Now we will be joined by your little field
of my record and hear their response

could I have the single slight bit that
Mayor Smith had there of the National Mall

back to one slide.

My god are you.

I hear I can't get used
to the road you roll.

We were always together in
Washington more than any other of us

were emitted first time and
he always was active in the high speed

real Committee of the Transportation
Committee of US Congress of Mayors and

first time I met him I told my
wife this man has a true Southern

he looks like a southern putting
a lot of figure up a Southerner.

If you will and
look his presentations in the middle.

You're right or more recently when
we were in one of the meetings.

We were talking about
the connectivity of high

speed rail and
I think the first time I met him and

he came running over to me with a map and
he had drawn on the map from Macon to it.

Land to shoot each other to
the Nashville hospital connection.

He said we need to be working
together to make this happen and

that's a brother you're
preaching to the choir.

We've been working on this
pretty quiet some time and

I welcome your help and
that's really what we've got to do.

We've got to work together to reason
if you look at that map right here it

is comforting in a sense but

if you see the big red lines connect
some of the areas that there's a.

Vast hole there in the middle and
as I've told my friends in Tennessee.

It is just in the city and
it's a really has no connectivity unless

they get busy and that's why
Senator Corker back when he was mayor and

I was on the council I think I might
have written a letter for him but

he was a supporter of high speed rail even
when he was a developer and had property

that would have been affected by some of
the connections that we're talking about.

I am a walkie talkie
example of regional ism

in the sense that we're talking about
even Monica Landecker region here today.

I'm actually a native of Georgia.

I was born in La Grange Georgia.

I'm one of those just post-war to baby
boomers born in one nine hundred forty six

and I can remember riding the train from
Atlanta from the Grange to Atlanta and how

wonderful it was you could ride a train
from downtown Little growing to Atlanta to

the station it was right over here where
the on the in the convention center and

all of that stuff is now this beautiful
beautiful railroad station you get off and

you could walk to riches and Davidson's
and I was places that don't exist anymore.

But what a wonderful
environment we had there.

If we had not just lost our interest
if some where along the way and

passenger rail we've got to
reconnect ourselves in that sense

born in Georgia and I'll just say this
very quickly is an example of regionalism

my wife and I both went to Alton
university usually a Marmite Georgian

tonight grumbling
groaning at that time and

we raised two boys who both went
to the University of Alabama and

early in my playing career and I am
an urban planner background I worked with

research finalist a few clubs and so
at that time we had better Erika.

Next year and we have today we had
an air connection that went from

Chattanooga to Raleigh Durham and it was
a forty five minute trip I could literally

fly over to Raleigh Durham work for
a day fly back to Chattanooga and

without any loss of motion whatsoever
with airline deregulation and

all that's happened in that and

the lack of connectivity from Chattanooga
to the Carolinas is something that we've

been struggling with through the
Appalachian Regional highway system and

all of that we're not white here from
Greenville we took one hundred ten people

from Chattanooga over to his city
because Chattanooga is contending with

the with the entrance of folks walking
into our economy and we wanted to see ya.

He had dealt with that in
Greenville when B.M.W.

moved in there and we all the gray
we've got to have better connectivity.

OK or whatever from point A to Point B.
across that region transportation.

It should go without saying is the reason
for being for most of these communities.

The reason we are where we are and
it goes back to the old trade route

to the settling of this country
to Native American times and

that was formalized and
supplanted by the highway system and

if you look at the map today and
I am again I'm sixty four.

I'm not ashamed to say it but

I can remember prior to
the interstate system and there are so

many people alive today who have no memory
of the country before the interstate

system was built and I have to think
about it and sometimes I go back and

drive those old highways just to
remember and think about how hampered

we would have been if President Eisenhower
had not had the foresight and

the vision to push the interstate
system as a defense.

System.

Whatever you have to call it whatever
you have to do it we would have been so

crippled as a country.

He had not been inspired by
what he had seen in Europe and

came back to with the conviction that we
needed the same kind of transportation

connectivity that they had and
so the interstate system

was building from one nine hundred
fifty five to about thirty years and

it has been essentially complete for a
long time except for little expansions and

repairs and we all know
the the problems with maintenance of

infrastructure the age of bridges
dangers of not keeping up with it and

experience keeping up with it but
if you drive that system today and

try to envision the number of trucks and
traffic moving on the old system you

realized very quickly that this country
could not have developed it would have

been very much a second
class power that we had not

vested in that system US forty one and
twenty seven supplanted by Interstate

seventy five which goes all the way from
the tip of Michigan down to Florida and

I drove down from Chattanooga today and
there was trucks trucks trucks and just

cars trying to fit themselves in amongst
all of that with rain and so forth.

Going No early trying times and then
east and west all Highway sixty four and

other U.S. highways were
supplied about twenty four and

my favorite road and I'm glad that
John Roberts here is interesting.

Fifty nine.

I don't know why you stay fifty nine with
Bill list someone just said you know

it be fun to go from Chattanooga
to New Orleans all cutting the I

only across Alabama through really in the
know down to New Orleans and that's it.

And it starts from one place and
goes to the other and

it has served me well when Katrina.

New Orleans.

We had all of these evacuees
who came up fifty nine and

quite a few settled in Chattanooga and
are still there and

it's it's been a wonderful connection but
it's really if you look at it as an urban

planner you think why did they do that but
we're glad they did and

it and it did make a difference
in all the cities along the way.

So those systems though now
are very much an overload of all of

if you travel the route
twenty of us east and

west you find some readers out there
that look very old very warm very tired

very narrow if you're if you're going
across some of the older sections of

interstate that haven't had the kind
of attention that they should have

shot a new go of course is a railroad
city without passenger right after

we lost our passenger rail back
in the one nine hundred seventy

people are surprised by that they say
there is no Chattanooga Choo-Choo

where we have a beautiful one hundred year
old station we used to have two stations I

mean it was a very important city and
again it was transportation.

That may Chattanooga what it
is river transportation and

rail presentation before the highways
really became so prominent and

predominant and
of course in Civil War history.

The great locomotive chase took place
from just north of Atlanta just south of

Chattanooga with both sides
trying desperately to control

the transfer to a Haitian system
between those two cities.

It was it was very important in
the war effort and in some time in

the one nine hundred sixty S. Georgia came
up and took the gentleman from the city

of Chattanooga a little locomotive the
general which is not here in Kennesaw and

we've never quite gotten over that people
really have but it is part of our his.

Three in freight capacity I know
from looking at the railroads

is at capacity in north
of Atlanta Chattanooga.

There's a there's a real problem there.

We have a lot of transportation people in
Chattanooga we have to do with the largest

truck lines in the country U.S.

Express is located just at the
northeastern corner of Chattanooga U.S.

Express just go out there in drive up and
down the highway and see how many U.S.

Express trucks you say and you think
I did know they were in Chattanooga.

That's where they are in Covenant
transport is it is the bookend at

the other side of the city.

It's over at the south
western corner cupboard.

You'll see a lot of those trucks out there
too so we spent a lot of time talking to

those executives of those two very
large companies about transportation

of course they're in communication with
the railroads and all and so we know where

the gaps are and there is a tremendous
capacity problem even in freight.

So people say we always just put passenger
trains back on freight trains that's

not going to work.

We need a new system we need
a system like you see in Europe

like you see in China like
you see in Japan life and

see in every other advanced
seeing culture and

why we still have people who
say we can get by without it.

Where were they on September eleventh
two thousand and one when in a flash

our entire airline system was shut
down and there were not enough cars or

enough highway to carry all the people
who needed to go somewhere for

that short period of time we were
unsure if we could take to the skies.

It didn't last very long but we saw
how quickly we could be crippled and

in other countries where
terrorism has been a problem for

a long time to deal with it because they
have that other way moving people and

goods from one place to another
a much more developed system of rail.

Well.

Looking at it as a regional planner
with a regional perspective

driving down this morning I was thinking
about what I would say to you and

I kind of had an idea what John Robert was
going to say could have seen a lot of his

presentations for and yet I can't compete

with him when you're talking southern
stuff I have no point the liberty to you.

That's so good I'm going to do this.

Some of these days with
there is no region.

There's no region like our region.

We are unique.

We are special and if you look at
how other regions or are impacted

by the limitations that they have if
you look at California couple less.

I mean they have every kind
of problem in California.

They've had they've been a go go.

Growth kind of area but they have
everything from water to environment

to earthquakes to all sorts of things
that that limit their potential.

They have they have managed
very well to get this

forced to have a much farther than they
get with the limitations that have at

least in the near term and
if you look at the northeast it's

fully developed a lot of mature
industries affair and so forth.

If you look at in the area
at a region with still

a lot of room to grow a lot of
resources that we can if we do it

right if we plan it well
we can be the center

of economic of the universe for
the next several decades.

Honestly believe that if
the latter is capital of stuff

I've had people say to me why
haven't we grown like a ladder and

I can tell them all if you believe they
don't stand there a long time I've learned

grew from the transportation connections
that they had which were always superior

to most of the other cities that
didn't grow quite like that and

then they'll say we don't
want to be alive and

well I said good because we probably
aren't going to be like that anyway.

Land is the capital of South it was my
first love as a city is still lives but

we've got a lot of metropolitan
planning organizations that

are part of our transportation
planning system.

We are about to inaugurate
a new governor in Tennessee.

He was the mayor Knoxville and Knoxville.

You know anything about Tennessee is just
a little bit larger than Chattanooga.

And we're the fourth largest city
Knoxville is third largest city

Nashville the second in Memphis.

We don't have a lot of large cities and
say.

So we're growing faster than Knoxville and

until recently I would simple messages
to Bill Haslam I'm coming for you Bill.

We're growing faster than Knoxville and
Knoxville should prepare

to be the fourth largest city in
Tennessee and now he's elected governor.

So I sort of played
that down a little bit.

I don't reckon quite as much but
he came down to Chattanooga to

meet with a group of our mayors just a few
days ago and Bill's a great guy knew him.

Also in Washington with us.

Conference of Mayors and being in
Knoxville which is kind of in the middle

there in eastern Tennessee and then you've
got Smoky Mountains and all of that so.

So it is it doesn't reach out and
touch other states.

It's not affected by other states
like some of the so and so

he was talking to a group of us mayors and

I said well you know we are in Chattanooga
one of the largest cities in Georgia.

But I have enjoyed telling governors
in Georgia that over time he was

intrigued by that shift because
three of our counties in our metro

area are Georgia counties now Georgia has
a lot of metropolitan areas that spill

into other states as well in Chattanooga
is the only one where the principal city

is on the other side of the state line you
know Columbus and Augusta and so forth.

So other states have similar
circumstances where because of rivers or

whatever letter Politan area
spanned state borders and

so we have to take each
other into consideration.

We we have to consider
the politics of states even

when we York just looking at Chattanooga's
transportation system we've been

planning this high speed rail connection
between Atlanta in Chattanooga for

a long time and
I honestly believe it will happen.

I was not even on the council years
ago when I first began working on it

but we've done a lot of work and
it has not been wasted.

We are prepared to move as fast or
faster than other communities.

If that money that Mayor John Robert

was talking about is released and
we already have quite a bit of federal

money that we are matching to continue our
environmental and engineering work and

I'll tell you this from being in
politics now for almost forty years.

If you poll the issue of high speed rail.

I mean if you listen to the talk radio
people in the very conservative pundits

who love to get on things and make them
controversial perhaps you would think that

high speed rail is kind of looked
at as a flaky proposition.

Not so if you ask the man on the street

what they would like to see they
would like to see speed right.

It is in fact his will supported and
I have run for mayor several times

successful unashamedly supporting
the idea of high speed rail.

If we connected it between Chattanooga
in Atlanta in Chattanooga and

national own the line and
the lines over the Carolinas

all the cities would not lose from it just
like the interstate system we will gain.

We will all gain and we have food in my.

Just do it.

I'll say this and I'll sit down
because I want to hear Mary Riker and

he by the way if you know anything about
about Macon as I tell him everywhere.

I meet him.

They have the greatest hotdogs
I will start that new way and

make any time I'm going through
there may consider great city and

being from Georgia and
know that if there's a role for

all of these cities to play in the fact
that he was visionary enough that

in one of his first meeting to march into
the U.S. Conference of Mayors to say let's

connect all the cities with high speed
rail he was immediately my friend and

we spent a lot of time talking about
where we can go from here since then but

in my opinion I speed rail is not
just something we could do for

them just because we've
seen it in other places and

we like to ride it in Europe and Japan and
China China is doing fantastic things I

have written to maglev train
in Shanghai several times and

it goes two hundred fifty miles could go
faster if it had a longer straightaway and

you think all that's not all that fast.

Until you pass the other one going
in the other direction and if so

it's a five hundred mile per hour closing
factor there when it goes by that

was I was sucked in and
it's literally flying.

Well perhaps it is the way of
the future perhaps not steel and

steel as you'll find with me but

I think that if the United States wishes
to be a power in the next century we

don't want to just give up and
if we do wish to just give up.

Let's not build let's stick
with the old tried and

true interstate system and I know some of
the politics of the airline industry and

the road building industry and so forth
that short sightedly ever existed this

transition of a third type of
transportation that there is nothing to

be gained from that and not pinion if
we don't do it then we will suffer.

We will be a second million
dollar in the future.

It is now absolutely assessed they can.