MDOT presents The Extra Mile podcast.

(Paul) Welcome into another addition of The Extra Mile podcast presented by the Mississippi Department of Transportation. I’m MDOT Digital Media Manager Paul Katool and as always I’m joined by my Co-host Will Craft. He handles government and constituent affairs at MDOT. And we have the podcast on the road once again. We’re actually out of state for the first time. We are in Louisiana. We are with Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Transportation Development Dr. Shawn Wilson. We really appreciate it, Dr. Wilson, you hosting us here at your agency.

Just a little bit of information about Dr. Wilson. He was appointed by Louisiana Governor John Bell Edwards in January of 2016 and he’s now serving in his second term as secretary. So, yeah, that’s a little bit information about you, but can you kind of tell us how um, tell us about your background and how it led to you being head of the agency here.

(Dr. Wilson) Well, I will tell you, Paul, it was purely accidental. Which is, now I say that, but you know my background has been in urban and regional planning. And working in college at the planning commission I learned that I did not want to go to public meetings and so I got into government and ended up doing public meetings. And that was in the world of non-profits and in part it was with what was called Louisiana Service Commission. And we actually had a partnership with the foundation for the mid-south which was Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana.

And we worked in the Delta with some Kellogg funding working in that East Carroll, Issaquena County in the Delta and it was a really neat effort. And it was also tied to national service so it may be AmeriCorps, Learn and Serve America, America’s Promise other types of activities. That was in the office of Lieutenant Governor who decided to run for governor, and she became our first female governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. And having worked on her campaign and transitioned a couple of departments one being transportation and transitioned Wildlife and Fisheries and Natural Resources which is basically managing the selection process for the secretary for those different departments. And then I went into her office as the deputy legislative director. I also had the responsibility of having transportation policy for the department for the governor and for the department.

And that time I worked with Dr. Kam Ovasagi who was with us for a few months into that administration and Katrina happened. And right as Katrina was happening and right as Katrina was happening right before that I had moved out of legislative affairs and began moving into the department of transportation as the chief of staff if you will for then Secretary Johnny Bradbury. And that’s where I got introduced to AASHTO, got introduced to transportation research board in a big way. And I’ve been at the department ever since.

So, when I became secretary I had over 15 years’ experience in the executive office always in the chief of staff role. And I had the privilege of working for Governor Blanco with Johnny Bradbury. And then Governor Jindal was elected different party, which was very unique and rare, but I stayed on and worked with Secretary Engner and then Sherry Laba and Governor John Bel Edwards who actually grew up not too far from the state line and they meet Louisiana and was the state legislature and we got to work together on different projects. I provided some advice and guidance from a policy perspective during his campaign, and he asked me to stay on as secretary.

And through that process I’d gone back to school at some point and got a master’s in public administration and a phd in public policy. And as I said it was by accident that I got to be secretary. I don’t know many people who plan to be secretary or strategically take steps to be secretary. Same thing with being asked to be a president it just happens that way sometimes. And so, I’ve been blessed and fortunate to be given this opportunity.

(Paul) Well, that’s fantastic.

(Will) Yeah. Certainly, a lot of roles that contributed to get to where you are here. One thing we’re very much different at least a little bit just even from the name standpoint. So, you guys have the “development” portion

(Dr. Wilson) The “D”

(Will) That’s right. So, the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.

(Dr. Wilson) Yeah.

(Will) How does that kind of fit in?

(Dr. Wilson) Great question uh because we are unique in that we’re the only department of transportation and development. And uh if you pay attention to this nice little timeline through the years we celebrated our centennial anniversary last year 100 years. And prior to I want to say the constitutional convention, I want to say in 1974 we had a department of highways. And because the constitution limited the number of agencies that you can have in the state uh there was a consolidation of a lot of those agencies. I mean we had gone from like sixty plus departments down to thirteen or twelve different agencies.

To make the department of transportation and development we took the department of highways and the department of public works. And in public works you had dams, waterways, ports, railroads some of those other types of big utilities that really comprise our multimodal transportation system except for highways, and they consolidated those too. And so, we became the department of transportation and development.

Now when you look at government you see how we might have departments of commerce or departments of economic development. Before there was a department of economic development most of the economic prosperity that states saw was around the river, it was around railroads, it was around interstate systems, it was around natural resources and so that’s how we got to be the department of transportation and development. And uh yeah it’s a neat story and it gives us some responsibilities that our neighboring states might or might not have. So, not every state DOT is going to have aviation. Not every state DOT is going to have ports or rail or maritime, pipelines. So, all of that sits under us at the department not necessarily in terms of an ownership perspective while we do own an airport and I have other types of assets from a water-based perspective. The idea that we have management and strategic responsibility for those on behalf of the state is what’s cool.

(Paul) That’s awesome. It’s truly fascinating to kind of see the difference but differences in the DOT’s uh you know from state to state. We’re going to get into hurricane contravene a little bit but just kind of generally how does Louisiana DOTD and uh MDOT the state of Mississippi and Louisiana from a transportation infrastructure standpoint kind of work together and are there any shared responsibilities?

(Dr. Wilson) Oh huge. Yeah. So, um you know when you think about our interstate system that Eisenhower created he really wanted to network our country. And the ribbons that we have that connect our states is really the interstate system but before that you had U.S. highways. And those networks really transition from one state to the next all across our states and region. And we’ve got partnerships with Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi. And that has become much more critical in our success in part because of disaster response. Now we’ll come back and talk about that.

But when you look at the basic footprint of infrastructure you can look at every crossing on the river connecting our two states. We actually share responsibilities for bridges that will move commerce, that will move citizens, for health care, for education, for work particularly in some of those rural areas where you might go into Mississippi two or three times a day. Here in Baton Rouge, I’m not going to make it to Mississippi as often. But there are parts of Louisiana where everyday life for Mississippians or Louisianans is going to be across the state line.

So, we share responsibilities. For example, on I-20 or in Vicksburg where we might maintain the maintenance responsibilities inspection responsibilities for bridges compared to the actual construction of some bridges and then we flip-flop. There may be a different exchange. And then you have other things like evacuation. It brings to mind you know what we call the string of pearls really on Highway 90 where we’ve got some bridges that are really out of shape. The vast majority of them are in Louisiana but it actually impacts residents of Burlington. And so, we have that shared responsibility.

The world of communications has really changed. The digital media piece that you work on has really changed how we manage traffic and how we manage expectations. And so, it’s not uncommon for Rodney or our communications people to work with your folks around road closures, disasters, emergency response, detours so that we can communicate not just to the trucking community but people who unfortunately have these little square things in their cars with them. It will tell them what they need to know to be more effective and more efficient. So, if you look at a map you’re going to see some shared responsibility not just in terms of disaster but in everyday life. And so, that’s one of the keyways we manage and work on those relationships on a regular basis.

There are also things like managing the waterways that we have. When you see uh cleanups happening on the pearl all of that impacts both sides of what we get. And then there’s the disaster response which you cannot underestimate. It’s probably a growing role for CEO’s and departments of transportation given the ESF function of engineering and evacuation to the point where when there’s a hurricane everyone on the Gulf Coast is impacted from Florida and Texas.

And folks are suggested to go north but they don’t always do that. They take the east-west route because of what the destinations might be. Whether I’m going to leave Louisiana and go to Biloxi or if I’m going to go to Florida or if I’m going to go to Houston. That’s probably a little easier for folks south of I ten and so we do coordinate quite a bit on contraflow and planning for the worst-case scenario. I’d rather plan for something and not need it than need it and not have planned for it.

(Will) Exactly. Right. Well, just to go a little further on there kind of walk us through like what happens when you know a major storm hits. You know when do you make that determination we need to evacuate and how does the public receive that message?

(Dr. Wilson) Well, Brad and I join hands and pray that it goes to the east or west of either or our states. Go to Alabama , go to Texas now. So, what happens is you know we have a structured process that occurs in advance of hurricane season where our teams get together with law enforcement and talk about the process. We talk about the structure of what happens in contraflow because it’s not just something that can happen instantly. And so, I think it’s H96 is the hour that we make a decision whether or not we’re going to go into contraflow.

And I can take you back to probably a year ago in October maybe not even in October. It may have been in September. It was probably September that we had an event. And you know I was out of state. And we had this thing called rapid intensification where what was going to be a hurricane one in twenty-four hours got to be a hurricane Category 3. And all of a sudden the you know what hit the you know what. Well, it was too late for us to actually effectively implement contraflow given ways we evacuate the staging areas of where folks have to come from.

And a part of that process means reaching out to your CEO and and myself having a conversation. We engage our counterparts from state police or highway patrol. And then it actually rolls up to the governor’s office to make that decision because the the impact of contraflow is significant one because when you get into contraflow as you well know you’re predetermining where you end up depending on how you get on the highway. And then you’re going to go into another state before you get converted back to the same lane of traffic.

And so, for those who may not be familiar with it we actually take a four-lane interstate that’s two lanes in each direction and bring them all out at a certain point. But that requires a tremendous amount of coordination to do it safely. Everything from locking off certain on-ramps ensuring that there are no vehicles coming. But more importantly buses and movement of people and mass numbers has been extremely important that you have to get those buses in and get them out by a certain time. And that I think is a challenge that we will always have with contraflow. But it’s really based in communications uh and how well we can work together to address those issues.

(Paul) Gotcha. Gotcha. And we both Louisiana and Mississippi both hope it’s a very mild or non-existent hurricane season for sure. Uh, we ask this to most of our guests on podcasts. And this is great to ask you as a CEO of d-o-t. Why is it important for the state of Louisiana or any state to have a safe efficient transportation network?

(Dr. Wilson) You know it boils down to quality of life. And down here in the south we enjoy things from football to tailgating to hunting and fishing and just being a part of a community. And our transportation system is one that is so fundamental to everything we do, everything that we consume, every place we go. In most places every place we patronize has some value or some contribution being made from the transportation system. And it’s important for us to grow that. Not only is it the things we consume, it’s the raw materials.

And so, for Mississippi, Mississippi and Louisiana we’re relatively rural states that have a huge rural economy that is going to export a lot of goods that we grow that we might extract, that we might create in that process. And so, you’ve got to have a robust system to be able to accommodate that. I mean whether it’s wood chips or soybeans or cotton or corn, timber it’s got to go somewhere. And it’s going to go on a truck, it’s going to go on the train, it’s going to go on the ship or a barge. It’s going to go in the pipeline if you think about the oil and gas industry.

And so, investing in that system does two things. One it ensures a safe and effective quality of life. But it also grows an economy such that we can create jobs and have the kind of lifestyle that our states desire.

(Will) And there’s probably some unique challenges being right here in Baton Rouge with the university uh you know that population shift I’m sure. Your game day triples or something.

(Dr. Wilson) Oh it’s a double whammy here because we have Southern and LSU. And for the first time they’re playing each other for the opening season so. I think traffic is going to be a little light because we’re accustomed to having both of their games with visiting teams uh at both universities simultaneously. This way we’ve got two teams so we’re going to lose half of our traffic. It should be an easy day. But you know the reality is um yeah that’s part of that quality of life. And people will start tailgating on Thursday afternoon for a Saturday game.

(Will) You gotta love the fanbase.

(Dr. Wilson) And that’s just what we do in Louisiana and and in Mississippi and in the southeastern part of the country quite frankly. The biggest challenge and I would suggest that every state is dealing with this is that we have not kept up with the maintenance of our systems and we have grown our system so much. And to the point where we can’t always keep up. And I have a saying at my house it doesn’t work with me, but I tell my kids you can’t keep up if you can’t catch up and you can’t catch up if you can’t keep up. That’s kind of where a lot of states are with transportation systems and the things that we see whether it’s safety whether it’s congestion, whether it’s state of good repair those are real issues for us. And it happens in urban areas as well as rural areas.

I can show you bridges that we’ve closed that are essential for 10 trucks a day. And that’s going to be ten trucks that’s going to move big loads of timber or wood chips and that’s jobs. That’s the lifeline for those ten people at that mill. If that bridge closes there goes those 10 trees, and those 10 trees will have a ripple effect somewhere else. And so, yeah. We are very cognizant of the system that we’ve inherited and trying to maintain it. And unfortunately, with infrastructure build we’re going to spend some money to try and uh make it better.

(Paul) No doubt. No doubt. And I’ve got one more thing for you and we’ll end with a fun question. The Mississippians make the trip to Louisiana all the time. I made it for the Sugar Bowl. I’m coming back when Ole Miss plays LSU in the fall you know saints’ games everything. So, what’s the best way for Mississippians to kind of get travel and traffic information?

(Dr. Wilson) Sure. Great question. Uh if you’re wearing an LSU or Saints shirt you get priority. No. Just kidding. So, if you go to five one one la dot org it is probably the best place to understand and appreciate what we’re doing, what impacts you’re going to have on the road, how it’s going to affect your travel. And then I will also tell you if you come into a special event because New Orleans is such a unique place that we have culture, we have sports, we have all of these entertainment venues.

Come early to make sure that you get a chance to not get stuck in traffic. One of the things that we work well together is managing that traffic information so dynamic message boards that will be in Mississippi or Louisiana will provide that kind of information. Use your digital apps safely. Uh but yeah follow I ten come on down to New Orleans and have a good time and as we say, “laissez le bonte roulette.”

(Paul) Oh, we will. We will.

(Will) Yeah. And kind of the cherry on top is one of the questions we love to ask every podcast. As you might expect we are all southerners and like to eat

(Dr. Wilson) Absolutely.

(Will) So, we’re looking you know we had a great experience at Torchy’s earlier before we came here. Had some great tacos. Do you have a local favorite spot that you love to check out or even maybe one in Mississippi?

(Dr. Wilson) So, I will tell you the one spot where we actually hold our meetings is uh Middendorf’s. That’s where the two states get together and have it’s the home of thin fried fish uh it’s fresh. And you can get some really good alligator. I’ve caught some out there which is really cool. But here in Baton Rouge you know there’s everything from good Italian at Giulio’s. Go to Drago’s and get some of the char-grilled oysters. Poor Boy Lloyd’s is a no-brainer. You can get a deer sausage po-boy there. And you can get red beans and rice on Monday. And you can go to Little Village and get some of the best bread there is. If you’re on a low-carb diet that’s probably not the place for you but it’s very good. There are not many places you can get a bad meal here.

(Will) I love it. Yeah.

(Dr. Wilson) Same thing in Mississippi. Now, I’m looking forward to going to Biloxi for SASHTO.

(Will) Alright.

(Dr. Wilson) We’re going to have a great time there as we always have. And you all have had some really good leaders both in terms of Melinda and Butch. And I’m excited to be working with uh Brad. So, we’re excited to be coming to Mississippi.

(Paul) Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Well, Dr. Wilson, this has been a fascinating uh conversation and we really appreciate ya.

(Dr. Wilson) Thank you for coming. This has been great.

(Paul) Well, thank you so much for hosting us uh and uh definitely I will be back in Louisiana for sure. We’ll go

(Dr. Wilson) We’ll see you at a football game.

(Paul) For sure. We’ll go ahead and wrap things up now. So, we want to thank all our listeners out there for tuning in to The Extra Mile podcast. I also want to thank our producer Katey Hornsby, our editor Drew Hall. They of course are here on the road with us today. Remember you can listen and watch each episode by visiting GoMDOT.com/TheExtraMile. Be sure to follow on us social media Facebook and Twitter, Instagram. We have everything. @MississippiDOT is the handle. And uh as always remember to drive smart out there on Mississippi highways and Louisiana highways as well.