SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Pete Buttigieg ran for president once and may one day run for president again. Over the past four years, though, he has held a job that has come with a lot of potential political liabilities. He has headed the Department of Transportation, which means the supply chain snags in ports, the chronic airline delays that have swept the country in recent years, the collapsing Key Bridge in Baltimore, and the freight rail crash that roiled East Palestine, Ohio - all of those crises fell on his plate. Buttigieg oversaw big policy changes in many of those areas and ended up especially focused on the airlines, trying to make their policies a bit more consumer friendly. He talked about it in a sit-down with NPR. And I asked him if the airlines meltdown with all of those delays and cancellations in the summer of 2022 was a big turning point for him as secretary of transportation.
PETE BUTTIGIEG: Honestly, in the first year, the big question about the airlines was whether they were going to go out of business. It's easy to forget just how drastic their condition was during the worst of COVID. They came out of that, and then we had the opposite problem - delays, cancellations, the way that passengers were being treated. And we knew that the past enforcement practices of this department weren't enough, so we got tougher on the airlines. The airlines responded. They grudgingly responded, but at the end of the day, we have fewer cancellations, more passenger protections, better results. And of course, we're doing that at the same time that we're also physically improving airports around the country. We've got more than 1,500 airports where we're doing everything from new security checkpoints to better bathrooms, all to make it better and easier to be a passenger in this country. I'm proud of that work, and I hope that that work will enjoy bipartisan support in the years to come.
DETROW: Still a lot of problems, though - obviously, Boeing (laughter) I'll just leave it as the proper noun there, flow problems. One of the producers on this story had the pleasure of taxiing for two hours on the runway at JFK a few months ago. What are the areas that you wish you had had more time to get done? What are the areas where you're waiting to see what the next administration does when it comes to airlines?
BUTTIGIEG: I really think there is unfinished business to be done when it comes to compensation of passengers. We have launched that regulatory process, but it will fall to the next administration to make decisions about what to do in terms of actual compensation for your time if you go through an extreme delay. I know some of the airline CEOs have expressed their hope that the next administration will be less passenger friendly. I wouldn't be so sure because I think that this is something that really commands support across the aisle. And there's a lot more to be done at the FAA. We've finally got the number of air traffic controllers growing after years of shrinking. But it's still not where it needs to be. And that's going to be very important to make sure that the limiting factor on our growing air travel isn't the capacity of our towers.
DETROW: Some of this stuff got signed into law. A lot of this is still regulations, though. How worried are you about the future of regulatory policy given the very clear track record of the federal courts on that front?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, the automatic refunds are a matter of law, so it would take an act of Congress to undo them, and I haven't met any member of Congress who's enthusiastic to roll back those protections, at least not one who admits it. When it comes to regulations, that is more subject to what a given administration will do. But again, I would like to believe that this is something that any administration can't support because I haven't got one phone call or encountered anybody, other than the airline CEOs, who wants us to go back to having less passenger rights, the way it was just a few years ago.
DETROW: Were there conversations in the wake of the big ruling last year overturning the Chevron doctrine about, OK, all the stuff that we've doing, we're going to have to rethink it? How did that adjust how you are thinking about regulations? And what do you think that means going forward, if that's followed by two or three more rulings that really walk back the administration's ability to set rules?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, it's certainly affected us in a number of ways. We've sought to make sure that what we're doing has strong legal protection and authority but now need to work twice as hard to make sure that our efforts and our responsibilities to protect everyone from an airline passenger to a railroad worker are being met. And I do think that's going to take more engagement with Congress given the climate that we have in the courts. I know that regulation is a popular punching bag. But we should remember that when we get it right, the results are extraordinary. And a good example comes from the aviation sector, where we're continuing to engage on things like holding Boeing accountable for their quality issues. But also the fact that over the four years we've been here, we've had about 3 1/2 billion people get on an airliner, and as of today, the number of passenger fatalities in a crash of an airliner stands at zero - is not something that just happens on its own. It's one of the reasons why these regulations and the authorities behind them really matter.
DETROW: I want to go back to an interview I did with you almost exactly a year ago. We were talking about rail safety on the anniversary of the East Palestine crash. And we were talking about some of the regulations that you were trying to get into place, and you made this point.
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BUTTIGIEG: Right now, the railroad lobby is trying to make sure that they can have just one person on trains that could be miles long. Now, a regulation to deal with this was actually initiated by the Obama administration, halted by the Trump administration. We've renewed it under the Biden administration, and we're working to develop that.
DETROW: We are in a situation now where there's going to be another Trump administration. Whether it's this particular regulation that we were talking about having to do with bodies on freight trains or a lot of the other stuff, what is your concern level? How much are you thinking about this constant flip-flop of regulation put in place, regulation scaled back, regulation put in place, scaled back again? How does that affect rail safety? How does that affect governing as a whole?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, of course, there's the risk that the next administration would cut some of these railroad safety regulations. They've done it before. But we were able to finalize that rule about making sure that a train has enough people on it to keep it safe. I think that's something that will stand the test of time. It also remains the case that there needs to be congressional legislative backup for some of this work.
DETROW: Which didn't happen.
BUTTIGIEG: The failure of Congress to pass the Railway Safety Act is maybe the biggest piece of unfinished business of our time here when it comes to railroading in America. And given that the cosponsor of that was one Senator JD Vance, I still hope and believe that that should get action. If it's not happening right now, it ought to happen in the new administration.
DETROW: What do you think happened there? There was so much talk early on, and then it just stalled.
BUTTIGIEG: I think the railroad industry lobby got its way. They didn't want it to happen, and it didn't happen, even though there were Republicans and Democrats who supported it. I sure supported it, so did President Biden. There's no good reason that it didn't happen. And yet here we are.
DETROW: Wanted to end by asking how you changed on the job over the years - you were a mayor before. This is a massive government operation you took charge of. It's an area where - it's not like you came into it as, like, I'm a transportation guy with years and years of transportation expertise. How did you learn on the job? How did you approach it differently over the years? Like, I'm wondering, by the time the Key Bridge collapsed, what were you doing to respond to that that you might not have thought to do or prioritized in Day 1 on this job?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, even though I did a lot of transportation work when I was mayor, nothing can prepare you for Day 1 of a job like this. And that's especially true because we came through the door, and the circumstances of our national transportation system were dire - the biggest set of disruptions we've faced since 9/11. And the circumstances of our day-to-day work were bizarre because I couldn't even be in a room with my own team half the time. We learned a lot as everybody does in a role like this, and it's been astonishing to see the results we've been able to get, but also some of the obstacles that we face. So much of what you have to do in a role like this is navigating the complexity of the different bodies that are involved in getting something done. Take the Baltimore bridge collapse. More than 50 different agencies were involved in clearing out the harbor and getting things back up and running. And so just that coordination from highly technical processes to something like me picking up the phone and talking to the governor in the middle of the night played a very important role that I came to understand better and better the longer I've been in this job.
DETROW: That was Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. To hear more from that conversation, you can check out our podcast Consider This. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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