Transportation secretaries normally don’t get the attention that Pete Buttigieg does. The current secretary and former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has become somewhat of a political lightning rod ever since his 2020 run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The status was made clearer after the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which led to calls that Buttigieg himself should be held accountable.
“Ordinarily, transportation secretaries don’t go to active sites of crash investigations because that’s for the NTSB to do,” he said on the most recent episode of The Weeds, Vox’s podcast for politics and policy. “But I did go to East Palestine because the residents there were getting so much misinformation, and I think were really questioning whether the administration was there for them.”
Buttigieg’s department is also managing more everyday crises and disasters. Though it often fades to the background of our daily lives, access to transportation can be make-or-break for those striving to make their way out of poverty. According to the Urban Institute, only about 8 percent of Americans live near accessible public transportation. In 2016, 20 percent of those in poverty had no access to a car.
Meanwhile, American roads are getting more dangerous. And when cars are on the road, they often become deadly. Last year, nearly 43,000 people died in traffic accidents in the United States, a number comparable to the number of gun violence deaths in the same time frame.
“What I try to make sure of every day is that, if my profile is a little different than most transportation secretaries, that’s something that at the end of the day, we shape for the benefit of the agency’s ability to meet its mission,” Buttigieg said of the attention his tenure as head of the Department of Transportation has gotten.
“If we can attract more attention to the issue of roadway deaths, if we can really get some facts out there about…
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