A Lifetime on the Move: Tyler Duvall's Lessons Learned from a Career in Transportation

Tyler Duvall--currently CEO and co-founder of Cavnue, an infrastructure company dedicated to building safer, more efficient roadways while adapting today's transportation network to the next generation of vehicles--has spent most of his professional lifetime in transportation. Having served in both the public and private sectors, Mr. Duvall brings a unique expertise to solving challenges faced by all kinds of system users. He sits down with Allan to discuss his multifaceted career, as well as his take on the best approach to transforming the U.S. transportation system to meet the needs of the 21st century. | More on Transforming Roads Unleashing Smart Technologies (TRUST)

Episode Transcript

Allan Rutter (00:14):
Howdy everyone, welcome to Thinking
Transportation, conversationsabout how we get ourselves and
the stuff we need from one placeto another.
I'm Allan Rutter with the TexasA&M Transportation Institute.
Today we have the chance tovisit with the national expert
in transportation policy andinnovation.

(00:34):
Tyler Duvall held a number ofimportant transportation policy
positions in the office of theSecretary of Transportation,
where we had the chance ofworking together, including
Assistant Secretary forTransportation Policy and Acting
Undersecretary for Policy.
He was a principalwith McKinsey and Company, and
most recently has been the CEOand now chairman of the board of

(00:55):
the SH 130 Concession Company,and is a co-founder and CEO of
Cavnue-- all of which we'll talkabout.
Tyler, welcome to ThinkingTransportation.

Tyler Duvall (01:05):
Great to see you again, Allan.
You look great.
Nothing's changed.

Allan Rutter (01:08):
Yeah, except a little grayer.

Tyler Duvall (01:11):
Yeah, we're all doing that.
So yeah.

Allan Rutter (01:13):
So now both of us have spent a lot of our careers
in transportation.
Tell our listeners a little bitabout your journey to the
subject.
Most specifically, how does ayoung lawyer in private
practice, just out of UVA LawSchool, make it to the USDOT?

Tyler Duvall (01:28):
Yeah, so you know, I did my three and a half years
of private practice, Allan.
I did my yeoman's work to sitat my desk all day, review
commercial agreements.
And then I, you know, I wasjust getting the itch.
I'm from Washington, D.C.,originally, had long watched the
big company called the federalgovernment operate and literally
got a call from a guy you knowwell, Emil Frankel, who'd been
nominated to be assistantsecretary, and he was kind of

(01:49):
scouring for third- or fourth-year associates at big law firms
to kind of be his specialassistant.
I didn't have a bigtransportation background.
This was 2001.
And literally the weekend I wasactually getting married, I
went and interviewed with Emilabout two and a half weeks after
9-11.
So you just remember that time.
It was fairly chaotic.
And the administration, who wascoming in, what were we doing,
what was going to happen withDOT was a huge question that I

(02:11):
obviously ended up getting towork on.
And I just fell in love withthe idea of the agency over the
next three or four months.
He and I interacted, and Ifinally said, you know what?
I don't want to be the lawyerthe rest of my life, and jumped
in.
And you know, the differentlevels of political appointees,
I was the lowest Schedule C.
What was really funny aboutthat, Allan, is at the time Emil
was not confirmed, and thenJeff Shane, the under-secretary,

(02:33):
was not confirmed, and wedidn't have a political deputy
assistant secretary either.
So unbeknownst to me, I was thehighest ranking political
appointee in the entire policyoffice.
And I did not use my powercorrectly.
I just started to do work onthe reauthorization, met you
know, guys like you, and reallyjust fell in love with the
agency, honestly, from day one.
It's the greatest agency, in myview, in the world.
And the last thing I'll say is,it's the only agency that you

(02:54):
can work on massive regulatoryquestions, massive operational
questions, huge financialquestions, all under one agency
umbrella.
And that's why I love it.
But that's my favorite agency.

Allan Rutter (03:04):
So now you mentioned a couple of impressive
names there, and you were partof a very impressive policy
shop.
George Schader, Emil Frankel,Jeff Shane.
How did working with that teamhelp you learn about that whole
multimodal transportationpolicy?
And how did that equip you formore senior roles as Secretary
Peters took over?

Tyler Duvall (03:24):
Yeah, I mean, honestly, just really lucky.
I mean, Jeff, George, Emil, andthen you know, Joel Szabat came
in, and then obviously MichaelJackson and his depth sec.
I was like, I mean, youliterally couldn't have in the
office of secretary JohnFlaherty, who ended up being a
good friend, chief of staff.
You just take those sixincredibly different
personalities with unbelievableexperience.
Emil ran a state highway agencyin Connecticut and was just an

(03:47):
incredible thinker, so creativearound problem solving and
transportation, but with more ofa surface lens.
Jeff had done the job alreadyin the federal government in the
prior Bush Administration.
And so when he came in andrecreated the undersecretary
role, he had this incredibleaviation background.
He's an icon.
Both Emil and Jeff were justicons.
And, you know, I just I didn'tknow a lot at the time, but I
knew these two guys knew whatthey were talking about.

(04:09):
George, you mentioned Georgeand I became great friends.
He was a career person forFederal Highway.
But, you know, just Emilidentified George as somebody
who knew everything about howthe building worked, but also
how to deploy projects in thereal world.
That practical experience thatGeorge had...
just dumb luck.
I fell into this littleequation that gave me all of
these different experiences.

(04:29):
And, you know, I just soaked itup.
And then honestly, you know,meeting you, Allan, and Mary;
Jim Simpson came in as sort of atransit administrator.
I mean, it was a uniquelyincredible team of people with
experiences, all of whom havedone great things, by the way,
since they've left as well.
So just dumb luck.
The one thing that was reallygreat is, I got tapped to really
help write the reauthorizationbill as this kind of junior kid.

(04:50):
You know, I got the pen.
We didn't have Chat GPT at thetime, so we actually had to do
real work.
And you know, I got to writethat and we had this process
that Jeff a nd Emilquarterbacked that you were
involved with.
Let's do a reallytransformational bill.
And I think SAFETEA-LU ended upbeing a pretty important moment
in transportation history.
So I respect how lucky I was.

Allan Rutter (05:08):
Well, you and me both walking into the conference
room with the other modaladministrators with Secretary
Mineta, I felt like a triple-Aball player called up to the
Yankees.
It's like, what am I doinghere?

Tyler Duvall (05:18):
Well, I felt like you know, a D3 college player.
So and, you know, I should'vementioned Secretary Mineta, like
changed my life--incredibleman.
Obviously, I was reallydistraught at his passing last
year, and he changed everything.
He took a bet on somebody whohad not had 20 years of
transportation experience.
So he and John just keptpromoting me.
I took a little bit of a policyapproach to my policy career,

(05:40):
which was just keep moving up.
In McKinsey, they call it "upor out." So you got, every two
years, you got to move up.
And luckily, I did seven- plusyears, and each time, every two
years I kind of moved up.
But that was Secretary Mineta,and then ultimately Mary Peters
taking a chance on me.
It's funny, it's really changedmy leadership approach.
My willingness to take chanceson particularly young people

(06:02):
coming up who, you know, theydon't have the 40 years of
experience.
I was like, look, I got giventhose chances.
So the way I run Cavnue isbattlefield promotions
everywhere.

Allan Rutter (06:11):
So yeah, I find that one of the ways you learn
leadership styles is to watchpeople around you and the guys
you enjoy working for, do moreof that.

Tyler Duvall (06:20):
Yeah, exactly.
The other thing is just how todelegate.
One of the things I never toldyou is, I observed you were such
a steady leader of an agencygoing through massive problems,
transformational issues, bigquestions about the agency, and
just the calmness and alsowillingness to delegate to
people that you believed in andtrusted who are deep experts on
topics.
I know that sounds trite, butthat administration had

(06:43):
everybody in all the keypositions sort of had that
approach, was my sense.

Allan Rutter (06:48):
So you mentioned the 2005 reauthorization bill.
One of the things that happenedas a result of that bill,
Congress said, Hey, we'd like tocreate this National Surface
Transportation Policy andRevenue Study Commission.
You know, you've got to have ablue ribbon commission to look
at stuff.
But as blue ribbon commissionsgo, there were a lot of powerful

(07:09):
people on there.
Tell us a little bit about whatit was like to create and help
steer that commission, workingalong with Secretary Peters.
And then what were some of themajor findings that the
commission produced, and thenhow much of what the commission
talked about actually has endedup in transportation policy?

Tyler Duvall (07:28):
Yeah, the last one's the toughest part of that
question.
I mean, look, obviouslyan incredible group of people.
By the way, it was not reallywell known, but we had two
commissions going on at the sametime.
I was tasked with managing bothof them in many ways.
And so we had the policy andrevenue commission, but then the
finance committee the Senate,I mean the banking committee, I
think basically it said go do afinance study.

(07:48):
So they had two committees thatwere pursuing, I'd say, in a
Venn diagram, about 80% of thesame fundamental questions.
So and we had very differentcasts of characters on both.
I mean, the policy and revenueone was obviously the more
well-known-- heavy hitters fromthe hill, senior executives,
people ran largest companies inthe country.
We had folks who ran OfficeDepot, Matt Rose.

(08:09):
It was a who's who intransportation.
What was really interestingabout where we were at the time,
Allan, is we were fundamentallypushing with the White House a
rethinking of the whole role ofthe federal government in
transportation, where the moneycomes from to adhere to that
role, and then how the federalgovernment interacts with state
and local governments toadminister transportation
programs.
We were aggressive about sayingthat this needed a fundamental

(08:32):
rethink.
And so we were trying throughour influence to kind of get the
commission to really thinkfundamentally.
Some members of the commissionwere very much of the mindset,
I'm not going to name names,which is like we just need more
money in the existing framework.
Other members were like, let'sblow this thing up.
Uh, we obviously needed tonavigate that, like any good
commission.
We forced a lot of compromisethrough that process, uh, came

(08:55):
out with some really importantrecommendations about unlocking
additional technology,additional investment from the
private sector, really focusingon system performance.
If you recall, in like theearly 2000s, our system was not
performing that great, but thisquestion of congestion safety,
it wasn't viewed as a crisis.
But you know, our view was it'snot working.
We have some real problemshere.

(09:15):
It's not ideal that we havepeople sitting hours a day in
every major metro area.
It's not ideal that we're stillseeing no movement on
fatalities, even as vehicletechnologies were skyrocketing
in terms of their deployments.
And so we were stuck in thissituation where we're like, we
want to build on successes, butwe don't want to declare that
what we're doing today is theright thing.
And so that's always achallenge when you have that

(09:36):
problem framing.
And I think, like I said, thethings that really changed was
really the growing role of stategovernment, growing role for
performance.
We're gonna use performance.
Everyone uses it now, like hey,KPIs, like that was not a
thing.
Like people in transportationwere focused on planning,
construction, delivery, andmaintenance of assets.
And we said, you know, as youknow, from the railroad sector,

(09:56):
like that's important, but onceyou build stuff, you actually
got to maintain it and operateit efficiently.
And candidly, I think some ofthe experiences, and Matt Rose
and I had my favoriteconversations, taking some of
the lessons of acapital-intensive sector like
the freight railroad industryand how they operationally
transform their business modelspost-deregulation into the road
system.
That was my biggest interest asa policy person is how do we

(10:19):
take these lessons ofelectricity, railroads,
pipelines that have seen thisinnovation and tech and
operations and bring it intoroadways.
By the way, which is why I'mdoing what I'm doing today, that
same interest.
So I think overall, I would giveit a B- plus in terms of the
recommendations and a D - minusin terms of those things
actually getting done in thereal world.
We have seen it much slowerthan I would have wanted.

(10:41):
It just takes time.
I mean, I was very impatient.
I'm now 52.
I was a lot younger then.
I was very impatient.
It was kind of like we need tosee this move faster, you know,
let's move.
Truth is, moving stategovernment, moving local
stakeholders is a long, longfight.
You've been in that, you know,your whole career.
It just takes persistence.
By the way, that's the otherthing I learned is as a naive

(11:03):
kid coming into Washington,you're like, yeah, we're going
to change everything tomorrow.
It's like, you got to do it theright way, you got to sustain
and be relentless.
But those two commissions,they're still, if you read them
now, you're like, there's...
sounds like a lot of the samethings need to be done.

Allan Rutter (11:16):
So yeah, we'll talk at the conclusion about
we're near the end of anotherreauthorization cycle and what
that looks like.
I agree that one of the majorfeatures that you described,
which is mainstreamed intotransportation, both programming
and planning, is thatperformance management thing.
We have seen that at state DOTsacross the country.

(11:37):
Some are a lot more explicitand transparent about it than
others, but everybody has toconsider not just what are you
building, but how is it working?

Tyler Duvall (11:48):
Well, look, Allan, I gotta say-- TTI, you know,
VTTI-- the push from entitieslike that to not just talk about
the planning and constructionside of transportation, but
bringing policy people,performance people, operations
experts into the world you're innow...
like that was huge becauseplaces like TTI are huge
influencers on state and federalgovernment, like just the

(12:11):
problem statement.
Like, you know, what are weworking on?
One of the things Emil reallyinstilled in me is just this
huge belief in research andsupport for research
communities, and they really dochange the question that people
care about in the policy arena.
So we funded a lot of research.
I'm a huge advocate of researchbecause I don't think we can
have an adequate debate aboutstuff without that.

Allan Rutter (12:32):
So after your DOT, you went to McKinsey, aside
from learning how to producereports and landscape
orientation as opposed toportrait, what kinds of projects
and initiatives did you get towork on during your tenure
there?

Tyler Duvall (12:46):
Yeah, it was an incredible experience.
I did 10 years.
You know, when I left, I waslike, I don't want to go back
and practice law.
My father was a lawyer, hisfather was a lawyer.
It's like the Seinfeld episode,his mother was a mother, his
father was a mother.
So like, I was like, I don'twant to go back and do that.
And McKinsey at the time wasreally interested in building an
infrastructure practice.
They didn't have one that wasdedicated.
The firm had focused on servingconstruction engineering

(13:08):
companies, increasingly servingpublic sector entities that own
these assets, but not reallyfocused on the fundamental
infrastructure question.
How do we plan it, deliver it,and operate it?
And so actually, the head ofMcKinsey at the time, a
guy named Dominic Barton, whowas a real transformational
leader, he called me personallythat they were going to launch
this thing.
I'd gotten to know the McKinseyteam through some work they
were doing with a client inSouth America.

(13:29):
By the way, just one caveat.
McKinsey, we don't talk aboutour clients unless it's public
record.
So I can't reveal a lot ofthose confidence, but the
projects I worked on wereincredible across the
world--Middle East, in India, inthe United States, obviously,
in South America-- really onliterally every question you
could think of ininfrastructure.
How do we organize our teams?
How do we deploy in-the-fieldtechnologies better?

(13:49):
How do we frankly have anactual strategy around asset
deployment and maintenance?
I mean, all these bigquestions.
The one thing I got to work onat the end of my career was
really fascinating was therestructuring of the island of
Puerto Rico that had gonethrough a bankruptcy.
Congress had to create its ownlaw associated with effectively
an island like territory goingbankrupt called ProMesa.

(14:10):
And we were hired by theoversight board that was
effectively a federal oversightboard to restructure all of the
debt and put a fiscal plan inplace for the future.
That was a phenomenalexperience.
I spent about my final year anda half to two years in McKinsey
working with about 50 otherMcKinsey folks on that.
So I mean, what I love aboutMcKinsey is the training around

(14:31):
these big fundamental questionsand how to think about them, how
to attack them, how to analyzethem.
Obviously, Michael Jackson hasa quote-- Michael Jackson,
Allan-- has a quote that healways used about PowerPoint.
I'm sure you've heard it.
You know, power corrupts andPowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
So I use that line all thetime, and I do attribute it to
him.
But uh, you know, McKinsey, Iwent deep into the PowerPoint

(14:52):
world.
You know, I started at aboutseven or eight years in,
starting to feel like I wasreaching another inflection
point in my career, and I reallywanted to run something.
And I loved advising CEOs andsenior people and government on
things to do.
But you know, you've been in achair where you're actually
running things.
It does feel different to bethe decision maker versus the
advisor.
And I just got to the pointwhere I was like, I think I'm

(15:14):
ready to do something else.
But the training around how tomake decisions effectively is
the best in the world atMcKinsey.
And I will always cherish mytime there and my colleagues as
well.

Allan Rutter (15:25):
Well, it sounds like one of the things, after
having watched really, reallysmart people at USDOT, this
offered you some additional waysof, this is how we think about
things.
I'm not a lawyer, I'm not anengineer either.
So I kind of come at thingsfrom a slightly different angle
than many of my engineers hereat TTI.
But it sounds like anotherarrow in your quiver was to help

(15:48):
you think about how to thinkabout things differently.

Tyler Duvall (15:50):
Yeah, not through any grand career plan, by the
way.
I always tell young people,like, take the next chance,
listen to yourself a little bit.
Everyone says trust your gut.
But I think the key is to getoutside your comfort zone.
In a strange way, Allan, mycareer has kind of been the
inverse of others.
McKinsey taking a chance on mewas something I'll never forget.

Allan Rutter (16:09):
So you mentioned you were open to the opportunity
of actually running something.
So you moved to the SH-130concession company.
Tell us a little bit about whatthat is and what it was like
having thought about policy,having helped people think about
how to do stuff.
To now you've got somethingthat you're responsible for.

Tyler (16:30):
Yeah, I'll never forget, I was actually in Puerto Rico,
about to head to a clientmeeting, get a call from a
headhunter, basically saying,Hey, you know, there's this road
down in Texas called StateHighway 130.
It's basically a specialpurpose company that operates a
41-mile stretch of roadwayoutside Austin.
I was like, Yeah, yeah, I knowit.
I knew that.
When we were at the department,that project was talked about a

(16:50):
lot.
The time there was a TIFIA loanthat had been put on the
project.
And he's like, Well, they'relooking for a CEO.
I was like, okay, that'sinteresting.
And he talked about the owner,which is a company called
Strategic ValuePartners--phenomenal entity that
was really focused ondistressed assets with a little
bit of a focus oninfrastructure, industrial
assets.
So very unique company, verysmart, talented private -equity

(17:12):
firm.
Went up, did the interviews inGreenwich, Connecticut, and was
kind of like, this sounds alittle strange to leave being a
partner in McKinsey to go dothis, but I started to look at
Texas.
I mean, I my grandfather wasfrom Anson, Texas, by the way.
He was a big football star fromAnson, which is a very small
town near Midland.
Anyway, so I had always beenkind of intrigued by Texas as a

(17:33):
thing.
And when I was in the BushAdministration, we worked with
TxDOT extensively on, I mean,they were building so much stuff
in Texas, as you know.
So I just started to look at, Ilooked at that road, I was like,
this is incredible potential ofthis asset.
And it was, you know, goingthrough distress.
It had a major reconstructionchallenge.
The road had been built inCentral Texas soils that move
around quite a bit.
The builder, you know, I thinkmissed some of that movement.

(17:55):
And so we had a hugereconstruction challenge.
So I looked at this mess of asituation, and this was in late
2018, and I was like, you knowwhat?
This would be awesome.
It's 40 people, you know, 75%of those people work on the road
every day.
We had a small corporate team,but I needed to build a team
from scratch.
I need to take over adistressed situation, need to
figure out how to stabilize thecompany, deal with a private

(18:17):
equity owner.
And then the real irony ofironies is one-third of the
company is owned by the federalgovernment.
The US Department ofTransportation is on our board.
And the TIFIA program, now theBuild America Bureau, is our
board member, a guy named DuaneCallender, who many of the folks
will know here.
So they were on our board, andI was like, this is awesome.
So I literally just picked...
I commuted from Alexandria forabout a year, and I loved it,

(18:40):
Allan.
It was an incredible experienceto run a road.
You've run big things.
And like I said, I went fromlike high-level policy to like,
you know, who's getting the deeror the snake or the pig off the
road today, you know?
It's like...
which I loved.
I mean, I was like, this isawesome.
And really thinking about howto change the trajectory of a
company with a very set ofspecific challenges, bring

(19:02):
trucks onto the road.
So I fell in love with it.
And then, you know, COVID hitand everything changed at that
point.
Like I said, it was a veryunique challenge around an asset
class that I knew a lotabout...
but the road's doing great.
I mean, it's been an incredibleturnaround story.
I think it's top three or fourfastest growing routes in the
country.

Allan Rutter (19:18):
I think the thing that struck me, we both went
from a policy leadership thingto actually running uh the
actual road.
I went to North Texas TollwayAuthority.
The thing that struck me washow many people keep running
into stuff and breaking things.

Tyler Duvall (19:33):
Yes.

Allan Rutter (19:33):
It's like I joined NDTA when they still had toll
booths and the camera shots thatwe had of people just blowing
through toll booths, runninginto them, running into
guardrails.
I mean, it's, it's a constantthing.
People traveling too fast andthe fact that you have to go fix
that stuff.

Tyler Duvall (19:50):
Well, look, I mean, your leadership on NDTA
was a big deal because Iactually think to your point
about our backgrounds beingsimilar, like I'm not an
engineer either.
I didn't build roads myself,but you know, I do think our
personalities all lump ustogether here running these
enterprises.
You ask different questions,you focus on a little slightly
different set of problems.
And, you know, like you, likeme, very interested in, like,

(20:11):
innovation and how do we createperformance conditions to get
better outcomes.
NDTA became, thanks to you andothers, obviously that worked
for you, a real poster child ofhow to run an organization that
people don't think of ascomplex, but it's really
complicated.
I mean, the roadways are a lotmore complicated than people
realize.

Allan Rutter (20:30):
So shortly after joining the SH-130 guys,
Sidewalk Labs, part of, I guess,Google?

Tyler Duvall (20:37):
Yeah, so Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners.
So Sidewalk Labs was a ventureled initially by Google.
There was a crew of folks,great man, a guy named Dan
Doctoroff, who was the deputymayor of New York for many years
under Michael Bloomberg.
He pioneered this idea calledSidewalk Labs.
So it was really kind of aninnovation platform to get
technology into, particularly,metro areas.

(20:59):
They had a huge project inToronto they were working on for
many years, but really creativeset of products and ideas to
put into urbanized areas.
There's a couple of guys thatwere part of that that really
wanted to focus on investinginto asset classes and companies
that were really at theintersection of infrastructure
and technology.
So they broke out and formedsomething called Sidewalk

(21:19):
Infrastructure Partners.
And there was always arelationship with Sidewalk Labs,
but was a different company.
But they approached me in 2020.
So COVID hit in March of '20, asyou know.
I went home to Alexandria.
I'll never forget we, you know,we closed the office March
11th, had dinner in Austinliterally the night before with
one of these guys from SidewalkInfrastructure.
I actually thought they wantedto work with us on the road.

(21:41):
I didn't know they wereactually looking to find a CEO
to launch a new company.
And so, you know, through thatsummer, I talked to SUP, the
owners of the, of the toll roadsession, really about you know
where I was and you know, livingin Alexandria, Virginia,
running a toll road in Austin,Texas-- probably not ideal.
Nobody knew, as you know, inlike June of 2020 when the world

(22:04):
was going to reopen.
And so, you know, I startedtalking to them.
I said, Look, I think we needto get a Texas CEO down there.
I've also been approached aboutdoing something else.
You know, I think it's awin-win for you all to get
somebody in here.
I'll help with whatevertransition you need, as long as
you need, but pretty excitedabout launching this new thing
too.
Anyway, they were so graciousto me and they said, Why don't

(22:25):
you stay on as the chairman ofthe company?
And so as part of thetransition out as CEO, I became
chairman in September of 2020,the day that we launched Cavnue,
effectively, I joined Cavnue.
So I was the first employee,and we'll get into all that.
But that was how thattransition worked.
I'm still the co-chair now withanother great transportation
leader, Jennifer Ahmed, who youprobably know Jen well.

(22:46):
She and I are the co-chair ofthis toll road in Texas, and
it's been great.
And we just hired anothertransportation legend, uh,
Ananth Prasad, who ran FloridaDOT as our CEO.
So we got a lot of things.

Allan Rutter (22:57):
Yeah, that's some talent right there.

Tyler Duvall (22:59):
Yes.
And then yeah, we launchedCavnue.
And as I said, it's beenincredible.
I mean, Cavnue really is kindof the culmination of what my
career passions are, Allan.
Really, just this idea ofinnovation and these big complex
assets.
Like that's been my passion.

Allan Rutter (23:13):
So as I understand it, Cavnue has two major
projects they're looking at, oneon State Highway 130 and one in
Michigan on I-94.
Talking about those twoprojects might help our
listeners understand about whatthe company is.

Tyler Duvall (23:28):
Yeah, absolutely.
So we founded a company withtwo basic problem statements.
One is "current transportationsystem roadways perform poorly,"
as we talked about earlier inthe podcast.
Congestion, operationalproblems, safety, maintenance
challenges.
This is not a high-performingasset class.
People were unhappy with it.
And we thought technology couldreally do a lot more to

(23:49):
disrupt.
Obviously, there have been apush for intelligent
transportation systems.
I chaired the ITS managementcouncil when I was at DOT.
This kind of idea of injectingtechnology into, particularly,
roadways was a real passion ofmine.
And so that was problemstatement one, which is like we
just need more of this.
And with frankly, software andemerging AI coming, it was like

(24:09):
this is way overdue fordisruption.
But problem statement two wasthe catalyst.
Like-- and you always you kindof always need two problem
statements to have a really bigthing on--so there's like a
foundational problem statement,and then there's like what's the
catalyst?
Problem statement two was that"we're about to see all of these
advanced vehicles enter intothat chaotic arena." So, you
know, it's not performing welltoday, and we're about to see

(24:31):
level three autonomy, hands off,eyes off.
We're seeing robotaxis in SanFrancisco and Austin.
We're starting to see levelfour trucking, which is fully
autonomous trucking in Texasbetween Dallas and Houston.
And so it was like we got tothink about how do we accelerate
that, make it safer, andfrankly, give more look-ahead

(24:52):
information to those advancedvehicles.
They can only see what they cansee on the road.
That's you know, 300 meters.
So those two problem statementseffectively collided, and we
said, let's go deploy anintegrated platform onto
roadways, hardware, that'ssensing, backward fiber, power,
edge compute, all of the stuffthat you can do now on the road.

(25:12):
And then software obviously isthe backbone, the insights
around what we're observing onthe road.
That integration platform isvery different than any other
business in the ITS space.
And we launched it in Michiganin 2020 in a project on I-94,
which connects Detroit and AnnArbor.
So if any of you in Michigan,you go out, you come out of the
Detroit airport, you turn right,there's this kind of lane

(25:34):
that's sitting there out ofnowhere.
It's a new lane, it looksdifferent, and there's sensors
everywhere.
That's our first test bed,first deployment, about three
miles, to basically train all ofour models around exactly how
to solve these problems ofincident detection, debris in
the roadway, dangerous drivingconditions, water on the road,
all the stuff that causes riskin the system, Allan, and

(25:57):
basically help really identifyit and solve it much more
quickly is the basic idea.

Allan Rutter (26:02):
Well, as you talked about the need for making
infrastructure be intelligent,we spend an awful lot of money
to put pavement that's going tolast for a long time.
And we put structures and wehelp people stay on the road,
and we help, you know, here'slane markings, here's what you
need to do.
But the notion of actuallybuilding into that very
expensive piece ofinfrastructure information about

(26:25):
what's happening on it.
That's sort of, oh yeah, weshould probably do something
about it.

Tyler Duvall (26:30):
Yeah.
Well, I mean, as I said, therailroad industry is really a
pioneer in some of that thinkingwhere you have these horizontal
asset classes where you need toknow what's going on.
You know, you're operatingthem, you're maintaining them.
I mean, the air traffic controlfunction, we kind of view
ourselves as a bottoms-upversion of an air traffic
control function.
You would never let planesenter, like, New York airspace
without knowing where the otherplanes were or what was

(26:52):
happening in that environment.
There's just an operationalimperative.
I think there's the sameimperative in roadways, but for
a variety of reasons, societyhas just never demanded it or
thought about it.
Part of it is the technologywasn't available.
And the other is the benefitswere not shown.
So I think technology isclearly available now, and
benefits I think starting to beobvious.
And so, to your point, we lovethis dig once idea.

(27:15):
Like if you're gonna goreconstruct a roadway, and we've
got another project in somevery large southern states
beyond the ones you mentioned,which we can get into.
But you know, basically, ifyou're gonna reconstruct the
road, put fiber power sensing,put all that into the roadway
when you do it.
Incremental cost, Allan, isliterally two to four percent.
So for hundreds of millions ofdollars that we're gonna spend

(27:36):
on reconstructing roadways, thisis a very simple addition to
those projects.
Yes, it's still real money.
I'm not downplaying that, butit's cost-benefit of having that
permanent infrastructure inthere is massive.

Allan Rutter (27:47):
So let's talk a little bit about one of the
things TTI has been doing forabout the last year or so is, we
helped lead one of three majorvehicle to infrastructure grants
from Federal Highway.
What are the some of thesimilarities and distinctions in
what Cavnue is building inTexas and Michigan and what FHWA
and USDOT are thinking aboutV2X?

(28:09):
Are they similar?
What's different?

Tyler Duvall (28:12):
I think we view ourselves as a system integrator
to unlock V2X and frankly anycommunication platform from
roadside to vehicle and back.
So we are agnostic, we hope V2Xtakes off.
It's a great concept.
I've been working on it,effectively, for 20 years, off
and on.
There's obviously this chicken-and- the- egg problem around
equipping vehicles that don'tget any information off what you

(28:33):
know, why are we putting stuffin a vehicle if nothing's coming
into that?
So, you know, it costs 300bucks to add a hardware
component to a vehicle thatdoesn't get any information, an
auto manufacturer will say thatdoesn't make economic sense.
So there's achicken-and-the-egg problem.
We view ourselves as actuallyhelping break that problem a
little bit because once weprovide information off the
roadway, whether it's V2 X orcloud-to-cloud communication

(28:54):
from our system to a truckingcompany's cloud platform, all it
really is about is latency andaccuracy.
So, like, how quickly are yougetting that information and how
accurate and can you trust it?
So we are viewing ourselves asthe trusted, very high-speed
provider of information off theroadway.
Hopefully that accelerates V2X, and TTI definitely is a

(29:14):
leader there.
But I want to build a companythat's dependent on a bunch of
other companies making otherinvestments.
I want to build a company thatdelivers benefits today to
roadway operators.
So whether it's humans, Level 3vehicles, Level 4, a traffic
management center in Austin...
all of those people willbenefit from having this
information.

Allan Rutter (29:32):
There are a whole bunch of different places we can
go with that.
Let me focus on the StateHighway 130 element.
Once the Texas Department ofTransportation moved all of its
offices to Southeast Austin nextto the airport, I found myself
using State Highway 130 a lotmore.

Tyler Duvall (29:47):
But for you, yeah [laughter]...

Allan Rutter (29:49):
Yeah, pay the man.
And have noticed an awful lotof construction on the median
that's happening, not justadding lanes and those kind of
things, but adding equipment.
What kind Of features will thatdo?
And how will that help StateHighway 130 run the road better?
And how will that create anenvironment in which automated

(30:10):
trucks can leverage the kinds oftechnology that they have on
board?

Tyler Duvall (30:14):
Yeah, absolutely.
So, you know, we want acompetitive procurement by the
way.
It was a coincidence to yourcomment.
Like they basically selectedthe northern segments of 130,
given the increase of truckvolumes.
Obviously, I knew the quartervery well, but you know, the
segment that we're now deployingon is up near Pflugerville,
segment two, and it'seffectively a four-mile stretch.
You go out there for thoseTexans, you can drive, you'll

(30:35):
see poles, you know, every 200meters, and it will be the most
advanced road sensing platformin the world along a stretch of
highway in Central Texas.
And so what that means is weare turning the power on
literally as we speak.
I just got off the phonewith TxDOT.
We're working through somefinal stages of contractor
delivery, but the poles arethere, the power, the fiber's
there.
And effectively, the way TxDOTrefers to it is, they built the

(30:57):
Christmas tree.
We're hanging the lights.
So all of our lights are thesensing equipment and the got a
basically a mini data center onthe roadway around these poles.
And what's really gonna happen,Allan, is you're gonna have
full visibility for thatfour-mile stretch over
everything happening on 130 withrespect to hazards, slow
traffic, weaving activity, risksthat they're not getting
captured right now becausethey're just not the right

(31:19):
insights or eyes on the road.
That information could beprovided and will be provided to
drivers, including trucks, on alook- ahead basis.
So eventually we'll have abroadcast through
TxDOT itself or directly to the trucking companies to say, hey, you've got a tire four meters into the left lane 3.7miles ahead.
Not the general warnings theyget today, many of which are

(31:42):
highly inaccurate, just so youknow, which says "debris ahead."
Like, "debris ahead," if you'regoing 70 miles an hour as a
truck, is not that helpful.
You pay a little moreattention, but "tire left lane
four meters in at this exactspot," that's pretty helpful
information, particularly to anadvanced vehicle, but obviously
to a human.
So initially we're gonna streamit to some humans.

(32:02):
We got a number of truckingcompanies that are gonna partner
with us to receive thatinformation.
They're gonna pick some oftheir drivers to test it out.
The good thing about thetrucking industry, Allan, is
that technology on board isaccelerated a lot, as you know,
a lot of it because of federalregulations.
So there's now a data feed,effectively, into the cabin of
trucks.
And so all you need to do nowis just tap that pipe that's

(32:23):
already going into the driveraround different things, and you
just provide betterinformation.
One of the concerns with, like,Waze is that you know you've
got almost too much interaction.
You're asking people to makedecisions that, like live, like
is this here?
Is it like that?
It's better than nothing, bythe way, significantly better
than nothing.
But you know, we think this isa step change in information
fidelity and accuracy and speed.

(32:44):
And I think hopefully it'sgonna be the poster child for
TxDOT to deploy this.
The way I say it is, let's godigitize the triangle.
We have this huge opportunityto work with TxDOT in Dallas and
Houston as well, to franklystart to digitize this whole
network.
The analogy I gave recently wasyou know, Herb Kelleher created
Southwest Airlines-- the famousnapkin.

(33:04):
For those of you who don'tknow, just Google "Herb Kelleher
napkin." You know, he washaving some cocktails with a
pilot buddy.
They started this amazing thingcalled Southwest Airlines off
of a napkin that drew the threecities of Dallas, San Antonio,
and Houston.
And I was like, our version ofthat is a digitized napkin.
So that's basically what Ithink we want to do.

Allan Rutter (33:24):
Well, looking forward to it as it comes online
and being able to see some ofthe products that it produces,
having been able to be on boardsome of the autonomous trucks
that are operating on I-45, theamazing amount of vision those
things have, far beyond line ofsight."

Tyler Duvall (33:44):
Yeah.

Allan Rutter (33:44):
Taking advantage of built-in mapping of what
those three lanes should looklike, and then live traffic as
it happens.

Tyler Duvall (33:53):
Well, so you just hit on something really
important, which is I mean, it'sincredible what the L4 industry
is doing.
I mean, you know, obviouslyAurora and Kodiak are too, I
mean, it's just unbelievabletalent.
And we view ourselves asbasically an accelerant and a
risk mitigant to support thoseactivities.
Like, you know, they're notbuilding their companies
dependent on us, and we don'twant them to be.
But to your point, there's somuch variability in the roadway

(34:17):
environment.
Like, work zones get a lot ofattention.
A slight change in the workzone from Thursday to Friday is
a problem around uncertaintyassociated with look-ahead
information.
Why is that not being pipedimmediately to the autonomous
truck?
Like, we know what the workzone is from the spot of the
work zone.
And so I feel like this ideathat we can help accelerate and

(34:37):
de-risk, particularly for thethings beyond where they see,
and to prevent a lot of theharsh braking, the swerving, the
need for like aggressivemitigation, because that
aggressive mitigation causesoperational problems for
everyone else on the road, bythe way.
So there's...
these are interconnectedproblems with trucks.
Texas is obviously way ahead interms of deploying supporting

(34:58):
infrastructure, but we think wecould go even further.

Allan Rutter (35:01):
So talk on some of that automated vehicle thing.
Earlier in 2025, the TexasLegislature enacted some
additional regulations forautomated trucking and robotaxis
to allow for driverlessoperations.
Everybody was saying we'regoing to do it.
I think the legislature said,um, we probably want to know a
little more than we know now.
So they created a structure forthat.

(35:22):
And like you said, some ofthese trucks have been operating
on Texas highways.
What do you see as the near-and long-term feature of
autonomous vehicles, both overthe road and in urban areas,
both near-term and longer term?

Tyler Duvall (35:38):
Yeah, look, I mean, I think obviously you got
three different market segments.
You got robo taxis, you gotLevel 4 trucking, and then you
have Level 3 passenger car.
Robo taxis is very focused onreally transforming urban
transportation.
I'm in Austin all the time.
It's incredible to see, andjust so much innovation.
Obviously, Tesla's now enteringinto that game.
That's just gonna proliferate.
They're gonna get smarter andsmarter.

(35:59):
You've seen the maps over whereyou can actually operate these
robotaxis, they'll continue togrow incrementally.
The compute power...
hopefully will costs will comedown, LIDAR costs will come
down.
Obviously, there's a big debateover LIDAR versus machine
vision.
I'm not gonna pick a horse inthat race, but it's great to
have multiple bets as anAmerican.
It's good to have all thosebets being made.
So I think it's exciting.

(36:20):
I mean, it's really gonnadisrupt the Uber and Lyft
business models in very excitingways.
I'm not in the camp thateveryone's gonna abandon their
cars in 10 years, by the way,but that seems a little
unlikely knowing Americans; butit's gonna really change travel.
It's also gonna change the waywe think about the value of time
in a vehicle.
There have been a lot of betsmade around people's willingness
to pay for time savings.

(36:41):
I don't know how disruptivethat is.
If I could be doing this callright now in my robo taxi in
Austin, for example, like that'sa little bit different.
My time is different there.
So I think that one seems to beon a great trajectory.
Obviously, they'll start to getout onto the limited access
highways, but I think thebiggest disruption in the next
five years is gonna be Level 3passenger vehicle.
All the big OEMs are gonna rollout platforms that basically

(37:02):
allow you to drive hands off,eyes off.
So it's not a robo taxi, butit's a car that you can sit and
we could do this call in thatcar as well.
Those are getting mainlined.
Those actually, I think, wouldreally benefit from supportive
infrastructure on high-speedroadways because they will
disengage if they see somethingin the roadway, there's a
problem on the road.
Our initial idea was we canreally unlock level three on

(37:25):
high-speed corridors like 35 and130-- 20, 30, 40 mile trips
people can take effectively likea train in their vehicle.
So I think Level 3 is reallyexciting.
If you just Google Level 3 or"hands off, eyes off, " you'll
see every manufacturer makingannouncements about that.
And then Level 4 trucking, it'sgonna change everything about
the supply chain long term.

(37:46):
It's taking a long time,obviously, to get the full
driver out, just given some ofthe constraints.
But I have no doubt thetechnology is there and it's
gonna get deployed broadly.
The real big policy question,putting our old hats back on,
Allan, is, how do we deal withthis massive geographic
disparity between where thistrucking is available and not?
So as of right now, there arenot any plans, I don't think, to

(38:06):
deploy this north of Oklahoma.
And they'll probably spend thenext three to five years focused
almost entirely on Texas.
But what does that mean?
I don't know.
Like what happens to, you know,Michigan's economy if, you
know, all the trucking in Texasis autonomous and none of it is
in Michigan.
Like, I don't know.
Like, it's these are bigquestions that are not fully
answered.

Allan Rutter (38:25):
So well, and to be fair, there are all kinds of
reasons why that's beingexperimented on in Texas.

Tyler Duvall (38:30):
Yeah.

Allan Rutter (38:31):
Part of it is a legislative framework that is
fairly open.
Part of it is we don't have awhole lot of ice and snow.
Weather conditions are prettygood, the roadway conditions
themselves are pretty good,relatively modest grades.
I can understand why they wouldchoose some of the lanes that
they are.
As they make some progress inthat, the next steps, and maybe

(38:54):
this is one of the things thatthe I-94 project will help
people think through is asdifferent weather conditions in
the rest of the part of thecountry that you have to operate
trucking through all the timebecause everybody wants their
stuff all the time, that's gonnahelp push those Level 4s into
environments that they're not inright now.

Tyler Duvall (39:15):
Exactly.
No, and I think that's great.
And by the way, our view is,our technology platform can help
spread the wealth, so to speak,of autonomy faster.
One of the projects that wehave now going is in Georgia,
coming out of the port ofSavannah.
There's a drayage route calledDean Forest Road.
That's about a six-mileconnector route from the port of
Savannah to I-16.
I-16 is, I think, the fastestgrowing distribution quarter in

(39:38):
the United States.
Hyundai's North Americanoperation and plants are there,
massive facilities from Maerskand Amazon.
So that six-mile stretch is aperfect drayage route.
Now, there's signals, it's kindof a mess.
There are 5,000 trucks a daygoing on this little road.
And so this is a new kind ofdeployment, but I do think
automation into those firstmile/ last mile environments is

(40:00):
right around the corner.
It feels very solvable givencurrent technology.
So we're going to help GDOTpioneer some stuff there next
year.

Allan Rutter (40:09):
So Georgia, Texas, and Florida, and Virginia have
been states that have been,probably over that last 20 years
of both of our careers, a lotmore assertive on public-private
partnerships or P3s.

Tyler Duvall (40:22):
Yeah.

Allan Rutter (40:22):
What benefits come from P3 both development, from
project delivery and fromfinancing?

Tyler Duvall (40:30):
Yeah.
So look, I mean, we've hadmultiple iterations of the P3
movement in the U.S.
As you said, like when we werein government, 85% of the P3
deals were Texas and Virginia.
And we built out a whole roadsystem in Dallas and Houston and
Austin and Northern Virginia,where I live.
I can literally get from anyspot from Alexandria, Virginia,
to Dulles Airport to downtownwith an express lane now.

(40:51):
I mean, it's incredible, it'stransformed Northern Virginia.
People don't even realize it.
Maryland, unfortunately, hasnot done any of these.
I grew up in Maryland and wedidn't do any of those.
Virginia now has door-to-door30 miles, 30 minutes every day
in the most congested drivermarket in the country.
People don't even realizethrough the unlock of economic
value that's happened there.
It's similar to Dallas, right?
So they've changed the world,those kinds of public-private

(41:13):
partnerships.
Obviously, the ability toefficiently deliver
infrastructure, to price it, todesign it, to have this tension
between design, build, operate,and maintain.
These are all trade-offs.
When you bid out a projectthat's designed, bid, built,
operation, maintain, you losesome of that integration fight.
Obviously, that deliversprojects too.
I'm not saying that's not a wayto deliver, but there are

(41:33):
benefits associated withintegrating a design that's
Cadillac, for example, thatcosts more money to operate and
maintain or to finance.
That's that's not something youwant to do.
You want tension there, whetherthe government imposes that
tension through its own processor through a P3-- lots of
debates on that.
Obviously, I was a bigproponent of the country pushing
forward experimentation ofthat, Allan.

(41:54):
And I think I think it's shownthat it did a lot.
Now, obviously, there's been abacklash in a number of states.
My own interest increasingly,though, is new kinds of
partnership.
I think we've solved a way toprocure a big P3.
If Texas wanted to do it, theycould do it.
Georgia just did the largest P3ever done, in Atlanta.
Nashville and Tennessee areabout to do five of them.
So if you want to do it, it'sgreat.

(42:14):
There's a whole model now to doit.
I'm really interested in theservices side of it, the
operation side.
And I think what we need todevelop is a new kind of P3
around advanced technologyservices in operations.
And so, you know, I have a bitof a vision for like a 10- to
15- year relationship,performance-based.
So TxDOT-- which by the way, inour RFP that they put out--

(42:34):
laid out all these KPIs for whatthe system has to do.
So you tell the private sector,this is what I want in terms of
accuracy, latency, performance.
Put that out, let the privatesector figure it out, and then
the services fee effectively istied to whether the system
performs and achieves outcomes.
And if that was a 10- to 15-year contract, Allan, you could

(42:55):
finance hundreds or thousands ofmiles of roadway.
That promise from TxDOT or FDOTor VDOT to say we will pay for
these high-speed, high-riskquarters to get outfitted with
tech, you got to deliver, that'sa scalable concept.
We've never done P3s like thatin the U.S., but I'm pretty
bullish on it.
And I think we're cheap.

(43:16):
Like, our cost relative toreconstructing roadways is a
lot cheaper.
So that's one of my bigconversations with state leaders
is, think about procurement oftechnology and using, you know,
it doesn't need to be a 50-yearP3, but it needs to be
substantial enough to unlock thecapital benefits.

Allan Rutter (43:33):
So that gets us to my final question, which is to
talk about what we look forwardto in a surface transportation
bill.
The current one we have isexpiring next September.
The Infrastructure Jobs Actthat we have now was one of the
only surface transportationauthorizations that actually
happened without multipleextensions.

(43:54):
September 2026, two months inadvance of a mid-year, midterm
election.
I'm not sure that gets done.
But as we think about what thatlooks like, if someone were to
give you a fully functioningHarry Potter -style wand, where
you could have three whacks atit, what three things would you
like to see in a surfacetransportation bill?

Tyler Duvall (44:15):
Yeah, I think number one is just, you know,
we've done NEPA delegation, andthat's worked extremely well,
where states have assumedcontrol of the environmental
process, obviously subject tosome federal oversight, but
really driving that day-to-day.
That is applicable to the wholeprogram, in my view.
I think we're at a point wherestates have built up their own
mechanisms to deliver projects,procure them, environmentally

(44:36):
regulate them.
The federal government, in myview, has gotten way too much
into the process and oversightgame without really focusing on
outcomes.
I always say to people like, astate DOT could put forward a
plan that says we're going torepave the exact same road with
all of our federal money overand over and over again.
That's our plan.
That's what we want to do.
The only federal question aroundthat would be have you gone

(44:57):
through the 680 steps requiredby us to make sure that you do
that the right way?
We put out a framework for abill at the end of the Bush
Administration, really about anew platform concept for
restructuring the federal statepartnership around performance.
So, my own view, the number oneidea would be to block rent all
of the funding, put in place aperformance program, delegate

(45:19):
all of the regulatorypre-construction stuff to
states, assuming they haveprocesses in place to do that,
and ask the big fundamentalquestions, which is, Are we
driving performance outcomes?
Are we focused on efficiency,cost, project delivery, safety,
congestion, and environmentalquestions?
Like, are we doing that?
Is this program moving theneedle?
It's a big investment for thefederal government to never ask

(45:42):
any questions about what are wedoing with the money, other than
are you complying with these 40requirements?
And so I feel like that wouldbe number one, Allan would be to
move it into aperformance-based block grant
concept.
You know, I do think thesoutheastern states, GDOT, VDOT,
Tennessee, Texas, and Florida,and North Carolina have driven a
lot of that innovation in thelast 10 years, but others are

(46:04):
just as hungry to do that.
So I feel like, you know, maybeit's a five-state program,
maybe it's two, maybe it'severybody, but we always have to
start small.
So that would be number one.
I think number two would reallybe around the financing of these
projects.
Obviously, the TIFIA program, Ithink, has been incredible
accelerant, but we need tobroaden this idea of financing.
Like this whole idea of CapExversus OpEx, you know, I'll

(46:27):
always remember the blueprintyou developed for the Amtrak
reform bill, with Michael aroundthe federal role in CapEx
versus OpEx.
My own world is technology now,but, like, there's a lot of
CapEx that should be financedthrough mechanisms.
We can call it a bank orwhatever you want to call it,
but it's just a basic questionof how do we finance things that
are long-lasting assets,whether you know 10 plus years.

(46:48):
And I feel like we shouldreorient away from TIFIA just
doing these massive likemulti-billion dollar roadway
improvements or transit projectsto accelerating operational
deployments that are capitalexpenditures that are at the
heart of it.
So that would be number two wasto programmatically reform how
we focus on that.
For example, TxDOT said, hey,we want to outfit 250 miles in

(47:10):
all of our metro areas with anew technology platform.
The federal government shouldbe immediately talking about how
to financially do that faster,cheaper, more efficiently
through the TIFIA program orwhatever program you want to
call it.
And I guess third would reallybe safety, really developing a
standard for what a smart roadis.
And again, these are biasedanswers, Allan, I'm giving you

(47:33):
but but we don't have astandard.
Our view is like maybe we stealthe autonomy levels, but you
know, a Level 4 roadway inDallas or in Austin coming into
and out of the city, that'shigh- risk, high- speed, lots of
chaos.
That needs more attention as aproblem area than Midland,
Texas, does.
And I feel like we should havestandards of safety.

(47:55):
And frankly, what do we wantout of our operating systems on
those roadways tied to thoseoperating environments?
And at a minimum, I feel likethe Fed should get into that
game and say we want to see morelevel four roadways in our
metro areas and we'll help fundthem.

Allan Rutter (48:10):
Any three of those we could spend another couple
of podcasts on.
But to close out, this does notsurprise me knowing you, Tyler.
I think our listeners can tellabout your passion for making
transportation work.
One of the things we ask all ofour guests is what are some of
the reasons that motivate you todo what you do every day?

Tyler Duvall (48:28):
It's funny.
So I came into transportation,as I said earlier, having
started on another career pathand concluded that that career
path was probably not the rightone for me.
And I went in with kind of openeyes and I just, like, fell in
love with the problem, ineverything.
I worked on aviation stuff, Iwas like, it's just a mix of
really challenging topics.
But the thing that I love aboutit is it's solvable.

(48:48):
Like I one of the things I usedto always say is, I think
transportation is the mostsolvable big problem.
You know, education is reallyhard, health care is really
hard.
Some of these others...
housing can be pretty hard.
Like, but transportation, likehonestly, you know, well-meaning
people on both sides of theaisle sitting in a room, and
back to the commissionquestions, will align, I think,

(49:10):
on 80 to 90 percent of thethings we should do to solve
these problems.
Like, we need more technology,we need better quality roadways,
we need safer roadways.
By the way, we need morepricing of roadways and price
signals to customers.
Maybe not 80% agree there, butthat one seems pretty
foundational.
These are solvable big hairyproblems.
And I see the effects of notsolving them every day.

(49:31):
I mean, the lives lost, I mean,it's a tragedy that we tolerate
that.
I find it insane that as acountry we accept 40,000 people
dying.
Yes, there are a lot offactors, and it's not easy to
solve overnight.
I'm not saying that's easyovernight, but like we can do a
lot more there.
It's crazy to me that wetolerate just complete collapses

(49:51):
in performance in our majorcities every day.
At least to lose my mind.
I'm like, you know, we had a fewmember and we were in
government, I can't remember ifyou were still there, but there
was a brownout, basically arolling brownout in New York
City with electricity, andpeople acted like it was
doomsday.
It was all hands on deck.
This can never happen again.
One day of that happened withelectricity.
I'm, like, that's every day.

(50:12):
I just flew from New York, itwas an hour and a half to get
from Midtown to Kennedy Airport.
I missed my flight.
And I was like, everyone justsitting.
It's like, what are we doing?
This is solvable.
Like, you know, electricitymoves, other, you know,
railroads things move throughnetworks.
They move because they operatethem efficiently and they price
them and they manage thecapacity.
The fact that we don't do that,and I sit in traffic, I'm like,

(50:35):
what are we doing?
Emil and I used to always jokeabout the fact that they say
traffic and weather at the sametime in the local radio
broadcast or TV broadcasts, asif they were both equally
unsolvable.
Like the weather is what it isand the traffic is what it is.
And it's just always been,like, no, that's not true.
That's a policy choice thatwe've made to effectively allow
those conditions to persist.

(50:56):
We can address them, we canmitigate them, we can do stuff
about them.
Again, my frustration with howeasily solvable it is kind of is
matched now with my job.
And so that's a great way tocome together.

Allan Rutter (51:08):
Well, Tyler, I really appreciate you setting
some time for us today.
Thanks for joining our podcast.

Tyler Duvall (51:14):
Oh, Allan, thanks so much.
Always love talking to you.
I wanted to hear more from you,by the way.
So we should...
I want to reverse it next time.

Allan Rutter (51:21):
I am so grateful that Tyler was able to describe
the innovative work Cavnue isdeploying in Texas to accelerate
the connections betweeninfrastructure and smarter
vehicles.
Texas is the epicenter of thiskind of transportation
innovation, also exemplified inTTI's leadership of the
federally funded TransformingRoads Unleashing Smart

(51:43):
Technologies, or TRUST project,a partnership with TxDOT, local
governments, and a consortium ofprivate companies.
We'll include a link to theproject page in our episode's
show notes.
Thanks for listening.
If you liked what you heard orlearned something, please take
just a minute to give us areview, subscribe, and share

(52:04):
this episode.
I invite you to join us nexttime for another conversation
about getting ourselves and thestuff we need from point A to
point B.
Thinking Transportation is aproduction of the Texas A&M
Transportation Institute, amember of The Texas A&M
University System.
The show is edited and producedby Chris Pourteau.

(52:27):
I'm your host, Allan Rutter.
Thanks again for joining us.
We'll see you next time.