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- The failure on the bridge, infrastructure spending, and much more, tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Clay Bright, Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Transportation.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- Along with Bobby White, Chief Public Policy Officer for the Great Memphis Chamber, thanks for being here.

- My pleasure.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

We'll start with the bridge, but there's obviously a lot more to infrastructure than just the bridge, but I think that's still, to some degree, the headline of infrastructure and such, and again, appreciate you coming down from Nashville to be here, Commissioner.

The, since, a couple questions.

Since the bridge has reopened, how does it look?

I know you have some monitors on there, a lot of repairs, there were a lot of inspections.

Are you all comfortable with how the repairs are holding up now that it is reopened?

- Absolutely.

I mean the repairs that were made were substantial, so we're very comfortable with what we have now, but there will an ongoing plan to continue that inspection and the maintenance.

It's an old bridge, so that will continue.

- And so I think most people who follow this know but just to repeat, the bridge, because it connects two states, the inspections have historically been done by Arkansas Department of Transportation, ARDOT, and then maintenance and repairs have been done by Tennessee Department of Transportation.

There was clearly, to some degree or another, a failure on the, in the inspections.

The fracture had been there for many many years, was not found until obviously, what, 120 days ago or something.

Have you all looked at that agreement between Tennessee and Arkansas and said, hey, we may need to get into the inspection business, or more oversight or something, and again, you could throw the I-55 Bridge in there too, do, does Tennessee Department of Transportation need to be more involved?

- So you're right, it's a bi-state agreement between us and Arkansas.

They're responsible for the inspections, we're responsible for repair and maintenance, so we split that cost 50/50.

So, and I don't know if it's ironic or not, but the last, we've got a two-page document that makes up that agreement, it's pretty simple, and it was, the last time it was visited was in 1973.

So we have been doing, between us and Arkansas, we've been going through a new agreement, really started this spring before this happened.

So we're trying to update that agreement, but in light of everything that's gone on, I think it's going to be a different look at that.

The governor expects that from us.

I think we're gon' be looking at how we go about inspecting that bridge, is it internal?

Is it third-party?

That's something that's on my mind, with knowing the status of that bridge as it is now but going forward, and it, fracture critical, you've used that term before, are we going to make inspections more often, and how thorough is that inspection gon' be, the level of it, 'cause I mean we used a lot of ultrasound testing during the inspections back in June to really understand what we have here.

- And would that include revisiting how I-55 bridge is inspected?

- I think they both go hand in hand.

I mean, they're two different type bridges, but from an engineering point of view, I think we need to discuss that, yes.

- Bobby, from a Memphis point of view, I mean the bridge was closed, what 90 days, give or take.

I mean the economic impact was, have you all at the Chamber quantified that, and where do we go from here?

There's talk of a third bridge, I mean, what is your, what have you learned as the Chamber, as the inner advocate for business, of what happened?

- Well I think probably what I've learned is something I knew, but something that we've tried to communicate out, and I think the shutdown of a bridge has really elucidated it another level which is, that's a critical artery in an international supply chain, and the shutdown of the bridge, while it's something that may not have been necessarily on the news, it was definitely felt by everybody from truck drivers to companies to folks who were transporting product to businesses that were not able to get their products in a timely fashion.

So I think that what we have done, our Transportation Committee, which is a part of Greater Memphis Chamber, we actually have commissioned an economic impact study to be done for us to look at what that impact has been.

Of course, generally speaking, we have some numbers that go back to 2015 that talk about what the impact is of if we were to have a shutdown of both bridges, but to get a little bit more nuanced and direct about what the impact was of this shutdown, we have a economic study that we're looking to get done, and University of Memphis is one of the partners we're bringing in on that.

I think the other part for us though is that sometimes seeing the familiarity, that bridge is just something we're so accustomed to, I think what everybody now has attention on is the life of that bridge and what we need to do just to ensure that all of our businesses that depend so heavily on it are supported by us, not just thinking about repairs, but what it looks like for a new bridge across the Mississippi at Memphis.

That's important to us and that's something, that's where my mind is right now.

- All right, let me bring in Bill Dries.

- Commissioner, we talked about this before because Congressman Cohen said in an op-ed that he wrote for us that he's willing to try to find federal support for a third bridge, but that the real call for this has to come from the state, and from your vantage point, it's more specific than just the general concept of a third bridge, isn't it?

- Well, he's right.

It has to originate from us.

It's a grassroots effort.

Part of this committee that you're talking about, these're where projects start.

So, and it's a bi-state deal, it's between us and Arkansas both having that conversation, but it is a corridor that supports the entire nation.

So in some of those conversations, are we thinking about a third bridge or are we thinking about a pure replacement bridge?

'Cause one bridge is 50 years old and one bridge is 70 years old, and then the railroad bridges themselves are over 100 years old, so they're not going to last forever, so in my thinking, I'm thinking more of a replacement bridge, and that's the discussion that goes forward.

Do we need a third bridge for congestion?

I know what we need is, we don't need one bridge because it does impact economic development really across the whole country, and even the barge traffic, I was amazed at how much barge traffic during this episode, from Tuesday to Friday, how much barge traffic was impacted.

It was really starting to impact international trade.

- Right.

- That's when the, and I might go back to you, that's when the, when it first happened, you all, I guess you were part of that decision to say hey, we can't have any boats, barges under it, we don't know what's going on, and it was, what did you say, a week, five days?

And that-- - So from Tuesday to when they opened it up Friday morning, there was almost 1,000 barges that were sitting, either going north or south.

- Yeah, yeah, back to you Bill.

- Right.

Bobby, from the Greater Memphis Chamber's perspective, is this a replacement bridge that we're talking about?

- I think we take the view that, it's kinda like one of those things, if you're not from Memphis you say third bridge, a third bridge sounds like a luxury, right?

[laughs] You don't actually quantify the fact that there's a 50-year-old bridge and a 70-year-old bridge there, so replacement sounds great to us, but it's kinda the thing that we are always thinking about, which is, simply put, this, that whatever we have to do to ensure that we have traffic going across the Mississippi, and to increase capacity, not decrease the capacity, and make sure it's safe of course which is their wheelhouse of course, that's what we're interested in, so the only other thing I will say about it Bill, because you get the politics of it, the reason the Chamber has been so hands-on about it is because this, a bridge is a long-term project, building a new bridge, and it outlasts the administration of any governor, any mayor.

We are 180-plus-year-old organizations, and those businesses that depended on it 15, 20 years ago, forty years ago are still around, so that's the reason that we're in this fight, because we know how huge it is for economic competitiveness, and whoever the governor is or mayor is, we'll still be here supporting a replacement bridge over the Mississippi.

- Commissioner, back to the problems with the Hernando de Soto Bridge, it sounds like what might be evolving here, and the talks about, in the talks between your department and ARDOT is that maybe you both keep an eye on the condition of the bridge, and I'm sure TDOT has been looking at it all along anyway, but in terms of responsibility, could this be more shared inspections?

- It could, yeah, yeah, and I think, I mean our relationship with ARDOT through this whole process has been very collaborative, and that will continue on as we maintain these bridges going forward and having those discussions.

One thing I'll mention on the bridge, a new bridge speculates between, it's a $1.5 billion program.

Our program every year is right at two billion.

We have the IMPROVE Act with a lot of backlog there, so for us and Arkansas, those have been some of the discussions at the White House level and with our congressional delegation as far as, I mean we can only absorb and pay for so much for one particular project in the state of Tennessee, so with what's going on in D.C. right now and whatnot, it's something that can really be put to work in this project.

- You mean in terms of federal funding for-- - Yes, for us and Arkansas to afford a $1.5 billion project, I'm not sure if we can under a pay-as-you-go state that we are right now.

- But this is why we're challenging the system right?

The system of funding projects like a replacement bridge and not just repair.

This bridge isn't Arkansas or Tennessee's bridge, it's the nation's bridge.

It's, it belongs to the international supply chain.

And for us to take it on that everybody benefits but only two states pay for it, that's what we have to challenge at the level with congressional members like our Steve Cohen who's a member of Transportation Committee, Marsha Blackburn who's a member of Senate's Transportation Committee, that's the part that we have to get over, which is this should not be a burden borne by two states alone when everyone nationally benefits from it.

- An important point because you're not challenging the state's pay-as-you-go model.

- Yeah, I would say this.

- Let me back, before you answer that question, pay-as-you-go, for those not as close to this as we are, the Tennessee Department of Transportation has no debt.

That is uncommon among states.

Most states do bonding and big debt packages, then pay that debt service down.

You mentioned the IMPROVE Act, so Governor Haslam in his second term pushed hard, and I think the Chamber supported, an increase in the gas tax that was passed, kicked in in 2017 and kinda grew up to 2020.

So you, what you have every year to spend comes from that gas tax primarily, and then I guess any federal pass-through?

- That's right.

- Okay.

- As I mentioned, we have a $2 billion program, about half of that comes from federal fuel tax, the other half is state fuel tax.

- Okay, just, again, apologies Bobby, to interrupt, but just so people understand what pay-as-you-go means, and the notion that we don't, Tennessee does not issue debt, which some people would like to see Tennessee issue debt, I doubt that happens under Governor Bill Lee's leadership but just, in this current legislature, but back to how you were gonna answer the question.

- No, just fundamentally, it still gets back to the fact that even when you looked at President Biden's original infrastructure proposal, they were talking about the repair of the 10 most critical, economically critical bridges.

Well, we gotta get out of that, 'cause bridges get old, right?

[chuckles] We've gotta, repair is one thing, replacement is something very different, and so it goes back, we had a meeting, a very fruitful meeting with Federal Highway Administrator Stephanie Pollack, and she was in our office there at the Chamber, we had officials from ARDOT, TDOT, and about 30 businesses from the tri-state area, and we got into this thing where she talked about, they can only do so much because they are set up to fund a certain way.

It's like peanut butter, and when you take the peanut butter funding, you spread it out as far as it'll go.

Our thing is this, we don't need peanut butter spread out with Bucksnort, and we don't even need a competitive grant process where we are competing with other communities in a way.

We need a big hunk of peanut butter right here, across the Mississippi River, as there are probably other places around the nation where you need to make bets on where you can drop a good piece of funding that will benefit everyone, and not just people in a certain region or a certain city or certain state.

- We have a rendering of that peanut butter where we, yeah, we're gonna go to that, [laughing] right now.

The, staying with the bridge but then segueing into spending as a whole, right, spreading the peanut butter, I mean however you wanna talk about it, do you know, so there's this, what is it, trillion-dollar bill moving through the Senate, looks like it's gonna get passed as we sit here talking, do you know, Commissioner, what Tennessee might get from that?

Is there any detail behind that bill, if it, that bipartisan Senate bill, if it actually is approved?

- So the main part that we're getting from this is a five-year committed funding program from the federal government, and from that, it's my understanding, we're going to get $5.8 billion, divided by 5.

Now that's not a premium, that's over and above what we've been getting.

My understanding is we're going to see about a 200 million, 'cause all, that money is formula-based as far as the way it's spread out between the states, and from that, we are about a 2% state, so we're going to see about $200 million per year that's going to be added to our program of $2 billion, so it's a, from the federal side, it's a 20% increase, but our overall program, it's gon' be about a 10% increase in the dollars that we get to put to roads and bridges.

- Annually.

- Annually, yes sir.

- 200 million extra, annually.

- Yes.

- But what was the 5.8 billion part?

- If you take 5.8, that's the total formula base that will come to the state of Tennessee is my understanding.

- Including existing money, and then an additional, - Yes, yes.

It's a new number.

- so it's a huge package, but, and I'm not saying 200 million isn't welcome and isn't a lot, but it's smaller than some might think, when it comes down to that.

- When you spread it over 95 counties, four regions - And then it gets small.

- across the state of Tennessee, the peanut butter gets pretty thin.

- Yeah, there we go.

- Yeah.

What are your, and again, you've got this increased funding over the last three years by the increase of gas, so what are the priorities right now as we segue away, but I'm not taking away from the importance of the bridge, but there's all these different things, and the Chamber as well has other priorities for Memphis, what are TDOT's priorities right now?

- I think about three different things, and we've talked about it before.

One of the charges from the governor was, take care of what we have.

Deferred maintenance, he didn't wanna have that.

We gotta take care of what we have.

The other part of that is, how quickly can we accomplish the projects in the IMPROVE Act?

Right now, our backlog within the IMPROVE Act is $10.5 billion, so it's a big piece of toast so to speak, and the third part of it is, this state continues to grow, and we support the state in its economic development projects, so some of those dollars go to economic development projects that are out there.

- In what sense, economic development?

- From a transportation point of view.

- So is that like building roads to a factory that's gonna move in, or building access or something?

- Some sorta state access grants, yeah.

So some of those dollars come through us from those fuel taxes to enable economic development.

- And in terms of specific to Memphis, and I know you're commissioner of the whole state, but in terms of Memphis, what is in the pipeline right now, and I'll go to you Bobby with the same thing, but what's going on with those TDOT dollars in Memphis right now?

- So two projects, I mean we've got a lot of projects that are on the IMPROVE Act, and the two that come to mind is the I-240/Airways project, we tried for a grant earlier this year, we were not successful, that's a big project as far as, if you wanna call it social injustice and helping economic development and all that, that's a big project that's out there.

I can't tell you where that is, I just don't know as far as the schedule, but also is, we've got a maintenance project that's coming up on 55 this spring that came from previous reports, so we've got that in the queue.

Also as a part of that is about a $75-plus-million that's the new Crump/I-55 interchange, and we have seen, with one bridge, how important that is, so that's going to be part of that bridge project that's coming out this spring so we can go ahead and get that.

We've got the work on Lamar Avenue going on right now, so the move-- - That's the widening in that big warehouse corridor, which is just insane with the trucks.

It's not-- - Absolutely, the freight traffic is huge, so yeah.

- Your priorities, are those your priorities as well?

- Yeah, I would just say this, and I gotta take a moment to just appreciate the partnership of TDOT.

I mean, Commissioner Bright could not have been any more gracious and accommodating as it has related to the, he knows it and he sees it, the impact with economic development, so they've been great partners, and when's the last time anybody in government actually said we're gonna do something and it gets done within probably hours of when that bridge was reopened.

I'd say that we work closely with TDOT on our Transportation Committee, so those priorities he mentioned, those are the things that we bird dog in our communication with them and the meetings with them and a lot of other logistics and transportation folks who serve on that committee, so we're always bird dogging those things and they are always giving us those updates, but those are priorities for us as well.

- Let me go to Bill?

- Commissioner, you and ARDOT are still paying bills from the bridge repairs, but I think you've got kind of a ballpark estimate, looks like about $10 million so far, split 50/50.

- That's correct, absolutely.

- All right, and in the grand scheme of things, it's turns out that the I-55, what we call the Old Bridge, the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge, certainly had a lot of traffic, but maybe not as much traffic as might've been overwhelming on it.

- So prior to the issue, I think 55 was seeing somewhere in the neighborhood of about 50,000 cars a day, 40 to 50, and I-40 Bridge was close to the same.

So during this episode, we, the traffic on I-50, going from 50,000 cars pre-, to during it we were seeing 80,000 cars, so over the lifespan of the bridge, it's been there 70 years, that's not a, percentage-wise it's a big increase, but over a three-month period as far as total counts, it's a pretty small number.

- Right, it might've gotten hairier if this had gone on a little longer, that is the thinking, - Well, it's a stout bridge.

- or how do you-- - It's a stout bridge, and we do have some projects coming up this spring to maintain it, mainly on the deck and in some painting and some repair work, but it's a stout bridge.

- Is the 55 interchange that you talked about, is that the roundabout design?

- There's a roundabout, and I don't know all the details, but there's a roundabout involved and there's some flyovers as far as just making that traffic moving there, through there more efficient.

- Right, and you added an exit lane off of the bridge to go south on 55 - We sure did.

- that I think, for a very simple project, did wonders for the traffic backup.

- It was amazing, I mean our crews put that in over a weekend, and it was a hot weekend, so I appreciated what they did, but it was amazing how much that affected the backup into Arkansas as far as getting rid of a lot of that traffic, just adding that one lane, so I'm glad we did it.

- Yep, yep.

Bobby, people waiting in traffic obviously, in our business, we hear a lot from them, but you heard a lot from these trucking companies where time is absolutely money, and it's a reminder that for everybody who's stuck in traffic, we're talking about a freight corridor here that's one of the major ones in the nation.

How much did you hear from the trucking companies?

- Yeah, we, I have 'em on speed dial, our trucking associations from across the region, and if you just think about it, they have limits in terms of how long you can drive, right, as a truck driver, so if you're in traffic for some period of time, it could throw you off in terms of when you drop a load and when you pick up, and it means money and it's an impact, so we definitely heard from them throughout.

The thing for us is this, what was scary about the bridge being closed longer is that, what happens is people can change their habits, and now all of a sudden, traffic and freight that may have been coming through Memphis on trucks could have been put in other cities, or people as businesses maybe just change up what they do, but they're one of the ones that we were in contact with constantly.

I do wanna mention one thing.

We had a meeting yesterday with Federal Maritime Commissioner Rebecca Dye and also the Chair of the Surface Transportation Board, Martin Oberman.

We have been talking about issues like chassis, but there, supply chain issues overall, there has been an overload of issues and things that are happened that have impacted the fluidity of the supply chain during this pandemic, so it's just good to know that that bridge was not one of those continued issues that we had here locally, so again, shout out to TDOT.

- There's just three and a half minutes here and so I'll try to move quickly through a couple issues we could do a whole show on, but we only have three and a half minutes left.

We didn't, we talked a lot about bridges, freight, highways, we haven't talked much about mass transit.

Where are, if any, priorities around mass transit in your department?

- Well, I mean we've got a group that's dedicated to that as far as mass transit, multimodal.

We have a BRT program and-- - BRT, what is BRT?

- Bus Rapid Transit project that's going on right now within Memphis, I can't remember exactly where it's going, but-- - That's the Poplar-- - University of Memphis to, and downtown with Poplar - That's right, yeah.

- and Union as the major east-west corridors.

- And I think we got a letter yesterday as far as letter of support that we're trying to put in for that project, so yeah.

- A big part of the federal infrastructure bill, again, it's moving through the Senate, it's far from done, but there's a lot of talk about electric cars, charging stations, what's your vision for that, if any?

Are you waiting on the federal government for some more guidance and money?

- So on the EV side, between us, TVA, and environmental, the environmental group, there was a certain amount of money that came from the Volkswagen settlement, I think it's around $20 million, so through our environmental group, conservation environmental group, David Salyers' group, they are putting together a strategic plan to start putting EV stations across the state on the interstates to start growing that, and you're right, there's a lot of money in this infrastructure package right now that's gon' supplement and add to that as far as getting rid of that EV anxiety as far as people traveling across the interstates.

- One more for you and I'll come to some of these questions with you Bobby, sorry, thanks for your patience, the bike lanes, paths, I think some of that does hit TDOT.

It's not the biggest things, but I mean some of the intersections I think that've been redone in Memphis and made more visible and more walkable, that involved some or a lot of TDOT money, is there more of that?

Do you get more demand for that?

Is that more just sort of a Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga thing, or what?

- Well it is in our urban areas, but it's, I mean it's part of our multimodal program.

What we have seen in the past couple of years, we call them our vulnerable users, it's the pedestrians on the sidewalks, the crossways, the bicyclists, and the fatality rates for those vulnerable users have been going up, so we're looking at those areas where we're seeing these incidents and what can we do from an engineering point of view to make 'em safer?

So it is something on our charge.

- Are those priorities for you as well at the Chamber?

- Yes, we're dealing with, on the transit part, getting people to jobs, number one, and then the other part, there're a lot of livability pieces to the other things that you've mentioned that're important to us in terms of attracting talent.

- You mention safety, I mean it's a big issue right now, is that here in Memphis, and it's really a national problem, of drag racing and dangerous driving, are you all, I know you're not in the safety business, you're not-- - That's enforcement.

- Yeah, you're not Tennessee Highway Patrol, but you, are you involved with trying to monitor or stop some of the dangerous driving?

- Well, I'd mentioned, in our work zones, we collect all the data, and the data comes from THP, from the serious accidents, fatality reports, so we're looking at that data across the state always to see where the incidents are occurring, where is high speed in our work zones occurring, and trading that data back to THP so they can make smart decisions with the capacity they have to help us out in those special areas.

- All right, thanks so much, we have much more I could've got to, but I really appreciate you both being here.

Thank you Bill and thank you for joining us.

If you missed any of today's episode, you can get the full episode at WKNO.org or even on YouTube, or you can download the full podcast of the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks, and we'll see you next week.

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