional perspective is really important so we’re moving to become more involved in how we can plan more for the changes in the global supply chain. The logistics process that has such an impact not just on Mississippi but the world. And if I can digress a moment in the local news you have no doubt heard about all the major issues that are arising out of what the experts say is supply chain is broken. The months and dollars that are involved in not being able to move product from point A to point B so that consumers like you and I can get what we need and want and that’s important. A lot of this impacts not just what we would like to have for Christmas but these are needs that we have because our economies are so intertwined on a global nature now from a global perspective that we’re gonna have to be a part of that in helping to plan for solutions not being reactionary but being proactive in how we can be a part of making things work.
So, Charles we just want to thank you for joining us today. We learned a lot about the intermodal division and the process you go through and we really thank you for joining us. My pleasure. Thank you so much.
I just want to thank everyone for joining us today. It was a treat to get to hear David talk about his transistion from the media to Public Affairs and then talking to Charles. I learned things that I didn’t know even working here so I know it was really insightful for all of our listeners and we hope you enjoyed it. Remember to follow us on social media @Mississippi DOT on Facebook and Twitter. No doubt and before we get out of here we we would be remiss if we didn’t thank our awesome producer Katey Hornsby and our wonderful editor Drew Hall. He works a lot of magic for us here. Absolutely. And as always, remember to drive smart out there on Mississippi highways.