On this week's Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, Doug Hecox, acting director of public affairs at the Federal Highway Administration, shares his insights on the origins of interstate highways and wrestles with unanswerable questions about the future.
Hecox likes to remind people that the Interstate Highway System is "the largest human-built thing in the world."
The discussion ranges from the debate about President Biden's proposed infrastructure plan to why it has always been difficult for policymakers to agree on how to fund transportation systems, to what the ongoing development of connected and automated vehicles will mean to highway capacity. This includes a discussion about the president and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's emphasis on racial, social and environmental justice. We cannot right the wrongs but the history needs to inform future decisions.
Hecox explains why he's a champion of the decision to invest in the Interstate Highway System. He also underscores why it is important for future planning that the highways accommodate the people they are supposed to serve.
The conversation also touches on the history of the Good Roads movement and how cyclists, not drivers, advocated to pave roads. Such was the case in Michigan and the work of Horatio S. Earle, Michigan's first state transportation director.
Other references:
— President Lincoln's patent (the only U.S. president to obtain one) and how it benefitted transportation.
— Companies continue to experiment with driverless delivery vehicles, including Michigan-based Domino's Pizza.
This year marks the 65th anniversary of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 and work to create the Interstate Highway System.
On this week's Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, Doug Hecox, acting director of public affairs at the Federal Highway Administration, shares his insights on the origins of interstate highways and wrestles with unanswerable questions about the future.
Hecox likes to remind people that the Interstate Highway System is "the largest human-built thing in the world."
The discussion ranges from the debate about President Biden's proposed infrastructure plan to why it has always been difficult for policymakers to agree on how to fund transportation systems, to what the ongoing development of connected and automated vehicles will mean to highway capacity. This includes a discussion about the president and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's emphasis on racial, social and environmental justice. We cannot right the wrongs but the history needs to inform future decisions.
Hecox explains why he's a champion of the decision to invest in the Interstate Highway System. He also underscores why it is important for future planning that the highways accommodate the people they are supposed to serve.
The conversation also touches on the history of the Good Roads movement and how cyclists, not drivers, advocated to pave roads. Such was the case in Michigan and the work of Horatio S. Earle, Michigan's first state transportation director.
Other references:
— President Lincoln's patent (the only U.S. president to obtain one) and how it benefitted transportation.
— Companies continue to experiment with driverless delivery vehicles, including Michigan-based Domino's Pizza.
This year marks the 65th anniversary of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 and work to create the Interstate Highway System.
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Jeff Cranson: Hello, this is the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast. I'm Jeff Cranson, director of communications at the Michigan Department of Transportation.
[Music]
Cranson: Picking up on last week's theme, where we touched on some of the history of funding infrastructure in our country, or more appropriately, in recent years, not appropriately funding infrastructure in our country, I was going to delve into some more of that history with our roads and especially the interstate system and all things related to what's going on right now, and what President Biden is proposing to sort of put us back on the right footing, I guess, for funding these things. And I'm pleased to have with me today Doug Hecox, a friend and colleague, who is the acting director of public affairs at the Federal Highway Administration. Doug, thanks for taking time to do this.
Doug Hecox: Well, thanks for inviting me.
Cranson: So, let's start first with a little bit about your background so people know who you are and why you have, you know, credibility to talk about these things.
Hecox: I can't speak to the credibility part, but I do have quite a lot of experience. I’ve been with the Federal Highway Administration for 17 years this month, and in the course of that time, many of the same issues remain unresolved. The fact of America’s dependence and reliance on a functional, safe, and well-built, and well-maintained interstate system has not changed, but, you know, in that nearly two-decade period of time, the number of people driving around has grown considerably, the amount of mileage that the nation as a whole drives every year has grown incredibly. So, the average amount of mileage that each individual drives, and this is, by the way, these are just for the drivers, we still have a lot of folks that don't own cars or don't drive, they're still on buses, they're still using rapid transit in many cases, but the American people are simply moving around a lot more than ever before. And that's putting a lot more demand on the, you know, the interstate system in general, but public roads across the nation. In many cases, we're seeing some of the rural areas, or what used to be rural areas, dealing with big city traffic problems. So, we know that new ways need to be explored, new financial methods, new construction techniques, new service offerings, new fuel choices for the growing crop of brand-new alternative fuel vehicles that are becoming more and more popular. It's a system that's evolving right before our eyes, so we need to explore some of the newer, more cutting edge, or, you know, creative next steps to ensure that the road system that we use today is going to be around for another 100 years.
Cranson: Well, since you threw in that caveat about, you know, more people using the system and more vehicle miles traveled, how do you square that with surveys and what we're often told about how younger generations are going to want to use transit, and rail, and, you know, multi-modal options and not be so committed to their car?
Hecox: Well, that's a fair question. We won't really know, by the way, if that's right probably for another 30 years. The—
Cranson: Okay, I’ll wait.
Hecox: Well, the anecdotes that I remember hearing, and this is maybe 10 years ago, but, you know, over the past decade, were that the younger generation the Generation Z, the Zennials, whatever term of art you want to use, were not buying cars as early as their counterparts in previous generations. That isn't to say that they won't buy a car or that they won't use a car because, again, many of them aren't buying a car because it's costly. They've got student loans. They've got cost burdens that their counterparts of earlier generations did not have, by the way, so buying a car may not be the option. It doesn't mean they're not using a car. They're all using Uber. They're all using Lyft that is a car on the road. They're using car sharing services, so they are using cars. They just may not be owning cars, so there's that little fine point. But we're also seeing the advent of newer technologies, such as autonomous vehicles, you know, these driverless cars or other vehicles that are a hybrid of driverless and driver assisted vehicles. There is a very distinct possibility that we'll see more and more delivery vehicles relying on that technology. So, the roads themselves may be cluttered with more vehicles even though there may be fewer car owners. So, that's the issue we're facing is what the demands of the road system of tomorrow will look like because it's very likely they won't look like what they used to, where everybody had one car and one house. There was a time when everybody had one TV. The world is not like that anymore, and we expect it will continue to change. And we're trying to be ready for those changes.
Cranson: Yeah, so it is a little counter-intuitive because for, you know, early as we started seeing the development of connected and automated vehicles, we thought, if anything, because they can travel, you know, more tightly and more efficiently in a lot of ways, it would lead to, you know, overall, maybe less traffic, but I think you're right. Now the thinking is that even if not as many people own personal vehicles, there's going to be more vehicles on the road.
Hecox: There's also the prospect, again, getting back to the autonomous vehicles, I'm not anti them, by the way, I’m fascinated by them because they present an entirely new type of policy challenge, policy questions that we really haven't had to anticipate. For example, if we have, let's just say, driverless pizza delivery vehicles—Amazon, I believe, is already exploring driverless, or autonomous, delivery vehicles and—
Cranson: Actually, Domino's, Michigan-based Domino’s, is too, by the way.
Hecox: Fair enough, but I remember reading recently that Amazon has been experimenting with this, and they'll drive the delivery to your house. Then there's a separate—I hate to call it a robot, but some sort of system that is by pedal that actually crawls out of the vehicle to take your package and drop it off at your door and then get back in the truck and take off. So, they're finding ways to deliver. I don't know if that's the future of this stuff, but even if it's a driverless Uber, a driverless cab, a driverless whatever, driverless buses, there will be the occasion where there will be an empty, driverless vehicle going back, either to its next stop, or to pick somebody up, or to get more supplies, or whatever, there is the distinct possibility, depending on how successful this technology is, that we will see driverless traffic jams. We want to make sure that we have roads and a system that can accommodate all of these newer vehicle types, but also not become hamstrung by its own success or popularity. That's the issue—how do we manage capacity when we have the potential for so many more new vehicles, or alternative vehicles, out there competing for the same road space as everyday moms and pops who are driving to school to pick up their kids from band practice or whatever. It's an issue that we haven't resolved yet but we're looking at it.
Cranson: You raise a kind of a tree-falls-in-the-forest kind of question then, I guess. If these are driverless vehicle traffic jams is any human being inconvenienced?
Hecox: Presumably, everybody trying to get from point A to point B who sees a traffic jam up ahead, and then their Waze or other GPS system will reroute them onto a smaller side road which may have similar problems. So, like I say, these are sort of worst case, very theoretical, science fiction kind of issues that may never emerge, but we're trying to factor them in because they're worth considering.
Cranson: Sure, so, that gets to the next question, I mean, at a time when you've got an administration and a secretary, Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who are committed to multimodal uses of the transportation system and, you know, supporting rail and transit and certainly walkable communities, you know, complete streets, those kinds of things, and that seems to go against expanding capacity, you know, adding lanes to freeways and things. But what you're saying is that even as we transition to the newer technologies, we might need more capacity, so—
Hecox: We aren't real sure, and to be honest, that discussion has never really been had until now. Over the past, you know, the interstate system will turn 65 this year, so it's retirement eligible. And at no point in that 65 years has there really been a discussion of what should optimum capacity be, and the problem is that you can't answer that. It's an unanswerable question because every little increment, every little piece of the interstate system has to be considered in isolation. And that's a challenge because every little piece may need to be either widened, or narrowed, or changed, or whatever because the traffic pattern at that point may be different than its counterpart five miles down the road. So, there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for any of this, and that's the issue, trying to come up with bespoke or tailor-made solutions for a big system that is really 4.2 million miles of individual little road elements. It's a very complicated puzzle.
Cranson: So, those are the kinds of questions we wrestle with here. It's one reason I’ve thought of renaming the podcast Unanswerable Questions.
Hecox: I would support that.
Cranson: So, yeah, we don't know, but you're seeing this all play out now as the new administration takes over and as a new philosophy, you know, gets cast upon the various agencies within the USDOT, talk about that. I mean, first of all, I guess, I’m wondering what you're doing to celebrate the 65th birthday of the interstate system, but talk about some of that history and, you know, what would somebody be really surprised to learn about America’s highway system?
Hecox: Well, you'd mention the complete streets and the desire to ensure that the public road system that we have today, from interstate all the way down to city street, we want to make sure that they can accommodate the people that they're supposed to serve which is people. It's not just vehicles, cars, and trucks, obviously, proliferate on interstates, which is where they belong. They're driving very fast. They're full of safety devices and good brakes and so forth. That's where vehicles belong, but city streets and even some of the smaller collectors, minor and even some major arterials, we want to make sure that those are safe places for people who are not in cars and vehicles too, from runners to bicyclists, you know, even some of the folks that are using e-scooters and whatever. The road is meant to be a safe place for everybody. We want to make sure everybody gets where they're going safely.
And one of the things that I think is surprising is that while this may seem like a new or novel idea, it's actually not. It's actually a return to the original idea for roads themselves. I’ve always found it very interesting, the irony, that the road system that we all count on today, again, interstate, city street, all of that was largely the result of angry bicyclists over a hundred years ago back in the 1880s. For those students of history out there, this is before cars, this is before highways, this is before everything. Dirt roads were everywhere, and a leisure activity for some of the well-heeled and well-to-do people of that time were buying bicycles. And they were sometimes the big-wheel-in-front-little-wheel-in-back kind of bicycles. They did not have inner tubes, it was a solid rubber tire, but it was a pretty rough ride. Suspension simply hadn't been invented yet. It was a wooden seat, and, you know, it was pretty rough. It was a novelty item, and it was a luxury item. The only people that often could afford it or could afford the time that it took to go right around in your special suit—they would have special suits made for this kind of thing—it was the rich, educated people, and just like today, some of the rich, educated people have a big sense of entitlement. So, what these early bicyclists found is that roads were usually muddy when they wanted to ride, or when they weren't muddy that they would dry and become rutted and bumpy and rough to ride on, sometimes unsafe to ride on. So, they banded together, and they created a group, the League of American Wheelmen, which I think is still around. I think it's called the National League of Bicyclists today. But the same thing, they lobbied congress, they lobbied state legislatures, city councils. They were trying to make sure there was a governmental system of making sure roads were kept in good shape, smoother, well-protected. But the good roads movement lasted basically until the beginning of the 20th century when a new luxury item came around and that was the automobile.
Cranson: Do you realize that you just told the story of roads in Michigan and the first director of a highways department who was named Horatio ‘Good Roads’ Earle who was a bicyclist?
Hecox: Yeah, he poured the first mile of concrete on Woodward Avenue in Detroit. Yeah, that's a famous piece of road history.
Cranson: Well, there you go, so that's his story. So, you're right, I guess, about it's going to be the wealthy who set the trends, and—
Hecox: Well, but it shouldn't be, and we're in a very different place today where, you know, mobility itself, getting around, is not meant to be only for, you know, the rich and well-off. It's meant to be something everybody can use, and that's why it's infrastructure. It's meant to be something that helps everybody, and we want to do it right, but we want to kind of get back to that basic original idea, which is that these better roads, these smoother places to travel, can be safe for everybody regardless of the mode of transportation they choose to use, and that's the whole basis of the complete streets movement.
Cranson: So, what are you hearing about that and how those priorities are going to be, you know, implemented and injected into what Federal Highway wants and does working with their state DOT partners in the next few years?
Hecox: Yeah, well, I mean, it's an ongoing issue. The idea, I think, is not one that people have a problem with. The notion of better roads, better bridges, better tunnels, more inspectors, more R & D to, you know, find better, faster, cooler ways to get this stuff done, nobody seems to have a problem with that. And I think you interviewed our counterpart, Lloyd Brown, from AASHTO a couple weeks ago and he said, wisely, that ‘Nobody really argues about infrastructure, they all argue about how to pay for it, ‘and that remains the issue. That has always been the issue, by the way, and that is not new. That has been the issue since the 30s, the 1930s, when the idea of an interstate system was first discussed by federal officials, and they thought, ‘All right, we'll just link a few of the biggest cities with these big superhighways and we'll call it good.’ They couldn't figure out how to pay for that because if it's not going through Nebraska, Nebraska people didn't want to pay for it. Kansas didn't want to pay for a road they weren't linked to, so only the cities touching that initial very rudimentary system, then they felt put upon. It was too much financial responsibility for them, why can't every—it was just one of those things where it's difficult to know who is responsible financially for a system that may affect some but not all.
Cranson: So—
Hecox: It really remained a struggle for, you know, 25 years until the gas tax idea emerged and it became the obvious choice, and the rest is history. But, yeah, originally the plan was for tolls. They thought a toll road system was the only way they would work.
Cranson: Sure. So, speaking of unanswerable questions, why do you think we've been able to come up with a sustainable way to fund utilities, you know, whether it's gas, or electric, or other things that every state has some kind of commission that sets the rates, doesn't require legislative approval, yet we've left it to congress and state legislatures to, you know, fund our roads? I mean, we don't rely on them to keep the lights on. Why didn't anybody come up with a sustainable method to treat roads like public utilities because basically that's what they are?
Hecox: Well, up until recently there was no way to do that, up until we had wireless communication and special computer chips that could report that sort of information to some central processor, there was no way to do it. So, yeah, I think culturally it was just never part of the American DNA for travel itself to be regulated or priced in the way that other utilities are. It doesn't mean that that won't be the future, but it's still very much in under discussion.
Cranson: Okay, so speaking of things that we've spent a lot of money on, and as we turned to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the interstate, it cost a lot to build, costs a lot to maintain. Has it been worth it? Is it worth it?
Hecox: Well, I mean, there's there are two ways to answer that. The answer I will give you is yes, an unquestionable yes. The interstate system itself which initially, you know, if you break it down for those who aren't really sure about this, the interstate system is only roughly 48,000 miles of road. The entire public road system nationwide, county roads, city streets, you know, major avenues and so forth, anything that you can drive on publicly, is part of this larger tapestry of roads and bridges, and all of it together has been unbelievably valuable. And it's almost impossible to price that value. The initial 41,000 miles of interstate that was made possible in 1956 has paid itself off more than anybody can even count. It gave us not just convenience, but it gave us entirely new concepts of America. It gave us what we now think of as freedom. I mean, the open road itself is synonymous with American freedom. It gave us suburbs, it gave us the shopping mall model, it gave us, you know, now even now with online shopping, it's given us same day or next day delivery. It's kept our food prices and grocery stores fairly reasonable. If everything didn't have an interstate to depend on all of these things would not be possible, your groceries cost a lot more, you wouldn't have interesting flavor combinations from the west coast or the east coast. You'd have to have whatever was produced locally or regionally, so the nation itself would be a very different place. So, the interstate system has not only been a great investment, a very lucrative investment for the American people, but it's redefined what it means to be an American. And it's united the states in a way that no laws or rules, or traditions, or cultures ever has. It's given us a concept of unity.
Cranson: I agree with you on that final point. I think you and I could argue about whether malls and suburbs were the greatest things that ever happened in the country.
Hecox: Not only in their value, I’m simply pointing out they wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the interstate. And living far away from your office or something, for many people, is itself a bit of a luxury. There was a time when people had to live within walking distance of where they worked. If you wanted to live in a very, very, very densely packed urban environment today, I invite you to watch the movie Judge Dredd because that's what you'd have, everybody living in one basic community on either coast and that's it. So, it's not a desirable thing, but yes, the quality of life is greatly improved by the interstate system.
Cranson: I think that overall, that's probably true, but there are certainly advocates who would argue against that. So, I guess, talk, since you've researched this and you've been deeply steeped in it, about the history of the highway system going back to 1956 and, you know, what—give us your, like, I guess, in a nutshell, the briefest description of how it all happened. You know, everybody knows about Eisenhower, most people don't know that Al Gore Sr. carried a lot of the water for this in the U.S. Senate, which interestingly enough, as you talked about suburbs, did more to create sprawl and probably one of many modern environmentalists consider a scourge, you know, was implemented largely by Al Gore's father but talk about that.
Hecox: Well, that’s fair, and that's the issue—the interstate system has it's been vilified, and it's been deified. I understand both sides. It's a double-edged sword. It's probably, in my opinion, it's given us more greatness and more positives than negatives, but there, yeah, there's always going to be some critics out there. What I would like to point out though is that the idea of an interstate system didn't really begin in 1956. Obviously, that's when Eisenhower enacted the law that Al Gore Sr. helped pass. In fact, he even gave Al Gore Sr. one of the pens that he signed it with. So, yeah, there was that, but prior to 1956 you still had roads. You had many big roads, they were just primarily regional or local, but there wasn't really a big system of interconnected, really well-built, high-speed, high-capacity roads until the interstate act was signed into law. I always love talking to people about this because I really like history. And I think that the interstate system hasn't had enough attention paid to it, but it didn't begin in 56. Some people say it began with maybe Route 66 back in 1926 that linked Illinois with southern California. Others think it might have began with the Lincoln highway that was completed in 1913. Others say it began with the National Road, which was funded by President Thomas Jefferson in 1806. Yeah, it took almost 25 more years to complete, but it was what he and George Washington had talked about as a trans-Appalachian road that they felt was needed to unify the brand-new country. They wanted to connect the cities, or, you know, the coastal communities with these frontier western settlements, so that's exactly what it did. It connected Cumberland, Maryland to the Ohio river, so it's still around. We still call it Route 40 today, but the national road may have been the first federally funded road system in the country.
Cranson: Lewis and Clark still traveled largely by river.
Hecox: They did, yeah, that was easier than walking. Yeah, so, the river was the highway and really was for much of the early years of the U.S. And that's the little interesting thing most people don't realize, we've only had one president who ever got a patent, and that was Abraham Lincoln because as a young man he was working as a flat boatman. He was kind of a, you know, supplier to bigger boats. He was carting boxes and bales and big things, and he was using these flat boats to get from point A to point B, and he realized that when the water in the river was low, sometimes sand bars and things got away. So, he developed a system of baffles and kind of these big air inflatable bladders that helped his boat kind of rise up and get a little bit more buoyancy so it could get around those things. So, yeah, the river was the highway for a very long time.
Cranson: So, those are some great tidbits. What do you think—again, crystal ball, I know, but since we've got some discussion about decommissioning some freeways in some places? John Norquist, former Mayor of Milwaukee and all he's done to advocate for this around the country and make an example out of what they did there, how is that going to factor into these discussions about funding, knowing that many members of congress only would want more capacity and would want more roads and would be more inclined to fund things if it gives them something new than just maintaining what we have. How's that going to play out?
Hecox: I don't know, but that's the beauty of the system that we have is that it's not federally governed. It's not federally directed, it's state-owned and federally assisted. Ultimately, decisions like that are the province of state and local leaders, so if that's what local residents and local officials want to do that is definitely within their prerogative. Something like that could have some downside, but, again, that isn't for the Federal Highway Administration to say. That's for them to sort out and decide for themselves, and that's always been the case. The roads that we have, including the interstates, do not belong to the federal government. They belong to the states in which they traverse so those decisions are good ones, but they're definitely up to the local officials.
Cranson: Well, we know things now that we didn't know, you know, when these things were being conceived 60, 70, 80 years ago. And there is a racial justice, social justice component to this and the way freeways were built and the kinds of neighborhoods they destroyed or disrupted. I get the feeling that that's something that the new secretary feels strongly about. And you can't undo what's been done, but you can certainly think about not doing it the same way in the future. I mean, do you see that as a productive conversation?
Hecox: Absolutely, I mean, that's the whole point is that roads and bridges are meant to be of service to everybody, not just for some. You mentioned some of those early days, I was just, actually a couple hours ago, reading about Robert Moses, the big developer in New York City back in the good old days. One thing which I guess I hadn't noticed or heard about until today, which was very interesting, they were trying to build bridges lower between New York City and Long Island so that city buses, full of what they probably thought were undesirable city people, they couldn't get out to Long Island, to the Hamptons, and some of the places where all the rich white people were living at the time. So, it took many forms, you know, there's a reason that we keep referring to ‘the wrong side of the tracks.’ Transportation has classically been used in many places as a divisive agent, as a place of separation, and we don't agree with that. We, obviously, the world has changed, modern values and opinions have changed. And we think that transportation infrastructure itself and the decision makers behind them should be striving for unity and equality and equity and that's kind of where we are right now.
Cranson: Well said. That probably means it's going to be difficult for you and I to record another podcast where I play Citizen Jane to your Robert Moses.
Hecox: Well, we can do cosplay. I'm not above that.
Cranson: So, one other thing I wanted to talk about, Doug, because you've been following this in terms of the big things going on in Michigan that the Federal Highway Administration is involved in is our partnership with Canada to build the Gordie Howe International Bridge in Detroit. How much of that is on your radar?
Hecox: Well, not as much as it used to because the project is largely done. I mean, it's certainly under construction and for a long time, it was on our radar because it wasn't under construction. There were lawsuits and there were questions of how to pay for it, and then who will pay for it and then how can we get the U.S. to be a good partner to transport Canada. It was a soap opera for years, so I’m glad that it's nearing completion, and as I’ve been telling some of our folks, it's not Gordie Howe, it's ‘Gordie When.’
Cranson: That's great, yeah, and when you say done, for your purposes, you mean that it's off the planning table and construction is in the works, but we're still a few years from seeing that bridge open up.
Hecox: Yeah, my engineers always remind me done and open or really terms of art. Substantially complete is the term that they like, but, yeah, we're ready for that thing to be open to traffic and take some of the heat off the Ambassador Bridge because we've seen just how long the waits are there and that's delay. That's extra cost to the American taxpayer who's paying extra for all the stuff that takes forever to get across the border, so we know event is needed and that new bridge will help.
Cranson: So, one last question, and this conversation could go on, obviously, and we'll have to take it up again sometime but just one more for this episode, and this isn't a trick, tell me, of all the agencies under the USDOT umbrella which one is best?
Hecox: The Federal Highway Administration, of course, and I say that because I’ve given that quite a lot of thought. I’m a natural promoter and I’m obviously a fan of the work that we do, but I have given this quite a lot of thought. While a like my counterparts and the other modes, the Federal Aviation Administration seems to have a lot of bad days, you know, it's a crash, or a fire, or a strike. I’m glad I don't have to deal with issues like that. That's a lot of high stress, and I don't think I could take it. The Pipelines and Hazardous Material Safety Administration, similarly, every day it's just another mess for them to address. The Federal Highway Administration, at least we've got a story to tell and, for the most part, people like what we do and use this every day.
Cranson: Okay, now I guess I have an obligation to have some of your counterparts and those other agencies on.
Hecox: I’m happy to introduce you.
Cranson: Doug, thanks for taking time to do this and talk about your insights and—wait, the one last question you didn't answer, what is the big birthday celebration for the interstate system?
Hecox: Well, that would be telling, and, by the way, I wouldn't want to announce that on your podcast because the interstate could be listening.
Cranson: Okay, good point. Yes, in fact, I think the interstates are among my top listeners. Thanks, Doug. We'll have to talk again sometime. I appreciate it.
Hecox: I appreciate your offer. Thanks so much.
Cranson: Thank you again for listening to this week's edition of the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast. I would like to thank Randy Debler and Corey Petee for engineering this week's podcast. To subscribe to show notes and more, go to Apple podcasts and search for Talking Michigan Transportation.