Earlier this month, Patrick McKenna took over the reins as the new President and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation, after having been selected by Eno’s Board of Directors in mid-August. He replaces Robert Puentes, who returned to the Brookings Institution earlier this year. He sat down recently with ETW’s Jeff Davis to discuss his past and his plans for the future.

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Tell us about yourself. How did you get into transportation and then wind up in Missouri?

I started my career right out of college on Capitol Hill.

I ended up working for multiple Secretaries of the Senate, worked in the financial office in the Senate and had a finance degree undergrad. And I went there thinking I would spend a couple of years on the Hill and then move on to something else, but the work and atmosphere was exciting and a challenge and stayed for nearly 13 years. I ended up being the Chief Financial Officer for the Office of the Secretary and we worked with the Appropriations and Rules committees to draft the legislative branch appropriations bills and all the administrative work in the Senate.

I left the Senate when my wife Suzanne and I started having a family and moved back to my native New Hampshire.  I commuted back and forth to D.C. for about two and a half years while I was fulfilling commitments such as updating the Senate’s financial systems.  After leaving the Senate, I spent a little bit of time managing operations at a couple nonprofits in New Hampshire and then the New Hampshire DOT posted up for a Chief Financial Officer role. I applied and was hired.

The New Hampshire DOT was interesting to me because I had not worked in transportation and the budget was about the same size as the operating budget we managed in the Senate. And that was really my first foray into transportation.

Because of my background on the Hill, instead of just taking a portfolio that was financial and operating, for the organization, I was assigned the legislative work and interface with the legislature.  New Hampshire has a unique legislative structure with a 400-member House of Representatives, 24-member Senate, five elected Executive Counselors and the Governor. All told, 430 elected officials.  What an opportunity to learn about the state legislative process with a true citizen legislature whose members are still paid $100 per year plus mileage.

The NH legislature also has a large committee structure, a ten-month session each year and a biennial budget process. So, in my five-year tenure, I testified before the General Assembly or some governing body about 900 times. It was an interesting entry into transportation policy and the often, competing interests and controversies surrounding the issue. NH’s transportation system suffered, like many states, with chronic funding limitations.

There hadn’t been a major new funding source, such as an increase in user fees (gas tax) since 1993. The turnpike system was relatively small, but reasonably well funded by toll receipts, although much of the revenue was committed to long-duration revenue bonds that funded previous construction.

One of the things I focused on was getting a good sense of the debt structures and paying down debt, particularly on the turnpike system and lowering the cost of capital and looking at the free cash flow on the system to help make it run more efficiently. During my time, the state did pass a gas tax increase. During the same budget, we eliminated several old ramp tolls for communities to access the turnpike system and increased the fees on the main lines. And that was very popular at the time. It was coupled with the gas tax increase,  and that set a set in motion a ten year capital plan that was fully funded and passed by the legislature..

Being a part of setting the financial house in order and working a plan to address deferred maintenance across NH’s system, got attention in Missouri, who had similar needs, on a much larger scale. A search firm called me. I interviewed and in December 2015, I headed out to Missouri.

What about your experience in Missouri at MoDOT really stands out?

The thing that stands out for me is the caliber and quality of the people that I worked with. The Missouri DOT, just like in New Hampshire, a commonality is the dedication of the public servants that have in some cases been underappreciated by the by the public that they serve, and yet they continue to deliver as best they can.

And it’s a difficult thing because DOTs aren’t responsible for generating revenue. That’s a policy responsibility. Legislatures, general assemblies, governors, policymakers, elected officials are the ones that determine the funding in the state. But what the public sees is what the DOT doesn’t get too. If there is deferred maintenance due to lack of funding, and there is all across this land, and if you’re driving on a road that’s marked with potholes, you’re not happy.

And you see that as a reflection of the DOT itself. Which makes raising funds even more difficult.

But it’s really getting that framework understood by the public as well as by policymakers. And I think that’s really one of the things we’re most successful at in Missouri by having that difficult but very transparent conversation about what could and couldn’t be done with the available resources. And in both cases in New Hampshire and in Missouri, we’re able to get state initiatives to increase revenue substantially with gas tax increases and general revenue infusions in two states where the population is averse to tax increases.

These successful initiatives required stakeholder involvement throughout both states and support from the public, support from the General Assembly. And despite the victories, it was certainly not without not without opposition.

But that’s the way public policy moves. It moves with just a little more support than the opposition. And then what you must do is prove through execution of the plan that you’re making good use of the funds by delivering promised improvements as quickly as possible.

Missouri was very good at executing the construction program. During my tenure, we completed over 4,000 construction projects (4,206), completed 94 percent on time and about a half billion dollars under the program budget ($536 million). That includes the recent period with the rising inflationary costs during the pandemic.

So, together, policy makers, state and private partners completed extraordinary work for the public and that is what taxpayers expect.

MoDOT is an unusually multimodal department compared to how a lot of states are set up. Talk a little bit about that.

Yes, it really has broad responsibilities. In Missouri, there are about 1,100 miles of navigable waterways, primarily Missouri and Mississippi River, 14 public ports and quite a few private ports that are coordinated efforts through the department and the port association. Obviously, the department didn’t own the ports, but we administered the federal program and the state program of funding and capital.

On the rail side, Missouri has second and third busiest rail hubs in the country in Kansas City and St. Louis. All the Class I railroads operate through Missouri. This is critical work, moving freight through the state and agricultural exports from the state throughout the world via truck, rail and water.  But again, those rail hubs are vital. Working with the private companies and securing the federal funds through FRA to improve this network and safety is vital.

We eliminated virtually all passive rail crossings on the state highway system with the help of FHWA and FRA. There remains a tremendous amount of work to improve rail crossing safety on the local road network and the state has invested $50 million in general revenue as a kick start to that effort after an Amtrack derailment with the tragic loss of four lives highlighted the issue.

The transit system in Missouri is substantial – in all the metropolitan areas, certainly Kansas City and St. Louis, Columbia, Jefferson City and Springfield, but Missouri also has one of the largest rural transit networks in the country.  Over 100 out of the 114 counties have rural transit operating throughout. And we managed the federal operating and the capital funds, although it has been difficult to find sufficient state support beyond the federal match.  Federal funding increased significantly post pandemic and those funds are supporting the purchase of more energy efficient vehicles for the transit operators.

And Missouri has 124 public-use airports and operates as a block grant state with the FAA.  The Missouri DOT passed through FAA funding for capital and operating assistance to the public airports and completed sub-recipient monitoring.

Why did you decide to relocate, and why Eno?

The thing that really excites me about Eno is the broad mission to help train future leaders in transportation and to help policymakers and practitioners with sound research and policy advice and guidance. What a great way to continue to work in this vital industry that enables me to bring a practitioner’s perspective to an organization that is mission oriented, founded by a visionary who helped shape traffic management and safety and has grown to incorporate thought leadership across all modes of transportation.

The impact of transportation decisions and investments impact the lives and quality of life of every citizen in our nation.  We owe taxpayers the very best to face the competing challenges across all modes to improve safety, enhance mobility for all users and lighten the impact on the environment of transportation.  The ability to focus on objective and independent research in these areas and beyond is so appealing, and I feel so very fortunate to join the incredible team at Eno and the amazing volunteers who serve on Eno’s Board of Directors and Board of Advisors and Regents. The opportunity to work more closely with volunteer experts of that caliber was a big factor in my coming here.

You rotated through as president of AASHTO while that organization was preparing its policies for FAST Act reauthorization. So how is that experience going to help you with Eno trying to deal with the IIJA reauthorization in the next two years?

The work that AASHTO did during the last reauthorization of surface transportation was important and timely.  I had the good fortune to be elected by the Mid-America region to be vice president and ultimately president of the association.

There had been a committee restructuring and the creation of  a committee called a Transportation Policy Forum. As vice president, I became chair of the transportation policy forum and the strategic management committees.

The timing was perfect and a couple of years before the FAST Act needed to be reauthorized. We started thinking about the congressional calendar and how to be useful to policy makers and clearly state the priorities of state DOTs.   Jim Tymon’s leadership and Joung Lee’s policy prowess and their extensive Hill and administration experience were instrumental.

What state DOTS wanted to avoid, a repeat of the short-term reauthorizations for nearly a decade before the FAST Act was passed. We knew we needed to be organized on our end and be able to lay out the policy construct for what we as state DOTs would want to see in reauthorization.

So, we got organized. We put a committee structure in place. We did white papers from all the functional committees. We sought feedback from other transportation organizations and other groups.  We sought feedback from organizations that were not usually supportive of state DOTs, to broaden our perspective

And that was that was really enlightening because it helped us narrow down the vision of what it was we were trying to do, which was improve the quality of life of Americans through the transportation network and to consider some of the implications of the energy use of our industry and also focus on safety – acknowledging losing 40,000 or more Americans each year on our roadways is just unacceptable. That process helped us crystallize the outline as well as considering more equitable outcomes of transportation investments.

We shared our work with Hill staffers and testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The staff and the Members did fantastic work crafting a Bill, as did the committees in the House, such as T&I. And they did the work and got a bill out of Senate Environment and Public Works a full year before the FAST Act expired, which was fantastic.

And then it just as is frequently the case. The negotiations between the House and the Senate took a little bit longer, but it only took a single year after the FAST Act for the reauthorization to occur. And during that year, there was a full year extension of the FAST Act, which was vital to DOTs for project planning to have funding stability.

My view is the key for Eno is going to be to reach out and work hard, fill in gaps, work with AASHTO from the state DOT perspective, work with the other associations, APTA comes to mind and several others work with MPOs around the country. And find that common ground of the pieces on reauthorization. I know Eno can play a role.

I know that one of the one of the big functions that you, Jeff, help provide to policymakers as well as practitioners, as well as Hill staffers, is a real insight into the kind of the machinations of the Highway Trust Fund. And I think that that would be very useful for a new Congress coming in post-election to start looking at the implications of where we are in terms of the funding, how to deal with things like August redistribution, but how to look at some of the programs that might incentivize, the actions in the states to improve safety. looking at the Highway Safety Improvement Program and considering increasing the federal share to accelerate the implementation of safe systems and proven safety countermeasures to make zero fatality days on our system a rule rather than an exception.

A greater federal share helps economically distressed communities and vulnerable road users alike improve their safety.  There is some good work that we could be doing in working with partners that are focused on transportation and then helping bring kind of a unified vision to the Hill for reauthorization to help policy makers complete their necessary but difficult work.

Eno should try to be helpful with information that can assist policy makers with reauthorization, and I look forward to it.