Transportation Secretary Buttigieg nears end to his post where he started

Ten days from the end of his term as U.S. secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg spent a thoughtful and reflective day in Pittsburgh Friday that he dubbed “boats, trains, planes and automobiles.”

The Pittsburgh visit was the latest in a series of trips Buttigieg has made across the country in the past few weeks as the Biden administration winds to an end after one term. It would be inaccurate and mean to call the trips a sort of victory tour, but Buttigieg said he wanted to get one final look at some of the 72,000 projects that started during the administration’s infrastructure blitz.

For his final local tour in the cabinet position, Buttigieg had the ultimate Pittsburgh transportation day: He rode a Gateway Clipper boat down the Ohio River to hear about lock conditions, took the subway four stops to learn about plinth, talked up infrastructure accomplishments with United Steelworkers members, watched demonstrations of Carnegie Mellon University transportation research at Hazelwood Green, and toured construction of the new terminal at Pittsburgh International Airport. Maybe the only thing missing was a trip up Mount Washington on the Monongahela Incline.

Through it all, Buttigieg came across as friendly, sharp, inquisitive and keenly aware of the importance of the topics at hand.

On the river

Aboard the Gateway Clipper’s Pittsburgh Princess, Buttigieg listened intently as Mary Ann Bucci, executive director of the Port of Pittsburgh Commission, and local barge operators told him how long it takes to perform rehab projects on the locks and dams that are key to their businesses.

Locks and dams on the Upper Ohio are in the midst of improvements that will take 24 to 30 years to complete. Work at Montgomery and Emsworth alone will cost about $1.6 billion over the next six to eight years.

Buttigieg said he’s happy that the department and Army Corps of Engineers have been able to move those projects ahead.

“There’s still a long way to go to improve the efficiency of funding these projects,” he said. 

The Port of Pittsburgh Commission, the state agency that oversees waterways in Western Pennsylvania, claims the region is the second busiest inland port in the country. It handles 20 million to 24 million tons of cargo each year, ranking 19th overall in the U.S., but that is way down from 50 million tons at the height of the coal industry and coal-fired utility plants.

The Department of Transportation has taken steps to acknowledge the importance of river commerce to keep tractor-trailer traffic off congested roadways. In 2007, federal officials authorized the designation of lakes and rivers as “marine highways,” making them eligible for more federal money.

The Ohio River was designated in 2010, and the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers were added in August 2023.

At Steel Plaza, Buttigieg met with officials from Pittsburgh Regional Transit about its on-going project to replace plinth, the concrete that supports rails, in the Downtown Pittsburgh section of the subway. He seemed intrigued when CEO Katharine Eagan Kelleman told him the agency had switched work from weekends only to full-time closure to get the work done faster and at a lower cost.

“If you can save money and not inconvenience the public too much, why not do it that way?” he said, adding that the department should study other projects to see if that concept would be applicable.

Buttigieg also chatted with construction workers and had especially kind words for Melvin E. Clark Jr., CEO of G.W. Peoples Contracting Co. Inc., a minority business working on the project.

Previous visit

Buttigieg used the meeting with about 100 steelworkers and guests in the lobby of their Boulevard of the Allies headquarters Downtown, as his “return to Capistrano” moment. He recalled that he came to Pittsburgh on one of his first trips as secretary in May 2021 for a similar boat tour and visit to Mount Washington to push for the Biden administration’s $2 trillion infrastructure program.

“It would be easy to forget it was a fight,” he said, noting that critics had “written the obituary” for the program many times. “But we did it. We did it largely with the support of the United Steelworkers and others. Now, it’s actually happening.”

Buttigieg said the program had funded more than 72,000 projects that created 16 million jobs, 700,000 in manufacturing. Those projects paved 207,000 miles of roads, upgraded 12,300 bridges and improved 1,500 airports across the country, he said.

“It’s created an American renaissance like I’ve not seen in my lifetime,” he said. “We are leaving the condition of America’s infrastructure better than we found it.”

After reviewing safety projects being developed by students and faculty at CMU’s National University Transportation Center, Buttigieg told reporters he’s proudest of his department’s work to reduce traffic deaths that spiked to the highest levels since the 1970s during the pandemic, when less traffic seemed to lead to more dangerous driving activities such as speeding, impaired driving and not wearing seat belts.

Buttigieg called for a National Roadway Safety Strategy in January 2022 that has brought deaths back under control, and the trend has gone down substantially since then. Eventually getting self-driving vehicles regularly on the nation’s roads — “the biggest improvement since cars were invented” — will help even more, he said, because humans “don’t have a great record” at following safe driving rules.

“Even though there’s a long way to go, those are some of the most important things anyone could hope to work for in transportation, and I’m proud to have had a hand in it,” he said. “It’s exciting to be present at the beginning.”

At the airport, he recalled a program there that provides on-site child care for construction workers and said he would like to see that become a regular part of worksites, public and private.

What’s next?

In a private interview, Buttigieg said he hasn’t had any direct contact with the incoming Trump administration, so he doesn’t know what the plans are once President Joe Biden’s five-year infrastructure program runs out. That’s why he has felt “a sense of urgency” in the past few weeks to make sure funds are committed before he leaves office, including nearly $5 billion announced Friday for a wide-ranging series of projects that include electric charging stations, reconnecting communities that were decimated by previous road projects, freight and passenger rail safety improvements, and airport projects.

Even with more than $2 trillion available, Buttigieg said, the department regularly got several hundred more applications for projects than it could pay for under many of the programs.

“If nothing else, you can see the need is great,” he said. “I hope they look at the success of the program. Infrastructure shouldn’t be a political issue.”

One of his greatest disappointments, Buttigieg said, is that Congress hasn’t passed the Railway Safety Act proposed by U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Fox Chapel, and others after the Norfolk Southern train derailment that spilled hazardous chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023. The bill would require additional inspections of railroad tracks in areas where trains carry hazardous materials and of railcars that carry those materials.

“We did our part,” Buttigieg said about administrative changes the Federal Railway Administration made to improve safety. “There’s no good reason Congress hasn’t passed it. It needs to happen.”

As for his future, Buttigieg said he has “a garage full of projects” waiting for his attention at his home in Michigan, and his 3½-year-old twins will get even more of his attention. They asked him to take a lot of pictures in Pittsburgh.

Beyond that?

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “I just know that I will always want to have a say on what goes on in this country.”