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(bright music) - Hi, I'm Michelle Price.

Welcome to WCTE's public affairs show, "Interact."

Today, we're talking about transportation and all the needs for transportation around the Upper Cumberland.

Joining me today are Dr. Chuck Womack, board member for the The Nashville and Eastern Railroad Authority, Holly Montooth, who is the director of public transportation for the Upper Cumberland Human Resource Agency, John Bell, director of the CRMC Foundation and Dean Selby, who is the Upper Cumberland Regional Airport manager.

So, Dean, can you tell us a little bit about the airport?

- Back in the nineties, the cities of Cookeville, Sparta, Putnam County, and White County all came together and invested in one airport and a regional airport rather than having individual airports and by doing so, they have created a truly unique venture between the four governmental entities that has allowed us to do some things that each of those entities couldn't have done on its own and we're proud of it.

It has grown tremendously and traffic is growing and has been on a consistent increase since they created that merger.

- Do you have a lot of transportation in and out of the airport?

- Well, obviously a lot of private.

That's what people seem to associate a smaller airport with, just private, but we do a lot of freight operations, a lot of charter operations and private charter operations, where people will rent an aircraft from one of the charter operators, such as NetJets, Hop-A-Jet, Nicholas Air, those kind of people, JetRight, the list goes on and on, that they will come in, pick 'em up, they'll pay for one flight to wherever they're going and they can do that on an individual basis.

- Speaking about medical transport, John, you have a lot of experience with people needing help with transportation related to medical.

- Yeah, sure.

It's a very common need.

Very frequently we work with many transportation providers.

One of our strongest is here with us today, the UCHRA.

So as patients are trying to access that care, that is one of the primary barriers to folks particularly participating in preventative healthcare measure.

So we try to knock those down as best we can within all the rules and regulations that exist on that just to allow folks to take advantage of the care that's there and waiting on them that they just can't physically get to to access.

- What about when people who have been in the hospital are discharged, do they have a problem getting home?

- Yeah and you know, know that is a major slowdown in the discharge process and then the opening of beds for new patients is just having folks come in a timely way in picking up their loved one and taking them home or wherever it is that they happen to be going.

So when they don't have the support network available to them or the family or the friends available to them to pick them up, then oftentimes the hospital staff will contact the foundation to help a patient that doesn't have reliable transportation to get back home.

- So, Holly, tell us a little bit about how you partner with the hospital and with just agencies in general to go about transportation.

- Sure.

Of course, at UCHRA, we are the public transportation provider for the 14 county area of the Upper Cumberland.

So that means, and I always like to say, just because, you know, sometimes we get in our rural counties and we feel like we don't have these options, but the big buses that you see in Nashville, in Chattanooga, in Knoxville, you have that option here and it's with UCHRA public transportation.

Just over last year, we performed over 260,000 trips and drove right at 2.8 million miles.

- Oh, wow.

- Wow.

- Yeah, it is, it's a lot.

It's a big operation.

We have right now 135 drivers spread across our 14 areas.

We go to Nashville three times a day and I was listening to Dean talk about the busy airports as far as the folks leaving the Upper Cumberland going to Nashville, that is one of our stops and lots of times people will come to our office, leave their vehicle there and catch one of the buses going to Nashville.

It's our Connect Service, so you can ride from Cookeville to Nashville and get dropped off at the front door at the airport for $9.

So that's my shameless plug for the day.

- That's a lot cheaper than parking at the airport.

- Yes, ma'am.

- Yes.

- Yes, ma'am.

So that's just a service that we're very happy to be able to provide.

And to John's point, we are the public transportation provider, so anytime that John would reach out and say, "we have a patient that needs to be discharged immediately," you know, our buses are, they're coming and going all the time.

You know, just because they're in Fentress County doesn't mean that we don't have one or two sitting in Cookeville right now.

So if there's any way for us to be able to, and for lack of a better term, hitchhike that person right back home, we're sure gonna try to do it.

- You've also actually have a regularly scheduled bus service in our three micropolitan areas of McMinnville, Crossville, and Cookeville, don't you?

- Yes, ma'am, and that's something that really sets our agency apart and our public transportation system apart from the other rural agencies, we are one of the only ones that do offer a deviated fixed route.

So it's just like the city route, again, like you'd see in Nashville, those big purple buses, that runs continuously on a loop.

Now, the difference between ours is that we can deviate three quarters of a mile off of that and that's so that we can be sure that we are ADA accessible and that we're providing a service that everyone can utilize.

- People in Upper Cumberland are often asking about rail.

Why we can't have, you know, train service back and forth between here in Nashville?

Is that something that's really feasible, Dr. Womack?

- Well, not at the moment.

The Nashville and Eastern Railroad Authority began in 1986, when the L and N railroad abandoned the route.

The four counties, Davidson, Wilson, Smith, and Putnam got together and formed a railroad authority, the Nashville and Eastern Railroad Authority, and took over the ownership of the railroad.

We have an operator now, RJ Corman, that operates the railroad.

We have commuter rail from Lebanon into Nashville, and it's very active.

Three trains go in every business day and three trains come out in the evening.

So that's been a good thing.

That's been going on since 2006.

We have freight operations all the way up here.

However, the track from Carthage to Cookeville has aged and deteriorated a little bit and so the speed limit is a lot lower.

We need major funding to upgrade the railroad bridge across the Caney Fork, which was built in 1893.

- 1893?

- 1893.

And replace a lot of the ties that are from the Caney Fork all the way into Cookeville.

We've got a new segment of railroad that was built and 15 years ago from Algood all the way up to Monterey to haul sand down to Nashville.

There's things to be done to upgrade it where there could be a high speed railroad or relatively high speed railroad.

Right now, the speed limit's about 20 miles an hour between the Caney Fork and into Cookeville.

- What about the Rails-to-Trails program?

- Well, that has been relatively successful.

We've gotten infusions of money and we've built 4.3 miles between the depot and downtown Cookeville and Algood.

We're trying to expand to the east and we're trying to expand to the west and the trail authority is viable and going, and we lease the rail trail from the railroad authority, so I'm on both boards, and that's worked out fairly well and we're hopeful of expanding the rail trail from the depot.

- So we could actually have our own version of the Virginia Creeper Trail.

- Yes, we could.

That was the model back in 2006 that started this all.

People that used the Virginia Creeper and were enthusiastic here and that's what started this whole process.

It's a big economic impact and we're hoping to have the same economic impact for Monterey and ride down the mountain on a trail all the way to stop at Algood or Cookeville, or go into Baxter or go into Buffalo Valley, hopefully sometime in the future.

- Dean, don't you serve as the technical chairman for the RPO?

So this fits in with their multimodal ideas, doesn't it?

- It kind of does and I think going back to this whole process, what we've been talking about is it's not one thing.

It takes all of it to make it work.

I mean, we have unique needs at the hospital versus public transportation versus railroad for sure is an up and coming thing, as we've seen world, you know, nationwide, that's a big demand for what the possibilities of rail hold, and now trails too.

People are biking and walking more and we've talked several times about, you know, there's several grant opportunities out there now for some of the trail areas to develop some of these walking and bicycling trails.

All of these areas have got roads going to 'em, yet people who are going to the natural areas a lot of times want to bike and walk, and we don't have lanes for them to be able to do that.

And I think that's one of our greatest, I know I'm veering off of aviation here, but that's one of the things that this area is lacking.

- There's so much traffic on the highways now that we're having to look at, you know, alternatives like expanding roads and everything.

And I know the road on South Jefferson in Cookeville from the Interstate to 111 is in the process of being expanded, but hasn't that taken a long time?

- There are so many areas of opportunities, not just in Putnam County, but in Warren County and in Cumberland County that are dealing with some massive areas of congestion that we need to be looking at.

And yes, it takes so long to do, to go through all the environmental reviews and all of the steps that you have to take to meet the requirements for all of the grants for this money.

And it kinda seems like we're one step behind a lot of times, and I'm afraid we're gonna get behind the curve if we don't step on the accelerator on some of these projects.

- Speaking of downtown Cookeville, Dr. Womack has been on the Cookeville City Council for the last eight years and has really put a lot of effort into it.

Can you tell us what the city has done to try to alleve some of these transportation issues?

- Well, we're planning a lot of projects.

We're building sidewalks along Highway 70 out by Avery's Trace.

We're talking, you know, we've started that in the previous City Council that I was on.

I've been on four City Councils, and I've found that it takes about eight or 10 years to get a project going and finish it.

We're talking about now doing 10th Street from 111, all the way to Fisk Road.

So that's in the works.

We're getting ready to start to go from Jackson Street to Jefferson on Stevens.

That's the first phase of the project and then, these projects go in phases a segment at a time just like on 10th Street, on Stevens Street, try to relieve some of the congestion that's developing because so many people are moving to the area and providing sales tax revenue and congestion.

- But that's another place where you come in handy with the public transportation.

- And I think that was a lot of the reason why we were focused on trying to upgrade our Go Service, which is that loop around.

And Dr. Womack might be able to speak to the fact that Cookeville and the city is really looking at some potential changes, big changes if we go small urban.

- Yeah, if we go metropolitan, - Metropolitan.

- We will get additional federal monies to do transportation projects, which is a good thing for the people of Cookeville.

- Right.

- So we've been told that that's going to happen for the last year or so and we're waiting momentarily for that to happen.

We hope it will in the next few months.

- And we are in such a good position because those things that would have had to have happened once they received that designation, we already have in place.

So we're already ahead of the curve.

It's just up to us to number one, really increase the exposure and the opportunity for people to use the service.

A lot of people don't even realize it's there.

They see our buses go around, but it's always been sort of a situation to where they think that their pigeonholed into a certain demographic when that's not true.

This is public transportation.

It's not just for one person or another, it's for everyone.

So it's just really being sure that we spread that message and that everyone knows that that service is there.

That way, it's just a matter of getting those folks on the bus, providing the parking lots.

Here you go, hop on.

- And the app will let people be able to see the routes and see exactly where everybody is.

- [Holly] Yes, ma'am.

- How do they find that app?

- Well, we are right now in the developmental stages and we are hoping to be able to push that out by October.

- Oh, that's great.

- Fingers crossed, yes ma'am.

So we're excited about that.

- As far as the roads, is there anything that we can do on those, Dean?

- There's a difference between the city roads and county roads, state roads, federal roads, obviously that's, it gets complicated, but yes, I do think there is.

I think we need to concentrate, I think you can kind of vouch for this as one of the things we've talked about is Jefferson Avenue needs to be something done with, and that's one of the things we've talked about a few times in RPO is how can we continue that progress once we get to that first section done and continue on in.

But we don't wanna leave out the issues that Livingston is having and that Sparta is having in some areas with some deteriorating infrastructure and stuff.

So we don't want to, I think we gotta be careful about focusing on one at the detriment of everyone else.

So I think we've still got to consider this, and I know that UCHRA does a really good job of looking at all of the holistic approach of how we make the whole area grow, but I think the RPO needs to do that too.

We need to look at that from a, we gotta consider the whole area, and I think they we've done a good job of that in the past.

I think we'll continue that, too, to look at everybody's needs.

- I don't think people realize that the city of Cookeville and the state of Tennessee, both entities are zero transportation debt or pay-as-you-go communities.

Is that part of what takes so long to get these transportation projects done?

- Well, there is some bond issues that are done for about half of what we do as transportation projects.

Most of it is pay-as-you-go, as you were saying, the state of Tennessee, but there is some that we could potentially do.

But it takes a while to amass the money.

We're getting it primarily from property taxes and it takes a while to amass the amount of money to build a project.

- Sidewalks, you know.

Pedestrian transportation's important too.

And I know with Cookeville had gotten a grant to do some sidewalks, and there were some delays on that.

Can you tell us a little bit?

- Environmental delays and designing it.

And we had a grant that paid 95%.

We put up 5% of a million dollars, 50,000 of a million dollars.

The state put up 950,000 and we thought we could build a sidewalk system for that.

However, with the delays in designing and going through the studies, it elevated the cost to over a million and a half for the sidewalks out by Avery's Trace and so we've had to go back and get another grant, and it's just delayed things.

The delays caused the inflation and escalation of expenses to build these projects and make them somewhat slow.

- John, do you see a lot of people actually using the sidewalks and walking to doctor's appointments?

- Yeah, particularly around the medical campus surrounding the Cookeville Regional Medical Center.

There's a decent sidewalk network that exists there and the change to Cedar over the last year has been tremendously beneficial.

It's just a little more organized than it used to be, but yeah, there's a lot of foot traffic in and around the hospital, particularly between the west side and Tennessee Tech and the medical campus in between.

There's still some back roads.

Once you get off Cedar and start moving towards Willow that aren't the safest 'cause they don't have good sidewalk infrastructure on them, but we've seen some great improvement in the last year and we hope that continues.

- Years ago, there was talk of a northern loop and then even a southern loop that would connect here, close to the airport.

Is that something that still could be done?

- Now with the population growth, I think that is probably on the table to be done.

If and when Cookeville gets metropolitan status, I think that'll come in.

- Holly, what do you think would be the most important thing that you could see to improve transportation?

- From my perspective, it would be awareness.

And I'm very glad that you brought up the point, Dean, that sometimes we get focused so heavily on the city of Cookeville, but we are the Upper Cumberland region.

So not only am I focused on making sure that people are aware here in Cookeville, we also need to go to Macon County, to Cannon County, and DeKalb and Smith, and even Warren and Van Buren, you know.

Those folks need to know just as much as anyone that they have transportation options and that if you have an issue and you need to get somewhere, that we are gonna do our very best to get you where you need to go.

- Dean, what other services are available at the airport?

I know you have flight schools here.

You actually, they work on airplanes here.

- That's correct.

Last count we had, we had over 60 students here now flying, learning to fly, active students.

And we're excited about that because as we know, there's a huge pilot shortage right now.

So being able to introduce those people into the workforce is tremendous.

A lot of young people.

I'm seeing a lot more young people involved in aviation and that's kind of refreshing for me and diversity and different demographics.

I mean, it's not just the guy or gal whose parents can afford to pay for it.

It's the one who's out here working to come fly and learn to fly and several grant opportunities and things like that for those to learn to fly.

So I'm excited to see some of the next generation of what's coming up.

I think that's pretty neat to watch happen.

- How many airplanes are based here at this airport?

- Right now we have about 125 regularly-based aircraft here.

And this runway is actually 200 feet longer than the runway at Chicago Midway, but we are the, going back to everything, we are the, I think the seventh longest airport in the state of Tennessee and in the top 10 for jet traffic in the state.

- On average, how many takeoffs and landings do you have a day?

- Right now, we average about 90 operations a day on average.

There are days, I was sharing earlier a couple weeks ago, we had 245 operations in one day.

And then there's days that we won't do 30 or 40 due to weather.

As you can see outside right now, it's kind of, the weather's down, we won't be as busy today.

Back to his, to Dr. Womack's talk about what used to be considered Corridor J but now that's gone away, so now we're looking at other options or whatever, connecting this southern loop all the way back into 111 would be one of the things that would not just help the airport, but help the whole region from an economic standpoint because it would provide access to a bunch of property that we don't have access to that's potential industrial sites.

If you come on past the industrial park, on down around into White County, there's a lot of unused property out in that area that could be better utilized for industrial purposes.

So I continually look at everything.

not just from what I can do to create an airport, but how can I get people here?

I've had discussions with Holly about if we do start this, how are we gonna get people from here back into town?

Now there are times when we could almost run a service down here at certain times of the year.

So we've kind of, we gotta be looking at all of these different options at once and I think that's one thing that we all know, that we all realize, that the general public may not, but it takes all of it together for us to be able, we're constantly talking to each other, I guess is what I'm saying, and how can I do this?

And how can you make this happen?

And if I do this, can you make this happen?

And we're all working together in all of the different departments continuously.

- So Dean, with the possibility of commercial flight here, what changes would you have to make at the airport to make that feasible?

- Well, that's kind of an interesting question and it's a broad, there's a broad spectrum of answers to go along with that.

Obviously, we have to be what the FAA considers Part 139 and what that is under the code of federal regulations, a Part 139 Airport has to provide certain services and that includes fire.

We've been working on that for the last few years.

We can't actually become 139 until we have an agreement in place.

So things like, we're gonna have to work on fencing, we gotta have better fencing, we gotta have some better drainage in some areas, our markings have to be changed slightly.

There's a whole lot of those things that have to come into play such as security.

Where are we gonna put TSA?

How are we gonna funnel these?

We have had these discussions with different agencies, Homeland, TSA, and those people, and we have a plan in place of how we can do this incrementally without it being a huge financial burden if we do it.

And if we do this, if we step into it slowly and work our way into it, I think that makes more financial sense then jumping in head over heels and being, "oh, well, we can't, we took a bigger bite than we can chew."

So that's why we're trying to do this one step at a time and the FAA says five to 10 years to complete this process because of all of the stuff we have to do and all the different manuals we have to have and all the different procedures we have to have in place.

- So possibly by 2030, we could be coming to the Upper Cumberland Regional Airport and catching a flight.

- I think that's a reasonable expectation.

I wouldn't say that that's going to happen, but I really believe after seeing some of the numbers that we have seen come out in the early studies and stuff, I feel better about it today than I felt about it a year ago.

Each time we see something new, it's like that perks my interest a little more.

Commercial aviation is in a state of flux right now.

The commercial airlines are trying to figure out their little niche market and how they're going to work out the labor shortages, the different part shortages and things, so I think we're gonna see that shake out over the next few years.

So hopefully our timing is just right to where it is they figure out how they're gonna service all the markets, we'll be coming out of it being ready to be able to say, "well, we're ready for you."

- So Holly, tell me what else you've got going on that's maybe new and innovative.

- Well to Dean's point talking about the airlines and trying to find their niche and what's gonna work and what's not, public transportation is gonna have to do the same thing.

Before, we've been advanced reservation where you would need to call and schedule your appointment 24 hours in advance and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't.

We've realized that people don't want to wait 24 hours.

If you're ready to go to the grocery store, you don't wanna plan it a week out.

I wanna go to the grocery store, I'm outta milk.

So what we did, we partnered with Uber Technologies and we have devised and actually have an operation currently, an Uber-based model program here within the limits of the city of Cookeville.

So what that means is is you can actually go to your Uber app, you can put in your designation and Pick Up Cookeville will be one of your options.

Now we will be the lowest price, guaranteed, So all you have to do is select that option, and we will pick you up in one of our vehicles.

All of our drivers have went through our full transportation training program.

They have been background checked.

We go through the drug process, the screening process.

So it really is a safe, low-cost option for that true on-demand service.

- Is that something that you're looking at expanding to your other large cities in that program?

- Yes, ma'am.

We're looking to move that into Crossville probably before the end of the year, but, and just to touch on something real quickly, we're all facing supply chain issues.

So we are constantly ordering vehicles.

So until we can kind of get that leveled out and know for sure that we're gonna have the rolling stock to actually be able to operate the program, we're kind of in a holding pattern, but the plan is there.

So we are very excited about that.

But yeah, check it out.

It's Pick Up Cookeville.

- Thank you for joining us today on WCTS's "Interact," where we're talking about commercial transportation, public transportation in the Upper Cumberland region.

Joining me today was Dr. Chuck Womack, Holly Montooth, John Bell and Dean Selby.

We're gonna talking about transportation and please talk about it with your friends and neighbors.

It's an important subject.

Thank you for joining us.

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