“I see automation everywhere. I see technology everywhere. Everybody has the hardware at this point; the key is the software.”

– Daniel Studdard, Principal Planner at the Atlanta Regional Commission

No one in the business would expect to change a system without supporting the associated people and processes, and the same is true for freight and traffic. Atlanta, GA is one of the most heavily congested traffic cities in the U.S., and yet it is also a supply chain and manufacturing hub. For every policy or regulatory change in the Atlanta metro area, there are associated infrastructure and planning requirements.

Daniel Studdard is the Principal Planner at the Atlanta Regional Commission. He and his team work with federal, state, county, and local governments to study traffic congestion and anticipate the long range infrastructure needs that will ensure the safety of drivers and the general public.

In this interview, Daniel Studdard points out the magnitude of the challenge associated with traffic congestion to Supply Chain Now Co-hosts Greg White and Scott Luton:

• The power of data analytics for identifying constraints such as where drivers are supposed to stop for mandated breaks
• Anticipating the unintended consequences of well-meaning regulatory changes that still create new problems for drivers
• Looking at the potential of telecommuting to reduce congestion – since even one day per week of telecommuting could lead to a 20% reduction in traffic

[00:00:05] It’s time for Supply Chain Now Radio Broadcasting live from the Supply chain capital of the country, Atlanta, Georgia. Supply Chain Now Radio spotlights the best in all things supply chain the people, the technology’s the best practices and the critical issues of the day. And now here are your hosts.

[00:00:29] Good morning, Scott Luton here with you, Liveline Supply chain. Now welcome back to the show. We are broadcasting live today. If you came here from Moad X, the largest supply chain trade show in the Western Hemisphere is being held right here in Supply chain City, Atlanta G-A. And on today’s show, we’re speaking with one of the business leaders helping to make supply chain happen throughout the metro Atlanta region. Certainly the greater southeastern U.S. and by extension, the entire world. So stay tuned as we look to increase your Supply chain IQ on a quick programing note. You can find our podcast where we do your podcast from, including YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcast, you name it. We’d love to have you subscribe so you don’t miss a single thing. When to walk in? Well, welcome in my weirdly quiet co-host thus far. He always breaks in early early on. But Greg White serial supply chain tech entrepreneur, trusted adviser and legendary Atlanta city tennis champion Greg.

[00:01:27] Hey, I’m doing great. I’m trying to be more disciplined. Yeah. You still bring in that dadgum gold plate. Now you wait until we’re back in studio. Look, I don’t feel like these people should be burdened with that kind of distraction. I don’t want I don’t want people rushing the stage here in this public environment. There’s such a. Audience. Yes. You know, it’s audience. Yeah.

[00:01:44] But, you know, so the gold plate is just made the connection. You won a doubles tournament or league doubles.

[00:01:53] It was a it’s city championship. So. Yes. Single a Lynam elimination for round easy tournament after after a seven week season. I’m establishing my Tennis Know-How right this second. So as doubles is that you’ve got three teammates. It’s five lines. So for four additional teams, the doubles. Yeah. And it was mixed doubles. So thankfully my partner was able to carry me. She did a great job. Fantastic. Yeah. Well, in the rest of our team did a great job as well.

[00:02:23] Ok. I see your sponsor. But athletic apparel now. Yeah, and that’s right. Yeah. All right. Well, we’ve got an endorsement. We’re kidding. We are kidding. All right. So we’ve got a great guest there, the logo. That’s right.

[00:02:37] We’ve got a great yesterday. And actually, we’ve been fortunate to connect with Daniel Studdard twice this week. Yeah. And we’ll touch on the other reason here shortly. But Daniel serves as principal transportation planner with the Atlanta Regional Commission. Daniel, good morning. Good morning, Scott. Great. Great to have you once again. Yes. Earlier this week, we hosted the 2020 Atlanta Supply chain Awards. Moad X tyrannically hosted them. You presented for the second year in a row. One of those awards. I know that you and your team and certainly the ARCC, which work learn more about here momentarily. There’s so much to help make business happen. Certainly supply chain happen. And appreciate what you did. Thank you. We should watch all day here. Yeah, I know. All right. So now we’re going get the nitty gritty on Daniel Studdard. So we go before we talk shop, before we kind of, you know, get get some of the things that that you and your team do at ARCC. Tell us more about yourself. Where were you from, where you grew up? And give us a, you know, anecdote or two about your upbringing.

[00:03:34] Well, I’m actually a native, the Atlanta area, which is a little bit uncommon. Yeah, Atlanta, you’d find a lot of natives. But of course, we had people from all over that moved to Atlanta. It seems South Carolina. Kansas. Yeah. I was born not too far from here in DeKalb County. I grew up in any kind of DeKalb County, Rockdale County, mostly. So can your Shorja for folks are familiar and still mount my own area where I was born. So grew up, you know, native of the area. So kind of unique like that. Graduated high school and headed out to a University of Georgia for undergrad. And beautiful Adams G-A. Go Dogs Ellum Love Athans Classic College Town. About 30000 students there at the time. Back in the late 90s when I was in school. How he’s grown since then. Certainly it’s bigger now. I was actually up there, the campus a couple of weeks ago. And it’s it’s every time I go up there, it’s different. You know, it’s it’s growing. And you’re like, there used to be something else there. Now there’s a massive building. Yes, it’s consulation. Yeah. My undergraduate was actually journalism, mass communications. And so, you know, kind of, you know, back in the day, I go to TV and all that looks interesting. I want to do that. Yes. And we actually have a program for that when I was in high school, kind of a video production program. So I started doing that back then. And. And, you know, kind of freelance different gigs with, you know, the athletic association and things like that that were available. If somebody needs to, you know, shoot a game or make a highlight video or something like that. Yeah. Myself and a couple other students managed to do it and occasionally even make a couple dollars off of it. Which was nice.

[00:05:01] Let’s say you’re Keith business age. Yeah. Wards off ramen noodles and actually have a real mill. Everyone’s out. This was high school. So, you know, this was extra spending money. It was college more so that, you know, had to do it and live off the ramen noodles. Yeah.

[00:05:15] Well, what? So. So what he’s saying is he’s he’s tracking a mentally check list of all the things we’re doing wrong here with our production.

[00:05:22] Greg, do you agree? We’re gonna get a consulting couple hours. Daniel, looking at our camera and going, man, that’s a lot smaller. It used to be something big up on the jerai. Yes. And now you’ve got a iPhone. Yeah. Yeah. It is amazing. Like a new iPhone, too. Oh, yeah. That thing is quality. It’s a powerful camera. It really is amazing. Yeah, you can see right into what you had for breakfast. Singleton. That HD on that camera really is better than what I was shooting with, you know, back in the day, so. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:52] Well so clearly. So when you graduate from Georgia, what we’re talking kind of pre-show of kind of what led into your current role and we’ll touch more on your come your professional journey. Right. Part of that was graduate school at Georgia Tech. Is that right?

[00:06:07] It was software for about three years between undergrad grad school is going on behind the scenes and TV news production, corporate video production, and then decided, I want to become a planner, a transportation planner. Now, what inspired. Yes. I always get that question. Yeah. So if you’re Branson traffic and you have some opinion like was once this intersection like this, you know, it wasn’t their turn lane here. Or was there a sidewalk here? Why do I had to cross the street like even on campus at UJA? There re-allocation towards like sidewalk here when I have to go over here. I don’t have to do this. And I always had lots of opinions. Yeah, as as most of us probably do. Yeah. I’m not saying they were good opinions or smart opinions, but I had plenty of opinions.

[00:06:49] You’re in the right place. Yeah. Also opinion.

[00:06:52] Exactly. We call it. And so I had plenty of opinions and this was kind of 2002. The economy was a little slower, the job I was at. You know, I had some pros and cons like many jobs. Do you I kind of started looking around about what? What do I want to do for the rest of my life? And. And somewhat stumbled upon planning as a profession. And somewhat will give partial credit to to my then girlfriend the time who got tired of me having those opinions and said, if you think so. You know so much. Go to grad school, give degree and go do happen to actually send me something about the program towards attack. And while ending she was looking to grad schools. Do we both were and she was like, go do this.

[00:07:25] I’m like, I think I might. And yes, and I’m not taking you with me. Well, yeah, I went to for grad schools, different careers. But, you know, it’s it’s kind of funny. Like I look back at that like, yeah, that was a decision. Pivotal moment. Yeah. Going to grad school. Do you send her a basket of gifts on the anniversary? I I don’t maybe I should say. Because you’re not if you’re married. I wouldn’t go. Not even so much as a thank you on the Facebook. By the way, this has taken a strange turn. Hit it.

[00:07:56] All right. So let’s keep talking. So you you keep all cash, your professional journey. Clearly, we now know what the inspiration was for your work. You do. Which we’ll touch on more here momentarily. But tell us more. Lead us into your current role with the Atlanta Regional Commission.

[00:08:12] Yes. So I was in grad school, like I said, for urban planning at Georgia, TAG was transportation specialization. So I could kind of take those opinions I had and get some data behind them, understand the processes. When I graduated, I went into consulting in transportation planning. I spent about a decade doing that when I really. Yeah. Okay. When I was first out of grad school, I went to a consulting company that was done in national company. But their office down in Tampa, Florida, was there about a year and half doing primarily traffic studies. So, you know, again, you look at traffic congestion intersection, you can go out to count. You put it into special software and get a what’s called a level of service, which is like a letter grade. ABC TRF in terms of ayling, in terms of efficiency, traffic, how it handles volume stuff, how it handles volume, the amount of traffic congestion and safety. Oh well, safety is a different type of analysis really. It’s definitely part of what we did as well. I’ve had a specific safety studies where you’d find like a couple hundred crashes at an individual intersection over, you know, a three or four year time frame.

[00:09:12] What I’m so so if I can interject just for a second here, because after all of those sandwiches, we’ve had two lunches through the years you’ve been I don’t think I ever knew that you did 10 years as a consultant. You look like you’re 23, which is a compliment.

[00:09:25] Yeah. He’s holding up good.

[00:09:26] But. So that was a for a Florida based firm we’re used to.

[00:09:30] So they were national. But the fact was I was in their tank office. OK. Are you whose company called PBS and J. But they’ve since been bought out by a larger company called Atkins. Ocassions british-based. Yeah. So yeah. These you’ll have dancing. Why? We’re getting roundabouts around here. I can honestly totally get it. There’s a lot of a lot coming from, you know, from roundabouts weren’t common in the U.S., but a lot of like they should be.

[00:09:53] They are rare. They are great.

[00:09:54] Hey, if Walton County, Georgia, is adopting roundabouts, they are going to be prevalent everywhere. Yeah. Daniel. So were you when you were doing that consulting work? Were you looking at cities coast to coast or did you sent you spend your time on several major cities? What what was what your workload looked like?

[00:10:12] When I was in Tampa, most of what I did was in South Florida, somewhere in around Tampa, Florida area, was there for about a year and half, came back to the Atlanta area. Went for it to a different company up in Peachtree Corner Store called Ponton Company. Most of what I did was kind of metro Atlanta, north Georgia, obviously, where region of over 5 million, almost 6 million people. So plenty of work and transportation, traffic and, you know, bike and pedestrian analysis and transit and things like that. So, you know, around Atlanta, you hear the Beltline and stuff like that that comes up. And so worked on some of that worked on some things outside of metro Atlanta, too. There’s a handful projects kind of usually still in the southeast. But yeah, definitely worked on anything from small towns to big cities in between.

[00:10:54] And that’s true in your current role. You’re that right?

[00:10:57] No, that was still when I was in consulting. Yeah. Really? Everything okay? Like I said, was it mostly metro Atlanta? But certainly, you know, other parts of Georgia and throughout the southeast. We would work in and most of it was public sector clients or state duty’s local governments, things like that. Occasionally private sector, occasionally military. Worked on a military for military base contract in Gulfport, Mississippi one time. OK. So for a traffic study. So you have to get your opinion on something.

[00:11:25] Why is it in the Atlanta area that we have so many intersections at blind intersections at the top? Of hills or at the top of hills with also a curve in them. Why is that? Is it? Is it the legendary reason that I hear these are old? And the reason that I’ve heard is that they are ancient cow paths and an Indian trails. I don’t. And they’ve just. They weren’t. They were traffic right areas. And we just haven’t re-engineered them.

[00:11:54] Is that for the most part? I would say a lot of that’s true. You know, not every roadway, but a lot of a lot of roads in our region. Certainly war, you know, kind of paths that were already there before or automobiles or anything. It was Native Americans living through in the area and they just continued. HASSEN Exactly. In a lot of those were usually, you know, at high points. Yeah. So are Peachtree Street, if you look at downtown midtown in Atlanta.

[00:12:17] Strangely, I don’t know where I picked up this piece of trivia, but it’s the eastern continental divide. Okay. Meaning if falls on the east side a peace retreat, it eventually will end up in the Atlantic Ocean. The falls on the west side of Peachtree Street. It will eventually end up in the Gulf of Mexico.

[00:12:31] You have got to be kidding. That’s what they told me in a class ago. Everywhere but that Adelheid. And that’s kind of like Daryl on midtown, maybe. But you don’t stand on the middle of Peace Street to see which way the water gonna follow for long ways. It’s going gone. That was my first thought. Streams, creeks, rivers.

[00:12:47] But yeah, eventually. But yeah, I think it is natural you kind of build out from there. Yeah. And you know, Metro Lanta. It’s actually very hilly. Obviously we’re in the foothills of the Appalachians that a lot of physical barriers.

[00:12:59] Plus this is one of the original 13 colonies. So unlike land-grant states like I come from Kansas. Right. It wasn’t divided up into sections. It was kind of.

[00:13:09] Catch as catch can. Exactly. And so there there was that and in, you know, outside of, say, downtown midtown Atlanta and some of the suburban downtowns you can see likes where you have a little bit of a grid and was planned. But beyond that. Yes. It wasn’t really planned out. It was kind of, you know, free flow, whatever happens, happens if you compare it to, say, a New York or some other major cities where you see this solid grid Ryder that goes out. And it’s very easy to say, oh, I need to get to 20th Street. And if you’re at 10 Street, well, you know, 10 blocks up. Atlanta, do small pieces of it are like that. And so we’ve kind of developed very differently and in part because of most of our development was post automobile. And so we’ve got a very suburban style of development versus a more urban style that you might get in a New York or Paris or London all somewhere that developed Greene for the automobile. Interesting.

[00:13:56] All right. So I want to shift gears here.

[00:13:59] We probably ought to get off his job now. Don’t you think? Well, there’s so much there’s so much interesting stuff here, Sharon. It all builds up. Yes.

[00:14:06] I mean, it all does kind of come to where you are now. Right. Doesn’t it? It does. But original commission. But before we talk about RCA, I want to make sure, you know, I was a slow adopter. I was a laggard when it came to appreciating the beltline. We talked about that before. And I think for folks outside of Atlanta, you know, they met when you when they hear Beltline. They may not they may not be like me and not get it right. But that is reshaping the metro area in many ways of part, a number of factors, that is.

[00:14:32] But that certainly is when when those projects with deep roots, lots of appreciation and lots of use it. So explain in a nutshell since especially since you were part of the project. What is the beltline?

[00:14:43] So the beltline is kind of a loop that goes room downtown, midtown Atlanta roughly.

[00:14:49] It is built upon an abandoned rail line. So our Ayanna going kind of back to the very beginning. Atlanta, it was built along rail lines. It was where rail lines from the East Coast can meet rail lines, go into the Midwest and avoid the Appalachian Mountains. So this was the furthest point to the north that they could do that. So it started with rail lines and we have rail lines going in every direction except for due north because of the Appalachian Mountains. And so there are lots of rail lines and towns still are.

[00:15:11] Atlanta, originally known as Terminus. Exactly. And so the rail lines are going everywhere.

[00:15:18] And, you know, about 20 years ago, almost grâce to Georgia Tech. Not that somebody I knew at the time before my time, Ron Gravelle. He wrote his thesis and said, what if we took these this route and turned it into something where it was more of a it took the abandoned rail lines and turned them into a transit and a trail loop. And so the idea came about like, well, maybe that maybe that’ll work. And it kind of started picking up momentum over time. It was how do we acquire the property? How do we pay for this? How do we fund it? Design, construction, everything. And so we’re partway through that process. And by partway, I mean, the pieces of the trail have been built on the east side, on the north side, on the southwest side with the plan to complete that entire 22 mile loop, which trail sections. And beyond that, hopefully eventually trains it as well.

[00:16:06] Yeah, interconnect into some others, because in Cobb County we have the Silver Cometary, which was an old train grade that went from Atlanta, from Smyrna, actually, to Birmingham.

[00:16:16] Absolutely. And the Silver Comet already at all. It reaches the Alabama state line right where picks up a different trail. And Alabam, I think Chief Duga that maybe. But during that name and I apologize if I am. But it basically say of Alabama has something similar than getting to Birmingham. Right. And so the Silver Comet goes all the way to Cobb County. It doesn’t quite get into the beltline in Atlanta, but they have plans to connect those, right? Right. I make that connection similar. There’s a something called Paff Foundation around metro Atlanta that builds shrills. And there’s an existing trail that goes from the bell on all the way out to Stone Mountain, east of Atlanta, which folks around here are familiar with. You’re not.

[00:16:51] It’s a very large Granite Mountain State park around it. Right. Exactly. And so it connects to that. There’s a path 400 trail going north. And so it’s something kind of building this network of trails. Piece by piece.

[00:17:04] You know, the interesting thing about Stone Mountain and I’m an expert because I toured there not too long ago with my children. That’s what makes you an expert. That’s really that’s overnight. They do share a lot of information. Yes. Unlike many, most mountains that are formed by the plates colliding and pushing upwards. Right. Stone Mountain, actually, the top of Stone Mountain used to be ground level in years, a millennium of years eroded. The the non-green around the mountain, which made it a mountain. Yeah. You knew this already?

[00:17:37] I did. And did you also know that that loss or that loss on that Stone Mountain is far larger underneath the surface than it is about? I knew that. Yeah. Sorry, I should let you. You’re going to finish with that. I’m sorry. You stole my Patel. So it’s all my granite. My my previous company.

[00:17:55] We always held our our our customer gathering at Stone Mountain and people were fascinated by it. So. Right.

[00:18:04] We learned a lot. Fast Eddie out. Yes, it is excising piece of rock. So, all right, so let’s talk about the Atlanta Regional Commission. If you if you do business in Atlanta, you rubbed elbows with folks as it’s a pretty capable and large organization. But some folks may make certain assumptions around what it does and what you all do. So. So if you could, Daniel, talk about what the HRC does and then talk about what you do in your role. OK.

[00:18:31] So the Atlanta Regional Commissioner, HRC, large regional organization that does a number of different things. I’m on the transportation side under what’s called a metropolitan planning organization MPO. And I’ll circle back to that. Can I get some more details in a minute? But I want to hit on the fact that we do a lot of non transportation things. Do you? I’m a transportation planner, but there’s a lot of different areas you can work in, in training and planning. And so we have folks in community development that are focused on land use, planning and economic development. We’re the North Georgia Water Resources District offices. So we talk about water or lack thereof sometimes or right now more flooding in Atlanta and Seattle with the amount of rain we’ve had. Right. But certainly drought and not enough water in the region has been an issue at times. And, you know, there the folks, you have to kind of manage that at a regional level. So we had that staff we have staff that’s focused on data and research are the ones that kind of make the projections. I mean, how many millions of people are projected to to move here in the coming decades? We have staff that are focused on transportation, demand management. So kind of encouraging carpool. They employ telework, various incentive programs to get people enrolled in very time limit.

[00:19:33] So time out. One second, because here in the south, we all love the dry. We do. Unlike other areas of the globe and other cities here in the states. But we all love that independence and we’re all are like stubborn about it sometimes. So that’s what you just described there in terms of how we’re trying to change behaviors stuffing do in Atlanta.

[00:19:51] It’s a tough thing to do in most areas, to be honest, especially ones the regions like Atlanta that were built post-World War 2 posts, you know, automobile, which is really most of the United States. You know, we look at a New York or some other areas that are more grid in his Ryder. But obviously, we have a lot of sprawling areas and throughout the country. So it is a challenge. It’s something where you’ll see kind of a generational shift of folks who were younger than myself more likely to use alternative means where older than myself might be more likely to drive. But at the same time, you know, that’s that’s not everybody. You know, that’s kind of stereotypes. And each person is going to write a unique approach.

[00:20:26] Well, as far as my wife likes to tell me that there’s there’s some millennial in all of us. There’s probably some genze in all of us or there’s some some silent generation, all of us. Right. You can’t generalize.

[00:20:35] Generation X rays, generation Y and Generation Z.

[00:20:39] So there’s us and them and them enough. That’s not inevitable. Right. That’s it. Exactly.

[00:20:45] But what we’ve seen is certainly, you know, the programs can encourage Karpel van will have some impact. What we’ve seen really in the past five or six years a lot is teleworking has taken off because it was actually kind of a large regional survey that’s finishing up now, looking at the impacts of alternative modes like that and usage. And what we’ve seen is, you know, there was always a little bit of carpool, Vanderpool telework, all their transit usage out there. A few folks you Bob Walker bike and especially, you know, taking the belt line. Yeah, well, we really saw was this big jump and teleworking over the past five years. I think we’re getting to the point where that technology is getting there better than it used to be. And it didn’t just get there yesterday. It’s something that, you know, it’s kind of been there. And so it’s been able to kind of filter into workplaces and become a norm. You may not do every day, but if you’re even doing it once, you’re doing it once a week, you just reduced your travel by 20 percent. If we reduce 20 percent by everybody in the region, yeah, we have a whole lot less traffic congestion in Atlanta. So if you can do even just one day a week telework, that’s great.

[00:21:42] I think if you could cover the Beltline, I think people would ride bikes. Poor that, you know, half-joking there.

[00:21:51] But I mean, the child the truth is, is to going with it rains 55 inches a year here. Right. We have a drought. You know, drought is technically 20 percent reduction. Ryder is a 30 percent. I had somewhere in that range. But when we when we had a drought, one year, we got 32 inches of rain. Right. So you’re right. It rains so much here. And the beautiful thing about these rail grades as a trail is that they are relatively flat because trains can’t climb hills, right? Yeah. Metro Atlanta. So Hurley. But the Vetlanta flat. Yeah. Yeah. Likewise with the Silver Comet trail. It’s it’s an easy ride. If you’re an old guy trying to get in shape.

[00:22:28] That is good. Yeah, I enjoy it. Yeah. You’re not an old guy. I’m saying. I’m I’m sort of middle age. That’s where I’m old and all too well. Yeah. All right. So ladies, I’m going to be like a hundred and thirty.

[00:22:42] So you’re you’re talking about some some things you do some Ryder says I’ll do. Yeah. Obviously I.R.S. is much broader than that.

[00:22:49] But I’ll I’ll just add that, you know, we also have a work’s workforce group that knows. You’ve met some folks were there. Yep. Kind of focus on, you know, workforce need to metro Atlanta training programs, things like that. We’re also area agency on aging, which is actually a big, big part of what happened today or see, because that’s a huge need and it’s a lot more staff and there than some of those other. Groups I just mentioned combined, and so that’s a lot of what we do as well. But then myself, I’m like I said, I’m in the transportation world. Transportation planner ARACY was designated as a metropolitan planning organization or an MPO. That is a federal designation. So we handle required long range regional transportation planning for metro Atlanta. And so that’s a federal requirement now. Any region with urbanized area with 50000 people or more has a MPO. So most anywhere you’re at in the United States, you know, unless you’re in a truly rural area. Yeah. Probably have the equivalent of an or in some form as an as an MPO metropolitan planning organization. Wow.

[00:23:48] So let’s touch on the freight task force. That’s good. I think where we initially met years ago and that’s a group that you lead and I think the first. So I’m by no means my transportation expert, but I’ve got picked up some really interesting observations and insights and contacts from from this this task force you lead. Right. One of the first studies that really I gleaned out of some of things that you all helped facilitate and help communicate was the the study that that some groups were doing that evaluated truck rest stops.

[00:24:23] And it’s something, you know, a promise is something as much as probably most Americans don’t maybe know about the truck driver shortage. Folks aren’t in supply chain on a transportation. You know, just like I’ve got plenty of blindspots. Folks don’t know about that. But but by extension, no one ever thinks about where and how can these truck drivers that have this this massive responsibility, their own going problem solvers, they’re becoming more more technologists these days where they can pull over easily and rest in a safe and secure place because they have mandated rest requirements.

[00:25:02] Right? Right. Yeah.

[00:25:03] To speak to not a rehash of the whole project. Well I speak to that a little bit, especially that y’all’s role in helping to drive data and awareness in problems like that and then maybe give us something that is, you know, Tupperman product these days.

[00:25:21] So I’ll start with why we did that project. You know, you got to set it up pretty well. But for us, you know, we were seeing this was a need at the national level. Federal Highway Administration was starting to push this out. It’s in something called Jason’s law is in some federal transportation legislation called Map 21. It was a map 21 update past, I think in 2011. Twelve and out of this is a map. Every transportation law has some acronym. Yeah, I think map was like moving ahead for progress or something. They they kind of start with an acronym and work backwards.

[00:25:53] But it was Jason’s law. Was that named after your reference during this meeting? Could be right back. The truck driver, a truck driver that pulled over, I think, in South Carolina. Right. It was not a he had found somewhere. And a lot of drivers will spend a good bit of time, as your study pointed out, trying to find a secure place. This gentleman, unfortunately, lost his life because he’s being robbed or something.

[00:26:15] Yeah, you got it. Exactly. He was looking for somewhere to park. Couldn’t find anywhere parked in a vacant lot where a lot of truckers had part in the past because they knew it was available. Unfortunately, that night he was robbed. Murdered. I think he had something like $7 on him is what they found. And while they did catch the person did that at the same time, that’s, you know, little solace to his his widow. He had a toddler. His wife was bright. You know, it was really a tragedy in the fact that, you know, so many people depended on him. He had so many loved ones. And and so it’s something that was kind of a call to action to a certain extent for the federal government. UPS and you have hours of service requirements on truck drivers. And by that I mean there’s a maximum number for Ryan drive per day and then some other rest breaks during the day, things like that requirements. But then after they drive a maximum of eleven hours and a 14 hour time period, they have stopped for a minimum of 10 hours.

[00:27:05] But there are not enough rest areas or, you know, truck stops, places like that for truck drivers to park, especially in urban areas. You know, if you’re in a truly rural area, the chances are you may find a rest area. Truckstop, without too much of an issue on ramp, you see a lot of trucks on, on or do in that off ramps. That’s that’s an issue that’s considered unauthorized location. It’s usually illegal to park there. From the truck driver perspective, it’s hey, I have nowhere else to go. Yeah, it’s better than a vacant lot, you know, because there’s always some cars passing by. On the flip side, they may be rear ended while there’s an here and while the the truck driver themself may be OK. And that if you’re the car who rear ends, that you know who anybody in that, that’s a safety issue for them. So there have been a few crashes over the years where somebody hit a a truck that was parked like that. So that’s not ideal either. And police officers sometimes are hesitant to actually knock on the window.

[00:27:53] It’s a right move because they’re probably they know they have nowhere to go. But Leslie’s safe when.

[00:27:59] Yes, it but less and less. Let’s make sure everyone understands why that’s a problem and some of the causes are there. Our. Service requirements eleven hours. Right, so when you’re approached in the that you’ve got to pull over, right. Or you get in trouble. Right. Technical word there. But the challenge based on law, the day that that study uncovered is that there weren’t enough locations, especially safe, well-lit, secure locations. Number one. Number two, the thing that sticks still sticks out in my mind is that the data your uncovered was that on average, I believe truck drivers were spending over an hour a day just trying to find somewhere to pull over. And you think about how that slows down supply chain. What if what if they could an Aino, all things kind of happen on the roads, traffic going through cities. Of course, we’re at curve balls. But if you could just plan and know ahead of time where the location is based on where you’ll be. Maybe we could check if we could cut that figure in half. You know, and save that stress and certainly protect our drivers. That would be a huge win win, right?

[00:29:06] It would also first and foremost, the truck drivers do plan ahead. They saw her writing Ryder. The truck stops are with white areas are they’re doing their best to plan their day. And that plan is only as good as what gets thrown at them that day where they usually have little to no car and they’re the ones in charge of the truck. And that’s about it.

[00:29:22] So let me rephrase. If we could plan ahead and have more locations, you know, to be where that is, that’s what I’m saying. Or more visibility. Yeah, that’s what I’m. Yeah, yeah.

[00:29:31] Good point. So they they you know, they have their rail plan l have an idea what they’re doing. But then inevitably there’s some traffic congestion. They know certain times a day where there’s gonna be some as we all do. But then, you know, they do this for a living. They’re experts on it. But then you hit that unexpected traffic congestion at 11:00 a.m. 2 p.m., right. 9 p.m., some 3 lane that’s you’re closed on I-75. Exactly. That you didn’t expect there to be a crash or there’s construction. So suddenly that throws all their day. They also run into issues where they may go make a pickup or drop off at a warehouse and they allocate. Okay. I think I’m going to be here an hour to make that pickup or drop off. Next thing you know, they’re there three or four hours or 50 or something like that. And the way that hours of service works, while they’re not technically driving, they’re still on duty, essentially. And so there’s an eleven hour max of drive time, but 14 hours total. So, you know, you only got three hours of that buffer time that you use for, you know, a lunch break or for, you know, spend time and making a pickup or drop off. So if only you could go go to this pick up or drop off and then, okay, I’ve got to I’ll be here an hour, then I’ve got a couple hours left and hit the road and hit this rest area.

[00:30:33] Birgit, this truckstop, you know, an hour or so off the road. And next thing you know, you ran out of time. While you’re either sitting in traffic or you’re sitting making this pickup or drop off and you don’t have time left on your hours of service to get to that that location that you had scouted out ahead of time and that that’s where I’m going to park. And so at that point, they’re left with either driving and being in violation of the hours of service or parking in an unauthorized location. So a highway ramp, a vacant lot side of the road, somewhere like that. So it’s bad option or other bad option. Right. And so much of the time you see them, which of these bad ideas that you want to. That’s it. Exactly. That they’re they’re picking the least bad option. And so sometimes you’ll get complaints locally when they’re there, park in a parking lot or something like that. It’s like, well, they’re making a rational choice and that if they violate the federal law, it can have a bigger impact than violating things locally where chances are at worst someone’s going to walk in the door and say, you have to move. Yeah. Most of the time that’s worse. But certainly they can be a crime victim, as we have discussed. And so that is a it’s it’s not frequent, but it can be terrible when it happens or there’s kind of weighing the negatives and and, you know, the risks.

[00:31:38] So I think it’s a blind spot, no pun intended, for part of the truck drivers world beyond the shortage, that it’s great to see leadership gather together and get data around and then figure out how. At a minimum, as a metro Atlanta community, business, community and infrastructure, how we can address it here in arguably, you know, who does use metro Atlanta highways and byways and infrastructure to, you know, you name it ever I come through here. Right. All right. So beyond that project, what’s what’s one the current things you’re working on?

[00:32:12] So right now, we’re working on something called a freight cluster plans. And I’m going to give a broader brief overview. We completed regional freight plan update in 2016. And again, this all feeds into our federal planning requirements. So we work with Georgia D.O.T., we work with all the cities and counties and a 20 county metro Atlanta area. So almost a hundred cities and 20 counties and state D.O.T.. And so anything they use federal transportation funding, that’s all in our plan is required to be there. So that’s kind of why we exist, because the reality is there could be a project in Fulton County that has impact on Douglas County. Cobb County, something like that. And so we have to look at things regionally and make sure, you know, things make sense or that, you know, you don’t widen a row from two lanes to four lanes. And then at the county line, it drops back down to a two lane. Right. You have to look at things at regional level. So our regional freight plan update we complete in 2016 has a project list. But of course, it said, hey, you need to do some additional plans.

[00:33:02] It’s that job security for people like me. So I make sure that’s in there. Right. And so part of it was do the truck parking study. We saw as a growing issue party was doing what we called free cluster plansand because we looked at our region, we have a lot of county level plans, we have some city level plans, we have some plans at, you know, activity center, neighborhood level, you know, downtown parking lot or whatever. Exactly. It’s all the way down to individual retailer. It is absolutely yet available to impact. Your eyes would fall under that. However, we had only done plans and Industrial areas there. They had somewhat been ignored because they’re not. And no one in their right mind, not like. Let’s look at what park in Industrial area overnight. No, not I don’t mean just for triple 0 yen for anything for train. More broadly, of course, that we have all these plans, but not not in that area for transportation or landing’s or economic development. In some ways it’s just like, well, that’s old Industrial. Yeah. We want the business. We you know, we want to bring in the businesses and the jobs. But kind of the Proactiv let’s plan for had necessarily happened in the industrial areas for Sting.

[00:34:03] And so we we identified that need and we put some some federal planning funds aside and said, you know, we need local partners for those because you always have to have a kind of a 20 percent local match for these federal funds. OK, well, he’s got to have skin in the game if they want to do this. You know, it’s not just a freebie, right. Gotta make sure that they’re invested, that they’re going to do this and then do something with it after the fact, because once they put spent some money on it, they hopefully don’t want to just sit on a shelf. They want to be proactive and move forward. So it made some of that available. So right now we’re doing four of those and have a couple more in the works after that. But the four we’re working on right now. EMS around the Atlanta airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. So obviously air cargo is important there, but lots of lots of stuff just patrolling that area. Yeah, growing. Amazon has a massive distribution facility there and some other rather massive distribution centers and then got freight forwarders, things like that.

[00:34:50] And we should say Elate Page was also at the 2020 Atlanta Supply chain Awards. And and Linda, Ashwini, Nate. They are two of the leaders that lead the air cargo at ACL and they just launched, which is parg an impact somewhat Yarl’s work, right. The Atlanta Air Cargo Community System. Right. Which is making it much easier to get business and tap into the air cargo that comes through the world’s busiest airport. So you’ll probably have a a full plate ahead as you plan around the airport, as you look to use that that Industrial space around the airport, right?

[00:35:27] Absolutely. Yeah. There’s a lot of infrastructure needs and. Yeah, that’s kind of what we’re doing. You know, part of it’s a traffic sodium. It’s not earlier and that’s when you go to the counts and get that level of service. Figure out what those needs are.

[00:35:37] Aerotropolis, that’s what they’re referring to. Place around airport, right?

[00:35:41] That’s exactly. It’s they are Troppo S.I.D. Community improvement districts that are actually a local partner on that. And S.I.D. Are very common in metro Atlanta. They’re they’re kind of called business improvement districts and other parts of the country. But it’s these are areas that are self taxing where businesses come together and say we need more money spent on transportation infrastructure or public safety or beautification, whatever it might be. And so they become a self taxing area where they actually pay more in taxes. And it goes that S.I.D. Than in turn can use it to leverage grants like the one we have available and kind of, you know, bring in more transportation finds and build more transportation infrastructure to serve those needs with those areas. So make sense to me. So that’s Aerotropolis is having like the two more going on northeast of Atlanta, wanting Gwinnett County, the Gateway 85 S.I.D. Which is going to Jimmy Carter Boulevard, Buford Highway, I-5 area one in northeast DeKalb County, which is the Tucker Summit, S.I.D. Which is Mountain Industrial Boulevard. So Mount Freeway area that you may be familiar with. Southwire. Yeah. And then another one’s kind of on the edge of our region. And Spalding Kelly was kind of halfway between here, Macon. Most folks may not be familiar with Spalding County for not local and but it’s kind of out there a little bit rural still, but has Caterpillar for manufacturing some other main major manufacturers out there and a lot of undeveloped land and some existing major roads there. And they’re like, we’ve got the land. We want to bring in more development and be smart about it. We want to plan ahead.

[00:37:04] Ford is Renz and Spalding County. Yeah. Yeah. Rin’s Raine’s our town. You know what city as folks try to put city would be mostly Griffin.

[00:37:15] Yeah. Okay. Griffin Oh yeah. Yeah. Caterpillar is a big player down there. Yeah. Gotcha.

[00:37:19] Oh, and that’s that’s a tough that’s a tough stretch of road between Macon and Atlanta, especially as you get closer to Atlanta, of course. But that is it. That is a tough stretch road. The thought of additional development and more trucks there.

[00:37:34] A little bit scary, isn’t it? We’re still with organic. Right. I mean, I’m I’m think I’m you know, I’m thinking of it from a usually from a. Yeah. User standpoint. And I’m thinking that’s a big responsibility because that is already a treacherous and and congested.

[00:37:51] Right. So a lot of the road, a lot of that congestion is there in Henry County, you know, McDonough, Lucas Grove, which is a massive, massive amounts of Industrial. I think you know what? Home Depot has to figure out what it wanted. McDonough went to Lucas Grove Little Towns, which are basically next door to each other. Right. It grew so much that it was. matsen to have two facilities from a big company like that and obviously lots of lots of other disabilty taught together.

[00:38:13] You get Savanah on one side, Atlanta and then the you know, everyone’s getting to the. I mean, you get all kinds of factors that that make that stretch tough. But so clearly these these freight clusters are going to help the state of Georgia continue to help expedite everyone’s global freight come through here.

[00:38:29] Right. Absolutely. And that that’s all sorts of key for us. You mentioned the port and you know, I mentioned Henry County. McDonnell, Oaks, Grove, they part of why they grew there in that geographic sweet spot because a driver could leave Henry County drive to the port of Savannah and pick up a container from the port. Get back to Henry Kelly and me there. I was a service for a day because the port of Savannah, they get you in and out pretty quick. Never thought about that. And so there you come from north side of Atlanta. You’re going to have to track. Yes. Yeah. But if you started Henry County, your congestion mostly would be Henry County. And so you can do that. Spalding County kind of similar, but it’s kind of a little bit further south. So it’s starting to hit more that development and so that that location can matter a lot in terms of the type of business that you may be getting.

[00:39:08] It is fascinating to hear rate how regulation, which sounds very intuitive, but regulation kind of drives where things get developed, including those hours of service for drivers.

[00:39:18] It’s interesting how they conflict with one another as well. Yeah. Good point. Good point. And you know, we talk you hear this term a lot. Unintended consequences. Right. And, you know, it’s interesting how how complex those things are. I’m sure they seem simple in the political spectrum, but they are very, very clear channel UPS.

[00:39:37] The. You pull this lever, it has this this consequence over here. You pull this one goes about the other way.

[00:39:42] So the truck parking in particular, because you have the federal requirements for the hours of service. Right. Part of why you don’t have more truck stops is because of local zoning, because the zoning doesn’t allow the truckstop to get bill because most people don’t really want to live near a truck. Stop it. Right. Ryder high value like hey, I want that, you know, next door to me. But at the same time, it’s hugely necessary for these truck drivers to have somewhere safe to to sleep, to grab a bite, to eat.

[00:40:05] Right. Groceries, things like that. I love truck stops because it lets me know the Seabees still exist. Right. Which I did not know. You can always find a hat. They have the best shakes. And really, honestly, the lounges and the bathrooms. And in Truckstop, they are impressive. I mean, they’re like they’re like a mini dormitory.

[00:40:23] They and they really they have so many more services and the available than a typical like when you’re traveling longer distances, like that’s a good place to go because, you know, it’ll be busy, it’ll be safer. You know, there’s more food options, more stuff. You need to buy something on the road. Yeah.

[00:40:37] So I’m really only half joking. Yeah. You know, when you when you come up on some of those. But never like a small city. Yes.

[00:40:44] But never, never leave your gas tank being fueled unattended. We’ll say that story for another show. You saw somebody. Who? I saw somebody. Yeah. Did that experience experience some overflow spillage so well. So nevertheless, we’ll keep driving. No pun intended. So this as we start to wrap up this interview. Right. This is Daniel. You’re like a walking encyclopedia of so many things from development, a regulation, a transportation, which, of course, is the backbone of Supply chain where we had to bring you back.

[00:41:12] This can be like a multi-part episode. Absolutely. But let’s start as we can’t start winding down. I want to get your key takeaway or two about Mode X, which I know you don’t spend every day here. But of course, we saw you on Tuesday. You probably poked around some things here today.

[00:41:29] Key takeaways yet. So Tuesday, Supply chain Awards, a great kind of hearing different stories of the folks who are the award winners. And then afterwards, got to walk around the show here in mutex, which is massive. If you haven’t been to this, massive doesn’t do it justice and has all of exhibit hall B and C here and just one of those exhibit halls, this is huge in its own right.

[00:41:47] And so 400000 square feet under roof as well. That’s what John Paxton just told us. I believe it. And yeah, it feels bigger. Yeah, it does.

[00:41:56] It does when you’re walking your shirt. It did when I was trying to get to your booth today. Yeah. I don’t think I took the shortest route. I thought I was going to and I but, um, pretty standard that task force counts tell. Yeah. That’s what. Yeah. Okay. That’s the next generation. We all have Google Maps and ways until you had to get them out. I want to know how to get to that part. Yes. That this booth. Forty seven. This is exactly. Yeah.

[00:42:17] So but walking around here on Tuesday I see automation everywhere. I see technology everywhere. There is these massive displays and all these things that are moving on their own. And it’s not just a conveyor belt. Right. You know, here’s the thing that can pick up your pallet by itself. And here’s the thinking that can pick up something much heavier than your heaviest pallet by itself, and it knows where to go. And so this technology is everywhere. I was gonna go to Booth and he was like, yeah, we’ve got all this set up and it’s at all our competitors. Everybody has this hardware, this point. You know, everybody’s got very similar hardware. He’s like, the key is the software. He’s like, it’s tough to demonstrate that on the show floor, but that’s where we’re making advances. So the hardware, the things that are moving, the things around autonomously, that’s been around a few years at this point and it was ubiquitous over a decade as a matter. Exactly. And so it’s the we’re not at the beginning stages where more that intermediate stages. And how do we optimize? Software, a move things forward. That’s right. And so, yeah, I think on the Supply chain side that that’s really where things are moving forward of, you know, it’s kind of like how we had cell phones. And then at some point you got a BlackBerry and then you got an iPhone or an Android. And then that first iPhone or Android was nice. It could it could get on the Internet and writings, but it wasn’t till like people started getting apps and really changing things that you saw all the differences like, oh, we can have an Uber and Lyft that can have a real world change.

[00:43:33] So we’re kind of getting there, I think, on on supply chain technology and I think on the same on transportation technology, kind of I see the parallels in my work as well, because we’re seeing so much more transportation technology that’s a little bit getting to where it’s it’s been at that pilot phase for the past decade where you’ll hear about stories while autonomous pilot testing here in there air here in the city of Atlanta on North Avenue, there’s a connected vehicle corridor if you want to, you can download something called the Travel Safely app. It’s on the iPhone, on the app store. And the Androids were in it free. And you can drive down there and it’s going to tell you messages as you go down North Avenue, you’re sitting at a red light. It’s about to turn green. It’ll say get ready for Greene in this robotic loves. If you’re approaching a red light and you start to speed up, it will sound an alarm. It is going to tell you that because the makers of this app took me on a test drive out there and the guy said, don’t worry, I’m going to speed up towards this red light. Don’t freak out because I’m not speed up and hit the brakes. And so he has to trick the software to think he’s about to run the red light because some percentage of red light running is because of a distracted driver. This look in their phone or eating or talking or whatever.

[00:44:43] And this device can tell that you’re not going to make it. You are going to run this light even if you speed up.

[00:44:49] That’s the thing. It a knew that we were speeding up. OK. It was like if we were slowing down. OK. But if you you’re speeding up, that light is red.

[00:44:58] You know it is you red. Yeah. The light was red was red light. Exactly. A whiteboard. We had the white guys at Southwire.

[00:45:04] And I think the idea is that you may not be paying attention. And yet it’s worried that some percentage of red light runners just aren’t paying attention. Yeah. And so it’s a safety issue of, you know, you want to avoid that crash that happens if somebody runs a red light because those are usually bad. Right. And so it’s something it gives you. It sounds alarm like it’s not subtle when it right at others. Why he warned you. Exactly. Because he going to have to hit the brakes, doesn’t it? There’s other software that does other things. Ryder, you’re coming around a curve on a highway. You’re traveling 60 miles an hour. Say it’s gridlocked up ahead. You don’t see it often coming on that curve. You might rear in that car ahead of you. Yeah. This kind of gives you that warning in advance. There’s a lots of different pieces of technology that are giving you those warnings. You know, we hear about autonomous vehicles and Teslas and things like that. All that’s, you know, moving forward and getting there. The connected vehicle stuff’s kind of been in the background and growing at a strong rate, but it doesn’t catch your attention as much. Right. But it’s all coming is going to come in 10 year from now to be standard.

[00:45:57] That’s right. All right. So as much as we hate that one is down, we want to make sure folks can connect with you. Absolutely. And learn more about the Atlanta Regional Commission. So give us some guidance there.

[00:46:07] Ok. So we’ll learn more about us. Go to Atlanta regional dot org. You’ll find anything about pretty much any of the stuff I talked about in terms of ARACY. There’s a drop down meaning for freight. You can find of all of our freight web pages, including one for our free divisor task force, which Scott mentioned, that’s something where we really need to hear from the private sector about what your needs are in terms of transportation trucks on the road. Railroad needs, airport air, cargo needs. Because when we talk again, this is where you’re federal. Federal transportation dollars are going. Yeah. You know, you see road construction out there. You’re seeing the construction workers. Somebody designed that project. And before that, somebody had to plan it up. Figure out how to spend the money, where it could come from. And so we want to get that input. And so that’s true for us. That’s true for every organization like us nationally, every MPO. And even if you don’t have an MPO, you have somebody doing this job that needs to hear from you, because at the end of the day, the the decision makers are elected officials and they’re going to listen to voters rightly.

[00:47:03] Freight doesn’t vote for it’s not in the voting booth. And so we need to hang on. Yeah. Not yet. So we want to hear from you. That’s good. So it might be a survey sometimes, things like that. But it’s something where these meetings in particular, Scott’s been there. We’ll have these various plans and studies going on that we need to hear the you know, what’s happening in your world. Yeah, we have information about those on our Web site. I know this recording a mutex is going to come out and, you know, maybe in the next couple weeks, the next one after that would probably be May 21st. OK. Endedly scheduled at this point. But we’ll have the details on our Web site. And we use a post on Eventbrite as well where you can find the details and register and they can connect with you. Only 10 as well. Arlington, Va. Lee May 21st for the next freight task force. Exactly. First thing in the morning, we usually do 8:30, 30 to 10:00 a.m. So you can come to that. Then go to your day job.

[00:47:48] It’s a great event. It’s a great event. It’s a great not only market intel industry, intel event, great networking, Daniel. And the team does a great job.

[00:47:57] Most everyone’s welcome. UPS, right? Yeah. You’re in the freight logistics industry. Come on. Yeah. We ask you, you know, sign up on Eventbrite. So we have a headcount campaign ahead, but.

[00:48:06] And you can get on his. You got it. You’ve got a communications list. So let folks go through Atlanta original dot dot org or. Yeah. You could find that. And you can certainly find Daniel stuttered on LinkedIn.

[00:48:19] And there’s a there’s a page like Summit your comment or question to A or C here to freight and. Yeah, you can get to me through there as well.

[00:48:26] And we’ll try to Sardinia. We’re going to that will send you a tool at Shearson information if you want to send us one. There’s direct links will include shown UPS. OK, so folks and we’ll make it even easier. That’s great. So we’ve been talking with Daniel Stutter, principal transportation planner with the Atlanta Regional Commission. It doesn’t you know, it spent 40 minutes with Daniel does not do it justice in terms of it’s all of this.

[00:48:45] I’ve got a half dozen questions.

[00:48:48] Well, we’ll have to have Daniel back on.

[00:48:50] We really great friend, the show, great ally for business throughout the U.S., but certainly throughout the metro Atlanta area. Appreciate your partnership throughout the 20/20 Atlanta Supply chain Awards two years ago now for sure. And stay tuned for information and details for year three of the Atlanta Supply chain Awards. So to our audience, stay tuned as we continue our coverage of mutex 2020 right here in Atlanta. G-A. In the meantime, you can check out other upcoming events, replays for interviews, other resources at Supply Chain Now Radio dot com. Big thanks to our guests. Daniel stuttered again with the Atlanta Atlanta Regional Commission. Fondness and subscribe or ever get your podcast from on behalf of the entire team here. Greg Amand. Clay. Chris, you name it. Many, many more Scott Luton here. Wish you a wonderful week ahead and we will see you next time on Supply Chain Now.  Thanks everybody.