Latest / Conservation Stories / Dry Side Dispatch • October 2nd • Lauren D Garduno with Ports to Plains.

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Dry Side Dispatch • October 2nd • Lauren D Garduno with Ports to Plains. · Conservation Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the dry side Dispatch brought to you by HSI Water. We've got a full crew today. Andy's here today. He remembered that we are on the radio on Fridays.
• 0:09
  Speaker B: Hey, I was working, I got busy working and looked up and it was one o'. Clock.
• 0:13
  Speaker A: Well, yeah, somebody, somebody's got to pay the bills. I don't know if it would ever be me but I'm too lazy for that. We're fortunate today to be joined by Lauren Garduno with the Port to Plains Alliance. And it is. We've been sitting here pregaming the show here a little bit. Unfortunately we've been pregame and get like baptist and you know, not drinking anything. We need to pregame like catholic sometime. But we've been talking about the Port du Plains and let's go ahead and go back Lauren, if you don't mind and talk about the history of the port plane because I've, you know we've lived here our whole lives and we've heard about it for years since I think W. George W. Bush bought it, brought it to the forefront and everything. But let's go ahead and talk about what it originally is.
• 1:01
  Speaker C: Tell us who you were first.
• 1:02
  Speaker B: Jealous.
• 1:04
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 1:04
  Speaker C: So.
• 1:04
  Speaker D: Yeah. So. Good afternoon everybody. My name is Lauren Garduno. I'm with the Ports of Plains Alliance. I've been with him four years after about a 35 year career with Texas DOT. I spent most of my career, I went to school here in Lubbock. My undergrad in engineering, civil engineering at Tech and then ended up marrying a farmer's daughter down in the Winters. Blizzard. Winters area. Winters, Texas.
• 1:23
  Speaker B: Oh sweet. Yeah.
• 1:24
  Speaker D: And settled in the Abilene area and most of my career has been Abilene, Odessa and then finally Austin. But I was approached by then the economic, I mean the chair of the Ports Des Plains Alliance, John Osborne, he's ALITA executive director and he approached me, it's now four years now about if I'd be interested in taking over this organization. And it's an advocacy, it's an advocacy organization. Portstop Plains is. And so I said yes and I've been enjoying working on it the last four years now going forward.
• 1:51
  Speaker C: So it's an advocacy group. So who started it?
• 1:54
  Speaker D: Correct? Yeah, so it started actually in 1998. That's when it was formed if you think about it. And it's going to get into this history a little bit. It was formed here out of Lubbock. Some business men and women out of Lubbock here formed it and Names like Robert Duncan and Nagemeyer and some of those names, you know, pop up on the list. Even, you know, and even, even Ken Hans was, you know, some of those early days. Ken Hans was involved with it some, but it was just a lot of our local politicians that were pushing for improved highway corridor. And really the, the, the reason it got created too was it kind of all goes back to, it kind of goes back to this highway that you guys see right here out of Lubbock going north to Amarillo. You have a, you have an Interstate highway that's I27.
• 2:35
  Speaker B: Is, is it the shortest north to south interstate in the United States? Maybe.
• 2:40
  Speaker D: Yeah, maybe. Maybe with a two digit number, right? Yeah, you got loops, you got an odd, odd number.
• 2:46
  Speaker B: So.
• 2:46
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, it may be. And it, and I'll tell you how we got it. I mean, it was interesting how we got it. So this year is the 70th anniversary of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway Act. This year, 19. It was signed in 1956. And then what happened was the next year in 57, the federal government signed a bill that actually created the Highway Trust Fund to fund the Interstate highway program. And that's when we started building interstates and going to, going to work across this country. The i27 was not on that list at the time. You know, and over the years, over the 50s and 60s and 70s, you know, they started rebuilding. But in 1968, if you think about
• 3:26
  Speaker B: who that was, a great year, by the way.
• 3:28
  Speaker D: Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff, good sports things.
• 3:33
  Speaker B: A lot of good people like me were born that year.
• 3:38
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. So it was an interesting year, actually.
• 3:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, it was.
• 3:41
  Speaker D: But there was a. Our president was LBJ at the time, Lyndon Baines. And actually interesting enough, the chair of the Appropriations Committee in the House was a man by the name of George Mahan out of Lorain, Texas.
• 3:56
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, very familiar.
• 3:58
  Speaker D: So with George Mahan sitting on the Appropriations, lbj, President, they added to the Interstate act, they added miles. They added another 4,000 miles. And there was some politics about the loop around D.C. and whether it was going to be added or not. But, but in the process of getting that added, those miles added, we got our 121 miles.
• 4:17
  Speaker C: Oh my goodness.
• 4:17
  Speaker D: Amarillo to Lubbock added.
• 4:19
  Speaker B: Oh, wow. Okay.
• 4:21
  Speaker D: All right. So they started funding and building out that. Right. And you know, through the 70s and 80s, you know, we were building this interstate all the way. And actually in Texas, 1992 was the last, the last piece of interstate in Texas that was Built under the Eisenhower bill. That was this little segment that kind of ties into Lubbock. Yeah, Right here. Coming. And we. We were just a little bit ahead of the I70. Glenwood Canyon in Colorado. That gets dubbed as the national last piece of the interstate on the Eisenhower bill. Okay. Created. They had to go through that Glenwood Canyon area. But they only beat us by, you know, they were a little bit later than us by about a few months. So.
• 4:57
  Speaker C: Oh, wow.
• 4:58
  Speaker B: Amazing. It's harder to build up there than it is. We already had a road, I guess. Right.
• 5:05
  Speaker D: And so that was in 1992. And this gets to the ports to plains connection. In 1991, the federal highway program, the highway bill was called ICE T Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act. ICE T. And they basically. They still had the interstate construction program by statute, but they stopped move. They put a little money in it to finish building out R27, you know, a little bit of completion into 92. But they started taking that money out of the highway trust fund money out of the interstate construction program. They moved it over into maintenance. Their programs, how to maintain the national system. So back then, the legislators said, well, what is our vision for the next evolution of highways, the big national highways? And they come up. They created something called the national high priority corridors. And they started letting each state kind of submit their list of. Of what they thought were high priority corridors. And Texas had their list. We submitted a group of corridors. One of them became this Ports to Plains. Designated Ports to Plains segment high priority corridor. It runs from Laredo, Texas to all the way up through the Texas Panhandle and splits the Dumas and goes to New Mexico. And the other part goes up through to Colorado. Right. That was our high priority corridor in the 90s that was designated. How did it get out? How do we land on Laredo in port? Back in the 70s and 80s, when they were studying the alignment of a Ports to Plains, it was all about the. It goes all the way back into the 50s with the new. They call it the Puget to port highway corridor up in Washington state. Runs out 287, comes through Texas and goes all the way down to the port of the Gulf of Mexico like Corpus Christi or Galveston. That used to be the Puget to Port. And really eventually it was a Puget all the way to Florida. They were talking about getting, you know, kind of a cross country highway. So our Porsche planes kind of came out of that. And there was a man by the name of Ross Perot that created Inland Port alliance, you know, and. And when he created the inland port. Then all of a sudden everyone had an inland port.
• 7:08
  Speaker B: And did that, did this coincide a little bit? If I'm trying to think back with nafta, yes, it did.
• 7:16
  Speaker D: Yes, it did. So the, the, the Laredo port got picked up in 1994, we signed NAFTA. And then four years later, of course, business leaders here in Lubbock are looking at, listen, we've got the NAFTA free trade. We got to figure out how to improve this highway, these north south corridors. And that's how portstoplanes got kind of created to help with the NAFTA trade program. So they kind of coincide with each other. If you look at a map today, if you look at a map of the national interstate highway system, you're going to notice that most of the interstates were east west.
• 7:48
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 7:50
  Speaker D: Because that map was basically created back in the 20s. And we were trying to figure out how to get from the east coast to the west coast. And so a lot of east west trying to get from St. Louis up to Washington under the Lewis Clark thing. We were trying to get from, on the Chisholm Trail. We were trying to get from St. Louis and Fort Smith, Arkansas down through Texas, all the way out to California. Then the gold rush stuff and pushing people through Colorado. I mean, so that's kind of why all your interstates follow that path. And you don't, you don't, and you don't have a lot of, really a lot of north south interstates. So when the high priority corridors were created in the 90s, that was really the answer to solving, you know, the north south gaps of a major corridor. And we rocked. But here's the problem, really. The problem happened in the 90s, the federal highway program. They created the high priority corridors. But it kind of always goes back to that highway trust fund, you know, that they created to build interstate. They started putting that highway trust fund money over into maintenance and maintenance and they said, okay, now we have these high priority corridors. But they really didn't have the political will to fund the build out of the high priority quarter system.
• 8:57
  Speaker A: It doesn't cost a whole lot to say, to say the name. Yes. Yeah.
• 9:01
  Speaker D: And, and now lo and behold, for the next last, the next 30 years or so, all these states had to try to complete these high priority quarter systems. And it was four lane divided. It wasn't interest. It wasn't an interstate. It was, it was connecting four lane divideds. And they started working, they started working to do that for the next 30 years with no really guaranteed funding source. Texas has a lot of high. We got a lot of heavy, we got a lot of area. We got a Texas trunk system. We got about 12,000 miles of highway. And we're trying to get to four lane divided standards. So the Ports du Plains is competing with everything else.
• 9:36
  Speaker A: How many miles?
• 9:37
  Speaker D: 12,000 miles of four lane divided highway. It was the trunk. The trunk system, yeah. Trying to compete. And that trunk system was created in the 90s to, to connect cities of population about 30,000 or greater with a four lane divided highway. Right. That was kind of Texas's version of the next evolution of corridors. And so really, you know, ports to Plains has been, you know, punching along for 30 years trying to get, you know, four lane divide. And if you look at our, if you look at our map from, from i10, from i10 at Sonora, we follow 277 up to big up to San Angelo. That little segment There is not four lane divided today. If you drive it and 277, it's not four lane divided.
• 10:18
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 10:19
  Speaker D: But then at San Angelo it does turn four. We do get four lane divided pretty much. There's a little piece in the Abilene area, I mean the Big Spring area that they're working on now. They're working on it and everything else up there.
• 10:29
  Speaker B: I missed that turn every time coming into south from Big Springs. I ended up going all the way around town.
• 10:36
  Speaker D: And then, you know, and then, and then if you look at La Mesa, we got bottlenecks at La Mesa. But once you get it, you still get a four lane highway all the way to Lubbock. Right?
• 10:47
  Speaker A: Right.
• 10:47
  Speaker D: Then you pick up interstate all the way to Amarillo. Amarillo, there's four lane divided north Amarillo to Dumas. Dumas. If you go over to Hartley and Dalhart, we now have, they're under construction today. The last piece of segment four lane divided there. So in Texas we've been pretty good about getting our Porcelain Plains four lane divided.
• 11:06
  Speaker A: Right?
• 11:06
  Speaker D: Yeah, but. But then south of Sonora down to Del Rio and then all the way down to the Blado. That's none of it's full.
• 11:11
  Speaker B: Well, so I drive a lot through. We had a business in the hill country and so we would go to Fredericksburg a lot and then I go to New Mexico a lot. So you know, if you, if you look at can. So I know that there's a way to determine traffic. But if you look at like from Raton to Clayton, down that, that way and then through level and then you get to Sweet. So everybody. All these trucks right. I'm talking about trucks they get down to Sweetwater and they turn and. And then there's a little cut off on a little road that you can cut off instead of going to bront
• 11:42
  Speaker A: it goes to winners it go.
• 11:43
  Speaker D: Yeah, right.
• 11:45
  Speaker B: Yeah. So they're not. And you know somebody died on there about. Well everybody. There's a lot of people died on that road but they, they. Somebody died three or four years ago and I noticed now they're. Texas is starting to do on. On just two lane roads where every so miles there's a passing lane. Yes. Yeah. But that is a super busy road. And then also from like Menard to Junction.
• 12:04
  Speaker C: Okay. That's the worst right there.
• 12:06
  Speaker B: It's terrible. So like like people the already have decided the way that they want to go.
• 12:12
  Speaker C: Right.
• 12:13
  Speaker B: Like and there is just. I don't know what the traffic is on those roads but like it's there and they're all just cutting from like i10 trying to get to Denver or wherever.
• 12:21
  Speaker D: It's kind of like how water runs that you know finds a path of least resistance.
• 12:24
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 12:25
  Speaker D: It's just he's trying to find the. The Super 2 is in that you. That. That you talk.
• 12:30
  Speaker B: Is that what they're talk calling them?
• 12:31
  Speaker D: Passing passing lanes. Those truck passing lanes. We call it. We call them super twos.
• 12:35
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 12:36
  Speaker D: Super twos because you know you basically run in a passing lane for so many miles on this side and you put a sign up says the next passing lane will be so many miles and you flip flop it. So it was a. Basically it was a poor. It was a poor boy's way of building extra capacity.
• 12:49
  Speaker B: Well it's way better than nothing. I will say that.
• 12:52
  Speaker D: Yeah. And we had to do that. This is the point. Case in point is we had to do that in the. In the started in the. In the early 2000s because we didn't. We ran. We had. We ran out of money divide right by the right of way and four lane device. So what was the solution? Well with stay in the existing right away footprint and let's build these super twos and a lot of our. A lot of that trunk system I was telling you about. That's 12,000 miles.
• 13:12
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 13:12
  Speaker D: A lot of that is super two type highway.
• 13:14
  Speaker A: Well I tell you what, the Super Tuesday. I didn't know it had a name. I know it has a name now.
• 13:18
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 13:19
  Speaker A: Eternally Great.
• 13:20
  Speaker B: Yeah. I'm all for especially guys. I mean people that just drive those two lanes, you know and then you Get a truck that can only go 55 miles an hour because it's in limp mode or whatever because of the death system. Well, there's 100 cars and then everybody. Then somebody five cars back trying to pass them. And then they end up head on with somebody. Right.
• 13:38
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 13:38
  Speaker A: I always heard the joke about if you ever want to be a leader of man, just drive slow in a. On a two lane road.
• 13:47
  Speaker D: Yeah. Well, they might just decide to take it. They might.
• 13:50
  Speaker B: They'll pass you. Take it right up your back. Or they'll pass you on the right. Yeah.
• 13:53
  Speaker D: You know, watch.
• 13:57
  Speaker A: I'll tell you what. For every crazy thing that can be done on the road, it's been done. And we probably.
• 14:01
  Speaker B: That and those little bumps they put to wake me up whenever I get off to the right. Like, who's that? Whose idea was that? Like.
• 14:07
  Speaker D: Oh yeah.
• 14:08
  Speaker B: Where did that. Where'd that originate from? Yeah. Rumble strip.
• 14:11
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 14:11
  Speaker B: And they're.
• 14:11
  Speaker D: And they're. They're a safety feature. They're a safety feature designed to keep you from. When you decide to doze off and fall asleep.
• 14:18
  Speaker B: Yeah. To what? Yeah.
• 14:19
  Speaker D: It'll actually supposed to wake you up and keep you. And it's. It's helped.
• 14:21
  Speaker B: It has statistics so that it has.
• 14:24
  Speaker D: It saved a lot of lives that way. And then today, I think with the new automobile technology. I think now that's baked into the automobile.
• 14:30
  Speaker B: Right.
• 14:30
  Speaker A: It is.
• 14:30
  Speaker D: They find yourself drifting. It'll. You'll feel that rumble in your.
• 14:33
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 14:33
  Speaker D: Your tail.
• 14:35
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 14:35
  Speaker A: Drive themselves.
• 14:37
  Speaker D: That's the most wild thing. So. And they've actually gone a little further with the rumble strip. We've invented ability to put the rumble in the paint stripe. So like a gray edge stripe.
• 14:48
  Speaker B: Instead of having that thing that puts it.
• 14:49
  Speaker D: Yeah. Instead of having to mill it into the paint, you can actually just. You can just lay a. It's a thermoplastic paint stripe that actually has a. You know, it shoots. It shoots it in bumps. And then foa. The stripe itself actually serves as a rump.
• 15:01
  Speaker A: Oh, wow.
• 15:02
  Speaker D: Yeah. Which is nice.
• 15:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 15:03
  Speaker D: And it saves lives too.
• 15:04
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 15:04
  Speaker C: So I've noticed that. That a lot of the four lanes are putting in.
• 15:08
  Speaker B: Yes. I was going to ask that rail with cables.
• 15:12
  Speaker D: With cables down the middle.
• 15:13
  Speaker C: Down.
• 15:13
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's another safety feature that is. And really where I first saw that. I think I saw it up in Kansas. Up in the Kansas area. We saw that it's got that cable. That cable barrier is what they call it. And. And if you're a motorcycle rider, you don't like it. Granted, you know, it's like a cheese grater for a motorcycle. Oh yeah. But it is proven again, what it's trying to stop is head on collisions.
• 15:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's cut down tickets.
• 15:40
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:42
  Speaker B: But get across.
• 15:43
  Speaker D: It's designed, it's designed to stop the, the vehicles moving over crossing lanes.
• 15:48
  Speaker B: And just ahead, what I keep thinking about with the ones they're putting in west Texas is what happens after that first sandstorm when it catches all them tumbleweeds of a sudden. It's like the guys that do the, the mow, the mediums are gonna have to go up on their bids.
• 16:02
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. So that's the same problem they have up in the northern states with the.
• 16:07
  Speaker B: Oh, snow. Yeah, I didn't think about that.
• 16:09
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah, similar, similar feature, you know, that way.
• 16:12
  Speaker B: But oh my gosh.
• 16:13
  Speaker D: So you know. Yeah, so you know, so we've, you know, we've rocked along for, you know, for 25 years here trying to build out a, build out this, you know, this high priority corridor called Ports to plains. And in 2012, 2012 we, there were these two other high priority corridors that were north of us right there at Lyman, Colorado where we tie into the interstate. Highway 71 goes north out of Lyman up into Nebraska in the corner of Wyoming, Scotts Bluff, Alliance, Chadwick, some of those areas and that becomes rats. Referred to as another high priority corridor called the Heartland Expressway. And it runs all the way from Lyman, Colorado all the way up through Nebraska up into Rapid City, South Dakota. And at Rapid City, South Dakota there's a third high priority corridor in the nation called the Theodore Roosevelt Expressway.
• 17:01
  Speaker B: Oh, so they named it after like a famous president.
• 17:05
  Speaker D: And if you think about Andy too, think about where that quarter runs from Rapid City up through the western edge of North Dakota. Today it runs close to Medora, North Dakota today. That's the new presidential library, which I
• 17:19
  Speaker A: was just listening today. It, it opened in just July.
• 17:22
  Speaker D: July, yeah.
• 17:23
  Speaker A: It's at150,000 people.
• 17:25
  Speaker C: Have you seen it? But have you seen a picture of it?
• 17:27
  Speaker D: It's great.
• 17:28
  Speaker C: Oh my word.
• 17:29
  Speaker D: Yeah, it's awesome.
• 17:30
  Speaker C: It disappears like they built it where it's just part of the landscape.
• 17:35
  Speaker B: Really.
• 17:36
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. They put the grass on the roof and they built it on a slope. Looks like the, it looks like the rolling badlands that you have up there.
• 17:42
  Speaker B: That's how Teddy would want it.
• 17:43
  Speaker C: Exactly. So cool.
• 17:46
  Speaker D: So, and for the record, we're gonna have our annual meeting next year in Williston, North Dakota. And one of our events is going to be we're going to tour that library.
• 17:53
  Speaker C: Oh wow.
• 17:54
  Speaker D: Yeah, we're going to, we're going to take, we're going to take our Ports to Plains conference all the way to Williston and then go down there and tour that library that day. But you now have three high priority corridors and to get all three of them. And that's another part of my job today is I represent all three of these high priority corridors called the Ports des Plains Trade alliance kind of tied
• 18:13
  Speaker A: it in that way.
• 18:14
  Speaker D: The trade with Canada. Trade with Canada, Mexico and.
• 18:17
  Speaker B: Yeah. So
• 18:20
  Speaker D: our mission has changed a little bit since 2012 to add those other two corridors and then. And now today for the last four or five years. Well, what happened was, is Senator Perry helped US back in 2019, legislated a study of the Texas portion of the Portuguese Plains to see what the impact would be if it was actually all brought up to Interstate I27. And so text. And so he commissioned, he legislated a study that TxDOT did that did. Went through the process of determining, you know, you know, what would be the economic benefits of actually upgrading this, this four lane divided highway to interstate standard. Right. And the numbers came back Wonderful. Great. Positive over 2 plus benefit to cost 18 billion in your GDP. Of course, it's kind of, you know, we all knew that, right?
• 19:08
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 19:08
  Speaker D: Where you build an interstate economy proves all great. And we just need, we just needed those numbers on paper so that all of a sudden the Ted Cruz's of the world.
• 19:17
  Speaker B: Yeah. Validate.
• 19:18
  Speaker D: Yeah. Oh yeah. Now I can. And he got on board and everybody else, you know, Jody Arrington got on board and we just, you know, everybody said, yeah, oh yeah, this is, this is a big deal. Yeah. So for us then our next step was let's go ahead, let's consider getting it now designated congressionally designated as a future interstate highway. And that was completed in 2022. We got that designation. Ted Cruz carried it along with Senator Ben Lujan out of New Mexico. So we had a Republican and Democrat carrying the bill and we got New Mexico and Texas designated as future i27. And that is what we have today is we have the i27 designation, which is good because there are 12 of these future interstates across the nation that are now got that designation. And now it's just a matter of trying to figure out a way to fund them. We don't have it. I do not have it on the rest of my high priority quarter system. That's one of my tasks. I'm working on now is I'm working with all the congressional leaders all the way from Oklahoma all the way up to Montana.
• 20:16
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 20:17
  Speaker D: To get them interested and excited about. Let's go ahead and designate the rest of our system, the heartland and the Theodore.
• 20:23
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 20:23
  Speaker D: All i27.
• 20:24
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 20:24
  Speaker D: And let's build this i27 from Laredo all the way to. All the way.
• 20:28
  Speaker B: Because everybody's fighting for their own little piece. Instead of pulling together and saying, hey, let's all go together. Let's get all the senators from these eight states or however many. How many states would reports the plane cross?
• 20:39
  Speaker D: About six. Let's see, there's this six, seven of them. Let's see, there's Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado. We got Nebraska. We got a little bit of peace. Goes into Wyoming. Then you get in South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana. So there's nine.
• 20:50
  Speaker B: Okay. So that's 18 senators.
• 20:51
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:52
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 20:52
  Speaker D: Wow. And with. Think about it, with John Thune. Senate majority.
• 20:55
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 20:56
  Speaker D: Right.
• 20:57
  Speaker B: Right.
• 20:58
  Speaker A: You could make it jog over into Kansas somehow. You could pick up two more.
• 21:01
  Speaker D: There's been debate. Yeah. There's been debate about that.
• 21:04
  Speaker A: So it's kind of funn. You start looking at going up to see Mount Rushmore from here, and there is nothing between here.
• 21:11
  Speaker D: Correct.
• 21:12
  Speaker A: It is going. I gotta go over here and then way over. But I mean, it's.
• 21:17
  Speaker D: And as recently as this last year. I'll just let y' all know, too. We are. We've looked. We're looking south also. There's been a big talk about if we can build this interstate along our border. This will help in so many ways with the military deployment, border security, all kinds of, you know, the new technology. Because I keep telling.
• 21:34
  Speaker B: That's a good word with all the.
• 21:35
  Speaker D: Oh, yeah. Border security.
• 21:37
  Speaker B: Just not you. That's. That's a good one. This is national security. Yeah.
• 21:42
  Speaker D: We're bringing in. Right.
• 21:43
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:43
  Speaker D: And. And. And so, you know, we. We are being approached by. We've been approached by people in Brownsville in that area. To take the 83 highway from Brownsville up along the border. It's another 200 miles all the way to Laredo, and it's tied 27 in that way.
• 21:56
  Speaker B: Right.
• 21:56
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 21:57
  Speaker D: And we think that makes good sense.
• 21:58
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:59
  Speaker D: And so we're pursuing that.
• 22:01
  Speaker A: It really get. I mean, didn't get you all the way out to Brownsville.
• 22:03
  Speaker D: Yes.
• 22:04
  Speaker A: And then all the stuff across.
• 22:05
  Speaker B: Well, where's Elon's thing at? Down there in Brownsville. Yeah. So let me get him. Get him on board. Like, I mean, like say, hey, we need to start here and go pay for it.
• 22:14
  Speaker D: Yeah, why not?
• 22:15
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 22:15
  Speaker D: Yeah. Well, you know, purpose and need. You know, purpose and need for that. Think about it. You've got Elon Musk and SpaceX as you come up the border to Del Rio, and then you come up Del Rio to Sonora. You get on I10 and go out to Van Horn and you got Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin.
• 22:29
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
• 22:30
  Speaker D: So you've got these two spaceports that way. Got their own spaceport in Midland. Right. So you got a spaceport in Midland that they're developing.
• 22:37
  Speaker C: Midland.
• 22:38
  Speaker D: Midland has a spaceport.
• 22:40
  Speaker B: Well, and there's going to be a.
• 22:41
  Speaker A: I'm nodding my head like I remember that because it rings a bell. Yeah, but.
• 22:46
  Speaker D: Well, I mean, they don't have an Elon Musk type spaceport, but they've got a spaceport, you know, something to develop.
• 22:52
  Speaker C: Makes sense.
• 22:53
  Speaker D: Something to work on. So now you have that connection. You have the new refinery in Brownsville being built as we speak. It's going to tie all that Permian Basin oil to Brownsville.
• 23:02
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 23:03
  Speaker D: As we say on that way, you know, we got that connection.
• 23:05
  Speaker B: Well, and then they're there. We talk a lot about Tilleries and her husband own a landman business. And so we talk a lot about like, where all these data centers need to go.
• 23:14
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 23:14
  Speaker B: And the Midland almost the Permian Basin is like the best place for it to clean the, clean up the water, the produce water. You got gas. They can't. Matter of fact, I was, I was reading a deal today that some. The gas has got. There's so much gas in the Midland that sometimes they have to pay people to take it.
• 23:32
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 23:32
  Speaker B: Or they flare it off. They can't flare it off over a certain amount of time.
• 23:35
  Speaker C: But when every time I see that flaring, I think, what's wrong with us? Like, why in the world are we wasting all of this?
• 23:42
  Speaker B: Well, the oil is more important than the net gas. Again, I don't know. It's crazy, but. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of stuff
• 23:48
  Speaker A: to have states banning, you know, the natural banning gas stoves.
• 23:53
  Speaker B: I know.
• 23:54
  Speaker A: You know.
• 23:54
  Speaker B: Well, yeah, I think that's kind of
• 23:56
  Speaker A: over with California and. Well, California is doing. It's got another push for it.
• 24:00
  Speaker D: Right.
• 24:00
  Speaker A: New York's already tried to do it. Well, I've actually. New York City, I think, has done it.
• 24:04
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 24:05
  Speaker A: But I mean, it's. It. That's a whole nother. That's a whole different kettle of fish.
• 24:08
  Speaker D: But. But the Technology is there for us to put that gas in the places we need to put it.
• 24:12
  Speaker B: Right.
• 24:12
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 24:12
  Speaker D: I mean, we can, we could really utilize. It's underutilized.
• 24:15
  Speaker B: What, what part does looking into the future does autonomous driving vehicles have to play in all of the stuff that you're looking at? Great.
• 24:25
  Speaker D: It's a great question. I'll tell you why. Because I keep preaching this to everybody about. I said, listen, you know, I grew up, you know, I grew up in Borger, Texas, and my grandparents lived in Moriarty Stanley, New Mexico. And I would get on the road, we'd get on the road with the family and we would drive Route 66. This is like the hundredth anniversary of Route 66.
• 24:44
  Speaker B: It is, yeah.
• 24:45
  Speaker C: Right.
• 24:45
  Speaker D: We would drive the Route 66. Yeah. And then all of a sudden I40 came along the interstate highway bill sign and we built Interstate 40 across that stuff. And I get this from people about interstates. They say, well, you're going to kill with these small towns. I said, no. Well, no, this is not your grandparents interstate that we're talking about building today. I27 is not going to be built like Route 4, I40, or even like our 27 runs today. It's going to look a whole lot different. And I'll tell you, by this, it's going to have the technology baked into it. It's going to have the fiber baked into it. It's going to be what we call smart corridors. To your point about autonomous vehicle. Because today, today as we speak, there are trucks running on I45 from Houston to Dallas and on I20 from Dallas to El Paso that are autonomous trucks running today, driverless.
• 25:35
  Speaker A: Holy crap.
• 25:35
  Speaker D: They're running today, y'.
• 25:37
  Speaker A: All.
• 25:37
  Speaker D: They are running today. And so it's happening. It is already happening. That's not. Everybody hears about the Elon Musk taxis in Austin, right. And how that's expanded. That's. Yes, it's going to happen. Jerry Jones is experimenting with the air taxis over there, Frisco over to the, you know, back into Dallas.
• 25:53
  Speaker B: Right.
• 25:54
  Speaker D: Look at the air taxi. So, yeah, get ready. As we build this interstate, you look, you're going to look for, look for autonomous vehicle lanes. Look for, look for ports that'll be vehicle vertical takeoff and lift drone ports. So, like, if you're trying to reach rural health care out in the middle of farmland. Out in the middle. Well, let's go. Clayton to Raton, for example.
• 26:16
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 26:17
  Speaker D: You know all that Captain in the country, there's nothing out there.
• 26:19
  Speaker A: Nothing.
• 26:19
  Speaker B: Right.
• 26:20
  Speaker A: If you get sick is awesome.
• 26:21
  Speaker D: Though it is nice. Yeah, it is. It's beautiful.
• 26:23
  Speaker A: If you haven't been to Kaplan, people go visit.
• 26:25
  Speaker D: Captain, I drove it this week. It's gorgeous.
• 26:27
  Speaker B: Did you go up the mountain?
• 26:28
  Speaker D: No, I didn't drive the mountain.
• 26:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, you drove through Raton.
• 26:31
  Speaker D: But anyway, it's a great.
• 26:32
  Speaker A: I dressed my fat.
• 26:33
  Speaker B: Hey, what's that. What's that town south of Capulin, though? Clayton.
• 26:36
  Speaker D: Is it Clayton Springer.
• 26:38
  Speaker B: Well, then what's the last big town?
• 26:40
  Speaker D: Oh, Clayton is on the Clayton. And then that's coming to Texas.
• 26:43
  Speaker B: Yeah. What's in. It's in Texas. Anyway, be careful. What is that town?
• 26:47
  Speaker A: That's Delhart.
• 26:49
  Speaker D: Dalhart text line.
• 26:50
  Speaker B: What's north of Dalhart? Nothing, Nothing. Maybe it was Dale Hart. I don't remember. Anyway, be careful up there because I put my card in the gas pump and somebody skimmed it up that area.
• 27:00
  Speaker C: Oh, no.
• 27:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, so. Yeah, be careful when you go up there. Use the tap. Don't use the. I mean, they can probably use it. They can probably get the tap too.
• 27:08
  Speaker A: Anyway.
• 27:08
  Speaker B: Yeah, well.
• 27:09
  Speaker D: Yeah, well, so. So the point is, I think you're gonna see. I think you're gonna see it doesn't necessarily look like a four lane divided with frontage roads. You may see it an extra third lane somewhere. That's dedicated autonomous traffic.
• 27:21
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 27:21
  Speaker D: And I mean, I throw this out as an idea. I keep telling all the engineers, hey, this is what you can do. I'm driving my car, my pickup truck down the road and I want to decide that. I want to go autonomous with it. Because you already got those vehicles that can do that.
• 27:33
  Speaker B: Right.
• 27:34
  Speaker D: So you. You decide. Okay, I want to do that. I'll agree. You know, you. You'll have an access lane that'll peel off into this third autonomous lane. You push a button, it takes over. And now the vehicle's running down this autonomous lane and it controls the spacing.
• 27:49
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 27:49
  Speaker D: You know, it controls all that. And you just run that lane all the way through.
• 27:52
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 27:52
  Speaker D: You get to a city, it's time to go access into a city. You push a button and take it off and drive it into your city and do what you need.
• 27:58
  Speaker B: I'll tell you what's. So I just bought a vehicle that has Ford Blue Cruise on it.
• 28:02
  Speaker D: Okay.
• 28:02
  Speaker A: And.
• 28:02
  Speaker B: And Ford has only. They have only allowed certain areas where you. Where it works and it'll drive itself. Well, in Lubbock, the loop is. Is Blue Cruise area. And. But as soon as you get out and Marcia Sharp and i27 are Blue Cruise. But when. As soon as I Get out on a divided highway. Like it cut. It won't let me do it because there's like people that can cross.
• 28:25
  Speaker C: Right.
• 28:25
  Speaker B: But I mean like, the loop is way more hard in my mind for the car to manage than like going to. From here to Brownfield. So like I have. I mean, like, I would love to see like more. More places. I know Teslas can go any, pretty much anywhere. But Ford has. It hasn't. They haven't done it yet. Hopefully that they will. But I just. My little experience with it, it's like, you know, and the people that I know that have. That have like cyber trucks, like you buy insurance on a cyber truck through Tesla and the more you personally drive it, the higher your insurance is. So like the people that drive like 90. So there's some people that have had them for 20, 30, 000 miles and 99 of the miles have been driven by the truck without the human interval.
• 29:08
  Speaker D: Right.
• 29:08
  Speaker B: So they. Tesla has like billions of miles with the data to back it up to say most of these accidents were human when the human was driving.
• 29:16
  Speaker D: You're right. You're exactly right.
• 29:17
  Speaker C: Well, I did, I did hear in it a body. Body camera of a guy got pulled over and he was like, it wasn't me. I wasn't driving. It was the car and the police officers. Like, I don't care. Yeah, yeah, you're getting the ticket. But I didn't do it.
• 29:34
  Speaker D: Yeah, he's still accountable for it. Yeah.
• 29:36
  Speaker B: Well, you can't.
• 29:36
  Speaker C: You can.
• 29:37
  Speaker B: You can go 15 or.
• 29:41
  Speaker C: I have a friend that they just bought a Tesla and she said it's got like. Theirs has like three modes which is like turtle. And then there's one that's like, you know, everything, like within the limits.
• 29:52
  Speaker B: I'm sure there's another one. It's. I'm from. Sure. It's called X Mode.
• 29:59
  Speaker D: There's a funny. There's a funny story related to that. So we have. Our family has live360. Right. Kind of track we're at. And of course it tracks how fast you're to going.
• 30:05
  Speaker C: Yeah. Kylie, if you're listening.
• 30:11
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 30:11
  Speaker C: And everyone track your twins.
• 30:13
  Speaker D: Yeah. And every once in a while I get a text from my wife about. Yeah, yeah. Aren't you going? Yeah, 360 just pinged you.
• 30:21
  Speaker B: But the funny thing about it was
• 30:23
  Speaker D: I was flying here the other day. I was on an American Airlines flight and I was. I got a text from her, says it's showing that you're going 180. Yeah. I said, you got Me.
• 30:34
  Speaker B: You caught me, you know, because it actually picked up. Yeah. You're probably on Starlink in the airplane. Probably picked it up.
• 30:40
  Speaker D: Yeah, I picked it up. So anyway. Yes, I said, you got me 180.
• 30:44
  Speaker C: That's so funny. Yeah, I, I know. We, I, that's funny. Some, some families are like, do not want, like, people to know where they are or they think it's weird. But I'm like, my goodness, I have an uncle and a cousin and another friend. I mean, like, if I ever, if anybody ever takes my body, my, if my phone's with me, people will find me.
• 31:03
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 31:04
  Speaker C: I will be found. There's too many people tracking me.
• 31:07
  Speaker D: I like it personally. Yeah, it's just some protection, right.
• 31:10
  Speaker B: Yeah. So anyway, Yeah, a little bit of accountability too. So there you go.
• 31:14
  Speaker C: That's so interesting. So, so what about the air taxi?
• 31:18
  Speaker D: Sure. Yeah. So, you know, I think, I think as we continue to evolve the, the drone space, you're going to use it in several ways. One of the ways I think it can happen is I think over time we're going to improve the way we move our products and goods across the border with Mexico. Like, for example, today you have all this trucking industry and have all these crossings and stuff to try to move, to try to move your products and then you actually have to handle it on both sides of the border. Sometimes if you're trucking stuff, I believe there'll come a day where we'll be able to warehouse our products and seal our products to certify and get, you know, get border protection, buy off on our products in a sealed container on one side, and then we will use drone technology to move it over to the other side to another sealed facility.
• 32:02
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:03
  Speaker D: And that'll be a one way of handling our border movement trade. Because, you know, a few years ago we got in, you know, we got into buying with the immigration. With the borders.
• 32:11
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 32:11
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
• 32:12
  Speaker D: The immigration actually created a conflict with the, all the freight movement.
• 32:15
  Speaker B: Right.
• 32:15
  Speaker D: Because you try to stop the, you're trying to stop the immigration, you're having to stop everything.
• 32:19
  Speaker B: Right. Yeah.
• 32:19
  Speaker D: So this would kind of free that up a little bit.
• 32:21
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:22
  Speaker D: Improve trade. You know, that's one way that drones are going to be used and then the other way. I do, but I do believe that you'll see us kind of like, you know, like today we have like air, air ambulances and stuff and you know, helicopter, you know, care flights. I believe you'll see a version of that with, with drones.
• 32:37
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 32:38
  Speaker D: And you. So you'll build your multi. You'll build your, you know, today you have rest areas and truck parking lots, you know, for the highways. I think that'll still, you'll need that because you still have trucking, but I think. And then built into those parking areas, you're going to actually have drone. Drone. Multimodal drone ports kind of, you know, and stuff like that to be able to.
• 32:57
  Speaker C: Wow.
• 32:58
  Speaker A: There's some, there's some things, there's some amazing drone technology as far as, like passenger, like, like, like car versions of a drone.
• 33:08
  Speaker D: Yes.
• 33:09
  Speaker A: That's coming down the end. You know, most. A lot of what you, you see the video like, oh, this is pretty cool, you know, but then you realize, oh wait, it's AI generated. But I actually saw one the other day that was actually, they were, that was listing. It was, you know, this, it's been test flown, you know, this many hours of test flights on it. And it was still the prototype, but I mean, it was pretty amazing. And you're not going, well, I can see how that would fit in.
• 33:31
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 33:31
  Speaker A: Somewhere. But you know, the thing that you, when you're talking about moving the freight over, one of the things that's, you know, in a lot of ways, Mexico is way ahead of us. Like if, like I was in the desert in Chihuahua 15 years ago and had full service on my cell phone and I've got places on, you know, between Post and Snyder that I can't, can't do it. Can't make a phone call.
• 33:54
  Speaker B: Right.
• 33:55
  Speaker A: You know, and so that makes no sense. But by the same token, though, some of the trucks that drive on those Mexican roads do not want them on Texas routes.
• 34:03
  Speaker D: No, you're right. And I think this will actually alleviate some of that. This can help alleviate some of that in some way. Another thing that I think we need to think about too, with this modern technology in these future interstates will be. I know people today are working, they're working right now to try to come up with a way to not rely on lithium, for example, for our battery storage. We're trying to get. And I do believe that probably someday somebody will crack that nut.
• 34:30
  Speaker A: And I think we're closer than we think we are.
• 34:34
  Speaker D: And so you're going to see actually us being able to probably bake our battery storage into our highway system.
• 34:42
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 34:42
  Speaker D: Yeah. And you're gonna. In, in. Over in Europe right now. Yeah, over in Europe right now. It's tethered in Europe today, but there's actually bus systems in Europe. In the London. In the London area. That actually are charging as they're driving down a certain road.
• 34:55
  Speaker B: So it's kind of like your phone, your iPhone has the magnet where it sticks to the back. That is crazy because my next question was going to be about, like, how do you charge all these things? Like, how do you.
• 35:06
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 35:07
  Speaker B: To me, any interstate system now has to include some type of charging station for all these trucks. I mean, everything that's coming down the road.
• 35:13
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 35:14
  Speaker B: You know.
• 35:14
  Speaker D: Well, you know, that stuff, that stuff that they were putting in was under the old federal highway program, that IJA program I call that. That's two generations away from what you're going to see when we build this interstate. We're going to have three. We'll have two or three new generations of technology too. You're going to be able to drive down the highway and there'll be segments of that highway where you'll actually be charging your vehicle just by going. Driving over this pavement for a while. And not only that, but rather over there on the side in the right way somewhere, you're going to see a battery storage systems. Yeah, right. And you're going to be. And that it's good for rural America because it's right there. You know, you can go up there between Clayton. Like a Clayton.
• 35:51
  Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, it's forever.
• 35:52
  Speaker D: You'll have. You'll have a battery storage thing that's an alternate, you know, power source to serve that rural area out there. Right. I mean, we'll be able to build that into this.
• 36:00
  Speaker B: It is just so crazy where we can go with this stuff. I remember, gosh, 20 or 30 years ago, they were talking about putting like magnets in the road like every 20 or 30ft. And that the car, before they developed, you know, self driving, that the car would know by the. It would sense the magnets in the pavement and so it would know. But that was before, like, you know, the, what they call adaptive cruise, you know, where you can keep something lane assist and stuff like that.
• 36:26
  Speaker D: I had a. I had a class. I, I didn't. I did my master's work in Engineering and 92 to 94. And I remember a class we were taking where the professor was actually experimenting with using technology to be able to drive a vehicle down a road based upon the color of the stripe, the yellow stripe in the road, which is
• 36:43
  Speaker B: what a lot of them use now. Right.
• 36:44
  Speaker D: That technology is now part of the technology today. I got real tickled at it because I remember Don Maxwell, he's no longer living. But anyway, Professor Maxwell. And I was. What you call a non typical student student, graduate student, because I'd, you know, I'd already been working for with the highway department and it was coming back kind of doing some master's work. Right.
• 37:04
  Speaker B: And you're the ones we always hated because y' all made A's all the time. Yeah, I was married and had a
• 37:15
  Speaker D: two year old daughter at the time. So yeah, I was a little more serious about my schooling than I was.
• 37:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
• 37:20
  Speaker D: Yeah. So it was a whole different story. But, but it was funny because, you know, even then we were trying to figure out how to figure that out. You know, this is 92, 93. Right. We're trying to figure out how to do that. Yeah, at some point we'll see. It.
• 37:31
  Speaker B: It really has taken a little bit longer than I thought it would to get stuff totally autonomous. I really, I mean, I remember hearing 10 or 15 years ago, like what's gonna happen? But I mean, I feel like now we're on the cusp of it and I think probably the, the great, you know, what changed everything now starting in the last year is going to be AI.
• 37:51
  Speaker C: So let me ask you this. So I've been reading a book about a man that, it's interesting. This is like a housing development that's about, it's 20 minutes from the Atlanta airport, so the busiest airport in the nation. And he and his family had bought an old farm and he recognized urban sprawl, worked with his neighbors who'd been there for generations. And they've put like, I think it's 40 or 70,000 acres in. It's 40,000 acres and it's kind of like in an easement. They incorporated it. It has three little communities in it.
• 38:27
  Speaker D: Okay.
• 38:28
  Speaker C: And 70% of it always has to stay in like green.
• 38:32
  Speaker B: It's like a conservation easement type deal.
• 38:34
  Speaker C: It's kind of like that. Yes. So but the way they, they have built it is not for cars, it's for people.
• 38:42
  Speaker D: Okay.
• 38:42
  Speaker C: And so he actually is that he references a lot of the things that you're talking about in the 50s and a lot of the lobbying that came about from the automobile industry.
• 38:51
  Speaker D: Right.
• 38:51
  Speaker C: And how that has really created the way that we live and how that our communities function now and how they've changed since then. What do you think culturally, what do you think it's going to look like?
• 39:04
  Speaker D: Well, so. And let me ask ask a clarification on that too. So when you say there, he's, he's designing the community for a kind of different modes of travel.
• 39:14
  Speaker C: So mostly I Think so. The way I understand it is it's kind of. Kind of like everything's in walking distance kind of thing. You know what I mean? So people live, they work in Atlanta.
• 39:27
  Speaker D: They create a cluster kind of.
• 39:30
  Speaker C: But the houses are like it. When you look at it on like a video, it looks like an, an old. Like a town in England. Like a little. What do you call those?
• 39:40
  Speaker B: Little like the Amish or like cottages
• 39:42
  Speaker C: or like, like if you were to go to a small town in England.
• 39:46
  Speaker A: Narrow streets, that kind of stuff.
• 39:48
  Speaker C: Kind of like that. Yes. So. But like, if they're not. The houses aren't built around the garage.
• 39:54
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 39:54
  Speaker C: Does that make sense? So, like the front porches are back and things like that. You know what I mean?
• 39:59
  Speaker D: So. So they're relying on. They're relying on maybe trying to identify public transportation options to get these people back and forth into Atlanta.
• 40:06
  Speaker C: I really don't even know. I mean, I know that now that there's a. There's a school there. And I mean, I haven't. I've just now started reading the book. So I don't really quite understand exactly how they've. What they've done and how they're doing it and how it's functioning and if it's even like a thing. Like. But I know that everybody's life is like here. If you do not have a car.
• 40:25
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 40:25
  Speaker C: You do not have a life.
• 40:26
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 40:27
  Speaker C: I mean, you just.
• 40:28
  Speaker D: So we, you know. And this is an interesting statistic too. I saw the numbers on the screen this week at a presentation in Raton. I was at a cadille and it was talking about driver's license, what time, you know, when we were, when we were 16. You know, we couldn't wait to get our driver.
• 40:43
  Speaker B: Oh, I tried to get it at 14.
• 40:44
  Speaker D: Hardship. And to be honest with you, I always enjoyed visiting my cousins, my farming cousins in New Mexico because my uncle Wayne used to let us drive the, you know, to haul, you know, irrigation.
• 40:55
  Speaker B: Hey, I was hauling them to the school when I was 14. Yeah.
• 40:58
  Speaker D: Yeah. So my cousin George and Walter, I. We got to drive the international pickup truck hauling irrigation pipe at 12, 13. Right. So. Yeah, but. But now today, 16 year olds don't quite necessarily go after that license at 16. And they're seeing some interesting numbers. 17, 18, 19. So it's to your point about less reliant upon a vehicle. What's the alternative? Right. If you, if we're not going to. And so there are these communities that are starting to design. There's a There's an interesting community down in Laredo area called Talis. And they're building a whole. They're patterning it kind of after the alliance program, where you're building your workspace and your living space and your park space, your green space. All is kind of an integrated community. And you'll see that where it's less reliant upon having to use some kind of transportation.
• 41:45
  Speaker A: It sounds a whole lot like when they call them company towns. Yeah. Back that. The coal mines.
• 41:53
  Speaker C: Hershey's has a place like that.
• 41:55
  Speaker B: Speaking of that.
• 41:56
  Speaker A: That's kind of. But that's kind of the bad connotation to bring to it.
• 41:58
  Speaker D: Well, future. Future program for you guys is y' all need to go back and redo the Thurber. The coal. The coal town of Thurber down here off I20, backside of Fort Worth.
• 42:07
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 42:07
  Speaker D: That is a. That's an interesting story about. It was all union. It was all unionized back in the turn of the century, 1900s. And it became. They discovered oil in Ranger, Texas, and all of a sudden they abolished the Thurber Oil Company. The oil company and formed. I mean, the coal mine company and they formed an oil company. Right. But that's an interesting story, Thurber.
• 42:28
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 42:28
  Speaker B: Well, I think they found oil in Cisco too, right. Yeah.
• 42:31
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 42:31
  Speaker B: And that. That was where. That was where Conrad Hilton established his first hotel.
• 42:35
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 42:36
  Speaker B: So the Hilton empire was started in Cisco.
• 42:38
  Speaker D: Yeah. You have a Hilton. You have the Hilton story there at Cisco, right?
• 42:41
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 42:41
  Speaker D: It's pretty fascinating how that. And some of this. Some of this red brick on Broadway here in Lubbock came right out of that.
• 42:47
  Speaker A: Thurber.
• 42:48
  Speaker B: Yep. Really?
• 42:49
  Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah. The Thurber bread. The Austin, Congress Avenue, Broadway here in Lubbock. A lot of these towns.
• 42:55
  Speaker B: Oh, Brownfield used to have it, but
• 42:56
  Speaker A: I think they pulled it still there.
• 42:57
  Speaker B: That red square.
• 43:00
  Speaker D: Just.
• 43:00
  Speaker B: Just on the square.
• 43:01
  Speaker D: That's a. That's a thorough brick. Yeah. Right there.
• 43:03
  Speaker B: Well, it happened with the CCC also. Right. Like they were trying to put people to work. WPA and. Yeah, but to your earlier, you know,
• 43:10
  Speaker D: but to your community thing, I mean, I think you're going to start seeing people designing, you know, you'll start seeing this. This transportation being designed around that kind of lot, you know, changing.
• 43:20
  Speaker C: That's kind of what I wonder too.
• 43:22
  Speaker D: Funny story about that. I. I had a speaking engagement in the 90s in Alaska, of all places, Anchorage. It was a transportation speaking engagement. And I was in Alaska, their transportation week. And I flew in the course to Anchorage and Then it was kind of like one of those, you know, the Jamaica bobsled stories.
• 43:39
  Speaker B: Oh yeah.
• 43:39
  Speaker D: I left Dallas Fort Worth at 87 degrees and it was minus.
• 43:43
  Speaker B: It was a late March conference.
• 43:44
  Speaker D: So it was minus eight. People got, you know. And so anyway, that was another story. But anyway, the. But what fascinated me. But I stayed at that old hall, that hotel I stayed at. I could look out my window and there was a general reliever airport. Kind of like our small general reliever airports we have in Texas and stuff. And I got to notice in all the houses around the reliever airport and these garage doors would climb up, rise up. And it wasn't a car that was coming out of the airport. It was a small Piper Cub.
• 44:15
  Speaker B: Oh yeah. With skids on it. Skis on it.
• 44:17
  Speaker D: And they would taxiway right down the street and they turn right into the airport and get on the tarmac and they would go through the air traffic trail and yeah, yeah. You know there's an unbelievable number. Like it was over 50% of the, you know, pilot's license people had pilot's license in Alaska, you know and they've just. So there's a way a community there met their mode of transportation. Right, right. That's the way they're.
• 44:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. You know, there's still lots of areas of Alaska that you can only reach by plane.
• 44:44
  Speaker D: Correct.
• 44:44
  Speaker A: And a lot of people by float plane.
• 44:46
  Speaker B: We had a dude that came up here that was on our show. Remember Tillery? He flew up. He lives like in. Yeah, yeah, bfe. Like in the middle of nowhere, like south of Sonora somewhere. And like he flew to. Love it.
• 44:59
  Speaker C: Yes. Huh. Yeah. That's when we were talking about the. The orphan Wells. That was Skyler.
• 45:03
  Speaker B: Yeah. And where was he from?
• 45:05
  Speaker C: So yeah, he's Odessa ish area.
• 45:10
  Speaker B: Okay. If I remember, he flew up. I've known several people that live like south. Well one, I say several. They had a helicopter. Like.
• 45:17
  Speaker D: Well, you think about companies, how they plan around transportation. It's kind of like why this interstate's gonna be such a big deal for us. McCoys, the founder of McCoys, he used to plan out his new facilities locations based upon their access to a general reliever airports. And so you look at, there's like 250something general reliever airports in Texas. And if you look.
• 45:39
  Speaker B: Can you explain that? General reliever. Yeah, yeah.
• 45:41
  Speaker D: So under the Federal Highway Administration, Federal Aviation Administration, you know, they get federal. Federal funding comes back to the Texas and you've got certain class airport class systems. Like for example, you have your large Base, commercial airports, your Dallas Fort Worth, you know, your international airports.
• 45:57
  Speaker A: Right.
• 45:57
  Speaker D: They're at a certain class, and then below that class you have there's about 250 of them across the state called general reliever airports. And they're. And they're defined by, you know, usually these are these county airports.
• 46:08
  Speaker B: Okay. So like the Brownfield airport or Levelland
• 46:11
  Speaker D: airport would be classified as general.
• 46:13
  Speaker B: Okay. Okay.
• 46:14
  Speaker D: Yeah. Based on the classification system.
• 46:16
  Speaker C: 250. That's basically one accounting.
• 46:18
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 46:19
  Speaker D: Pretty close.
• 46:19
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 46:20
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 46:20
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 46:20
  Speaker B: You know, and it's. I mean, it's sad. Like, I had learned to fly when I was 18 and loved aviation all my life. And like you in general aviation is going by the wayside. It's sad. I mean, like I, We. Our vineyard is like right off the end of the Runway at Terry county. And if. If we see a. What, one or two planes a week, sometimes maybe fly out of that thing. I mean, I'm sure there's more than that
• 46:47
  Speaker D: or what?
• 46:47
  Speaker A: There's more. There's more. Now cost. It's kind of something odd has happened over the last four or five years out there because you're seeing more smaller planes flying out of there. Now I'm seeing like, I drive by it and I'll see some plain, you know, like Piper Cub type planes. And I, I, unlike Andy, I know nothing about them. I know that looks like a cool plane or that looks like an expensive plane. You know, that's. That's pretty much the expense extent of it. But you see some more out there, and they're actually. I think they're actually building another hangar out there.
• 47:17
  Speaker B: Well, it's because that. And that can be because of taxes, because some people, some counties, if you store your plane.
• 47:23
  Speaker D: Okay, Right.
• 47:24
  Speaker B: Like, let's say you have some kind of business out in the middle of nowhere that you go to once or twice a year. Well, that can be where you restore your plane. And so it's taxed. It's taxed at that location. Yeah. Not at.
• 47:36
  Speaker A: At.
• 47:37
  Speaker B: At Addison Airport in D. You know, north.
• 47:39
  Speaker D: Right.
• 47:40
  Speaker B: North of downtown Dallas.
• 47:41
  Speaker D: You see this in the trucking. You see in the trucking industry too. You know, where. Where you going to get your light, you know, your.
• 47:46
  Speaker B: Oklahoma. For the trailers. Yeah.
• 47:49
  Speaker D: You really do.
• 47:50
  Speaker B: So. Yeah.
• 47:52
  Speaker D: So it's kind of crazy. But anyway.
• 47:54
  Speaker A: But it's. I mean, the. But the ability that this thing that the ports of plane would have to move goods from good. From the far northern part of North Dakota all the way to Brownsville. If that goes from Laredo to brown that. Right. But in that thing. That's incredible.
• 48:10
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 48:11
  Speaker A: And didn't.
• 48:11
  Speaker B: Didn't they just announce a new steel mill, like in.
• 48:14
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 48:15
  Speaker B: What was that? Was it Iowa? I was. I was like, man, that's a weird place.
• 48:19
  Speaker A: It is a weird. No, it is, because Minnesota is where they thought they were going to put it.
• 48:23
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 48:23
  Speaker A: But the company, they're investing $15 billion in Iowa. To put it in Iowa.
• 48:28
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 48:28
  Speaker A: Because apparently they didn't. They got a better deal.
• 48:32
  Speaker B: Well, I mean, I just think if you look at it, if it's in the central part of America or whatever, and they. I think that maybe the Mississippi runs close to that or something. Missouri, maybe. I don't know.
• 48:41
  Speaker D: Well, think. Well, think about this. These are some numbers that just kind of jumped out of me when I was getting into this again. The 12 of the nation's top 20 feedlots are on our corridor.
• 48:51
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 48:52
  Speaker D: Within about 80 miles off of our corner. Right, Right. How much of the nation's cotton here, especially in Lubbock area. 40%, I think. You know, or maybe it's higher. I don't remember. It's pretty incredible. Number of the nation's cotton is right here.
• 49:02
  Speaker B: It's like 90% of the acres, but it's like 40.
• 49:04
  Speaker D: It's only like 40%.
• 49:06
  Speaker C: It's getting lower all day.
• 49:08
  Speaker D: But here's another thing, too. 80, 85% of the nation's potash that we get out of Saskatchewan is out of Saskatchewan.
• 49:15
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 49:15
  Speaker D: And I write a check every year, twice a year for my fertilizer bill, you know, when I put my crops in the ground, you know, and if I. If I can. If I can not have to pay $700 a ton for my fertilizer and get it down to 650 or $600 a ton because of an interstate getting down here cheaper. Right.
• 49:30
  Speaker B: Has. Has inflation. This is a dumb question. I'm just giving you a softball. How much has inflation affected the price of, like, constructing a road?
• 49:39
  Speaker D: So it blew my mind what Covid did to us as far as inflation. We had. We were seeing numbers. We were seeing numbers from 2020 to 2024 that got us in, like, in the 20% range of inflation.
• 49:54
  Speaker B: So what does it cost to build a mile of interstate?
• 49:56
  Speaker D: Well, we've. We're figuring in Texas it's going to be about $42 million a mile.
• 50:01
  Speaker A: Holy.
• 50:02
  Speaker D: 42.
• 50:03
  Speaker B: Are you kidding me?
• 50:04
  Speaker D: No, I'm not. Because I'm. Here's my number.
• 50:07
  Speaker A: That's not a lane mile, though. That's like the, that. The complete.
• 50:09
  Speaker D: Yeah, complete interstate. And so. But that. This is my number for Texas. I've got 807 miles to build an interstate. And if I get the Laredo to Brownsville, it'll be now 800 and you know, it'll be a thousand miles. Yeah, you know, a little over 200 more miles. So it'd be a thousand miles of interstate today. That 807 miles we've estimated in today's dollars. Building out on a 25 year curve, inflation included. And we've been, we've been, we've been inflating it about 3% a year. Yeah. That it's going to cost us about $34 billion to build this interstate. 34 billion. Give me some numbers. When the Interstate highway act was signed Back in the 56, they wanted to build 40,000 miles of interstate. They originally appropriated $15 billion. Fifteen billion for 40,000 miles. But by the time they finished it in 1992, it cost us about a hundred and nearly $140 billion. That's a dollar 92.
• 51:02
  Speaker A: Let's just make sure that we don't get the people that are doing the high speed rail in California to do it. Yeah, they're like at 42B and hadn't laid a rail yet.
• 51:11
  Speaker D: They're stuck. Yeah, they're stuck.
• 51:12
  Speaker A: I mean that's, that's. Well, and I knew the number was going to be high because we had a guest on the other day that was telling us that in the city of Lubbock it cost a million dollars. A lane mile.
• 51:20
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 51:21
  Speaker A: For a street.
• 51:21
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 51:22
  Speaker A: A regular street.
• 51:22
  Speaker D: Yeah. No, it's, I mean, it's pretty high. And so the inflation is. It has leveled off the last two years. It's gone. It's kind of leveled out a little bit. But we estimate, you know, normally construction index, we usually estimate about a three and a half, four percent increase a year. And so that's the key to building it sooner than later.
• 51:39
  Speaker A: Right.
• 51:39
  Speaker D: Everything that you can build sooner is going to save. Which kind of gets me to one thing I'm sure I can cover with you guys is this. It looks like for us, it really looks like the stars are starting to align and the planets are starting to align for us, because the current administration, the current president and the. And just the current environment that we're in, we are really this close to resurrecting the Eisenhower Interstate construction program. The federal highway bill is actually the federal highway. It's called the service transportation bill. It renews every five years, kind of like A farm bill every five years. Farm bill? Yeah.
• 52:22
  Speaker A: We haven't had a farm bill since
• 52:23
  Speaker D: 18, you know, and you try to get them renewed every five years. Right, right. And get them, you know, and.
• 52:28
  Speaker C: Right.
• 52:29
  Speaker D: And there's. The last one was called IIJA under the Biden administration. And it was a. It was like a 1.2 trillion dollar program, but only 350 billion of it was in highways. They had. You had the electric vehicle station. You had all. You had all that.
• 52:46
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 52:46
  Speaker D: You had a lot of fiber. They took the word infrastructure and they really. So this administration is saying, let's cut this back and let's spend our Highway Trust Fund money on kind of focusing more on highways, which we agree with. We think that's what you should be doing with your money. And so the House committee came out with their version of the bill back in April, May, and it actually calls for an increase over the 350 to 380. It's a good, modest increase. These are a billion dollars. Right? Billions of dollars. The Senate got stuck and now we got the election. We're not going to see anything. They've got these extensions until after the election. But here's the good news for us coming out of the elections. Doesn't matter if it's Democrat or Republican. Highways have always been bipartisan. You've always needed them. Right. It doesn't matter. The administration's priorities under Secretary Duffy, Trump's priorities under Duffy has come out and listed this list. About five or six priorities. One of them is resurrecting the interstate construction program.
• 53:47
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 53:47
  Speaker D: Yes. And then we've been having conversations.
• 53:50
  Speaker A: We.
• 53:51
  Speaker D: I've joined forces, the Ports of the Plains. We've joined with seven other interstate coalitions across the nation. We formed a coalition called CAFI C A F I congressionally authorized future interstates. There's 12 of them across the country today. We've gotten five or six of those groups together that have active advocacy organizations. And we have formed a group called CAFE the CAFEY Coalition. We're going to get all these 22 states. These senators and these representatives have. Senator Fry, Representative Fry out of South Carolina, Representative Titus, she's a Democrat out of Nevada. They've joined and they formed a CAFEY Caucus so that the more we can get the politicians talking about Caffey and Caffey, Caffey. We think we're this close to resurrecting this interstate construction program again. If we do, Texas will then have a dedicated source of money every year. And guess what? It's going to take four or five highway bills. You can't build it all in five years. But you then, you know, you have a. TxDOT will know that they have a dedicated source of money to start building this interstate from, you know, Lubbock to Tahoka.
• 54:51
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 54:51
  Speaker D: And from Tahoka to Lamisa, you know, they'll have that dedicated funds to be constructed again. And you'll start seeing that construction program looking like it did in the 70s and 80s when we were building from Amarillo to Lubbock. You know what I'm saying? You'll see that. Yeah.
• 55:02
  Speaker B: And you would think, like, let's just take what you just said. Lubbock to Lamisa.
• 55:06
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 55:06
  Speaker B: Like, the right of way is already bought. Right. And to me, that has to be huge.
• 55:10
  Speaker D: Yeah, it is big.
• 55:12
  Speaker B: I mean, to have the. Right away.
• 55:14
  Speaker D: And so right now, TxDOT and Lubbock is working. We've actually were able to get them a little bit of earmark money to study. We're trying to get them ahead of the game. We're trying. We're pushing some earmark money to these TxDOT dishes. Hey, listen, start the planning work. Start getting, you know, looking to see what it would take to upgrade from Lubbock to Lamisa.
• 55:30
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 55:30
  Speaker D: You know, and you know, you're gonna have to build a few overpasses and grade separations. You have to look at your frontage roads a little bit access. You have to look at this autonomous stuff, what that would look like in it. Right. They're already doing. They're doing that as we speak. We've already handed them some money. Jody Arrington was good about giving us some of that appropriations money. Every cycle he can give, he can pass out 2 or 3 million here or there back to the communities. Well, he was good about giving us some money to give to the agency to start planning. And my whole argument has been is if I can get the planning done up front, then if we get lucky and get the construction program up and running, then guess what? We're first at the trough because we don't have. We don't have to buy a lot of right of way.
• 56:09
  Speaker B: Right.
• 56:09
  Speaker D: We start building.
• 56:10
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 56:10
  Speaker C: Right.
• 56:11
  Speaker D: So like, between.
• 56:13
  Speaker A: Like between here and to Hoka, and I think it goes all. Been to the mesa. There was. There's no railroad right away along that side.
• 56:20
  Speaker D: Some of it is. Yeah.
• 56:21
  Speaker A: Is that when the railroad abandoned that? Did that go back to the state?
• 56:24
  Speaker D: It depends A lot of. Sometimes those railroads, when they demand it, goes back to the local property owner who owns that property.
• 56:31
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 56:32
  Speaker D: You know, so it just varies across the state on how that.
• 56:34
  Speaker A: That.
• 56:35
  Speaker D: How those easements, how that were created.
• 56:37
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 56:38
  Speaker D: And that was an interesting railroad, too. You know, if you think about it has interesting history too, that railroad slayton. I think it's part of that slayton.
• 56:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think so.
• 56:44
  Speaker D: Tied to the slayton.
• 56:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 56:46
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 56:46
  Speaker D: Highway over. Going over to Tahoka, you know, and stuff. So. So you know, that if that would be one feature that, you know, that the state could look at about, you know, can we build with that? Can we build an abandoned right away?
• 56:57
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 56:57
  Speaker D: You know, I had a situation when I was in Abilene, for example, trying to improve around Haskell, Texas, and we were actually building some relief route around Haskell, and we used abandoned right of way to lay out the future highway. And we did it in a way that was very cognizive of the city of Haskell being able to develop it. You know what I'm saying? Because you hear the old adage about, oh, you're building this interstate around, you know, around these communities and you're just killing them.
• 57:20
  Speaker C: Right, right.
• 57:22
  Speaker D: You can build a highway and you can build access in a way that actually the city can actually take advantage of.
• 57:27
  Speaker C: That's so great.
• 57:27
  Speaker D: And Haskell did that.
• 57:28
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
• 57:29
  Speaker D: And it works for.
• 57:29
  Speaker C: Well, now they have a data center, so I'm glad that they are locked.
• 57:32
  Speaker D: Well.
• 57:32
  Speaker B: And Amarilla gets the buckies.
• 57:34
  Speaker D: Yes.
• 57:35
  Speaker B: 40. Like, I mean.
• 57:39
  Speaker D: And that's what I tell everybody down here in Lubbock. We get this interstate out of Lubbock, maybe.
• 57:44
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 57:44
  Speaker D: Even though Applin's an Aggie, we still get him to come up here and do some.
• 57:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:50
  Speaker D: He's a. He's an ag. But yeah, maybe we'll get him up here and put some red Ray Raider on him too, a little bit.
• 57:54
  Speaker B: So when you go into, like, Oklahoma, like, Oklahoma has, like, a lot of tolls, like, you know.
• 58:00
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 58:00
  Speaker B: And so. So I don't know how many of those are, like, held by US Corporations. But is there some foreign, like, investment where they own the road and they take the tolls?
• 58:14
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 58:14
  Speaker B: So, like, to help build stuff. I don't.
• 58:16
  Speaker D: So that turnpike in Oklahoma was actually a precursor to the interstate. So back in the 1920s, when we were trying to figure out what to do with our national highway system, Pennsylvania, for example, has the first one. It's like the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It was a toll turnpike that was created prior to the interstate system. And that Oklahoma system from, like, Wichita Falls area.
• 58:36
  Speaker B: Yes, that's what I'm talking About Oklahoma City.
• 58:38
  Speaker D: Yeah, that was a turnpike system. And so back in the 50s, 40s and 50s, when we were trying to figure out, oh, we're gonna. We're going to build this as an interstate. How are we going to fund it as interstate? There was a debate of whether it was going to be a turnpike toll or whether we were going to just actually collect a gas tax and do it with the highway. They chose the latter. They chose the highway trust fund in 57, and that's how we built our system. So these turnpikes are kind of old grandfathered leftovers. Yeah, yeah. But in Texas. Interesting thing in Texas was, is when we were running out of money in the 2000s, 2004, 2000, 2005, we actually. Our model back then was a corridor system that was going to be a tolled system.
• 59:18
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 59:19
  Speaker D: We were inviting foreign investment to come in and try to invest. There are Spanish. There's a Spanish. There's Spanish companies today. Weber is owned by a Spanish company today. And there's, you know, they're doing. There's doing some work in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex and also down the Austin area. You know, you start looking at, you know, who, you know, there's some Spanish investment.
• 59:38
  Speaker B: You know, the one in Dallas is the GW Bush Turnpike. Like, that's. That's a big one.
• 59:43
  Speaker C: I just. So I have a friend that lives in Denison, and she told me the other day when she comes, it costs her $40 in tolls to come get me and take me back to the airport.
• 59:52
  Speaker D: If she chooses the tolls.
• 59:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, if she. Yeah.
• 59:55
  Speaker D: Yes.
• 59:56
  Speaker A: But they've made. They. I mean, they've almost made it impossible.
• 59:59
  Speaker D: Correct. Yeah. So, you know, so you have. And so what we did actually, too is we. We created in the. In Texas, but back in the 2000s, we created something called Regional Mobility Authorities. There's about eight or nine of them exist today, and they are the ones that have taken on the toll. Toll efforts like in downtown Austin. The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority runs all that toll system with textile running. Only the textile has a little bit of the toll. And that's the old 130 that goes around east side of Austin stuff. The North Texas Toll Authority was kind of grandfathered in Dallas where it worked. They were in entity before the RMAs. The Houston Harris county toll was a grandfathered in Houston. You know, these were older systems, and so they have a little bit of what we call primacy on toll networks and around their region. But, you know, Tyler created a toll highway and a Little mobility authority around Tyler and Lufkin. And then you got. The Rio Grande Valley has a couple of them. You know, you got a few of these exist.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker A: Well, when they were first talking about Marsha Sharp, they talked about. They. About making it right. They offered that you can make it a toll. We can do it now.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker D: Right.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker A: Or you can wait.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker D: Yeah. And so Marsha Sharp used a unique funding feature. They collected a utility. They collected a utility fee off your utility bills in Lubbock. And that was actually how they funded their Marshall Sharp freeway. A big part of their Marshall Sharp Freeway. I did not know that. Yeah.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker B: Huh.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker A: I had to have heard that at the time.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker D: Well, they use a fee off their utility bill bill to be. Actually. Which is pretty smart.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker B: I mean, that was a tough one because it had the train tracks running right down the middle of it. I mean, like, that. That was a tough one, but that was a.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker D: That was a way that Lubbock leveraged. You know, of course, they got some help from the state, too.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker D: You know, textile. You know, they funded. Help fund some of that, too, with,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker A: you know, it has amazed me. How convenient. The martial arts.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker B: Yeah. When they were doing it, I was like, nobody's gonna drive that. We'll go at 5 o', clock, go look at how many people are getting off the Marches Sharp on that flyover that goes to South Love.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker B: I mean that. You want to know what?
• 1:01:58
  Speaker A: They should have designed that flyover better. It needs.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker B: Well, now they need another one going the other way, like. And these. I was at San Antonio three or four months ago, and my goodness, what they're doing is 1604 and 20 is our 10. I don't think 20 or 10. So we 10. I guess so.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker D: We. We were successful in getting through Ayrton's office. We got a little bit of money on the 27, and we gave it to TxDOT. And they're using it. Actually, they're using it. Kylan is their district engineer now. Kylan Francis. And we're using that to. They're using that to design the direct connects off of 27 into the Marshall Sharp. There's still some improvements there to be done.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker D: So they're. They're working a study right now to figure out what does that look like? How do we make 27 connect better into the Marshall Sharp? Because today when you exit.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker A: Yes. You know.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker D: You exit all kinds.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker C: And also, it doesn't even say. Yeah. I mean, it's.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker B: No, you got like 100ft between the flying J and like, you Got to get off.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker C: And it doesn't even say like that. That's the exit for Marcia Sharp. It says Floyd Ada.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker A: That's amazing to me though.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker D: But they're working that. Yeah.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker A: I mean, it's, you know, it. I think that the way that it ends on 27 to me is some. Is that it was just like, okay, we're going to end it here, you know, and there wasn't a. There wasn't a realization of how much would go through that. Right. Because, I mean, I'll be honest with you, I thought it was the dumbest thing. Which is this. Is this, is this. In case anybody is wondering. This is the story of my life. If I ever say something is a dumb thing, invest everything you got. Absolutely hit. But if I say, man, that's a great idea. Don't ever invest any money in that thing.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker D: And you're talking about where 27 terminates.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker A: Well, how. Terminate terminates. You know, because I mean, it was just like, you know, everybody. I think everybody was worried more about the west loop.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker A: And not how it tied into 27.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker A: When. When we're looking at that and planning that to begin with. You know, and I think that there's
• 1:03:51
  Speaker C: lots of more traffic there than there's
• 1:03:53
  Speaker A: been a. I think it's. Because I think I go that way a lot. I do too. I mean. And it's. It's mind numbing to me how much easier it is to get to downtown.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker A: Now. Than it used to.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker C: Absolutely.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker D: Well, and to your point about extension to y' all real. I don't know if y' all realize this, but last year we celebrated an additional five miles to Ride 27 Highway. We had a little. We had a little sign unveiling out here south of.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker B: Does it go. Is it going to go to Cooper?
• 1:04:19
  Speaker D: Yeah, he basically gets to Cooper.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker B: Somebody messed up that overpass. Right. Like, that was a big kerfuffle. Right.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker A: I think. Didn't that company go bankrupt or something?
• 1:04:28
  Speaker D: They did. They defaulted.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker D: So they're having to get.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker B: But they're. They're doing it. I think I saw them working on it.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker D: Yeah, they're back. They're back. Construction.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker A: I've never seen a construction project go faster than the 8 loop 88.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker A: Holy crap.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah. But that's kind of what we're. That's what we've been doing is we've been punching. We've been, you know, kit. Punching a little. You know, stab a little. Trying to get this up to interstate standards so that we can resign it, yeah, that process you have to go to federal, you know, get old Washington and Texas does and submit an application to actually extend the interstate system. Which we got done. And that's why we had that sign in baling to extend it to four or five miles. So now, now it's no longer 121 miles from Amarillo Lubbock. It's like 125.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker D: You know it's 125 miles.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker B: On the criteria that makes a four way divided highway like 6282 that goes from Lubbock to Brownfield or goes wherever versus an interstate. What's the criteria that differentiates those two?
• 1:05:25
  Speaker D: So several things that come into play. Part of it would be even your median width between the two lanes divided. Right. Of course back in the 60s 70s we have some interstate like I40 out of Amarillo going to Oklahoma. It's tight medians. Right. So they, those are called design exceptions today. You know, if you're going to live with, live with that. But if future, you know. So median where they look at medium widths, they look at the ramps. Sometimes you have an exit ramp that goes into a two way frontage road and that's not ideal.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker B: You know, Amarillo, I mean Abilene, we're calling your name.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker D: So even around that area I spent some time reading designing some two way to one way frontage road so we could actually change your ramp. So it's that ramp configuration.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker D: And speaking of that point, I just saw a horrific accident yesterday coming in from, from, from Amarillo area to Abernathy and it looked like somebody even on the interstate.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker D: Somebody had tried to go the wrong way the ramp and headed on. Somebody coming out there at the interstate, it was bad. I don't know what the news is going to show on that. But it, but so we look at ramp configurations and then also it, it, it's a, the four lane divided that's there today is not a full controlled access. And what do I mean by that? Four miles down the road you'll see a little median crossover between and that's the difference. You got to control that.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker B: So you have to have overpass, you
• 1:06:39
  Speaker D: got to have a great separation overpass.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker D: You got to control access. You can't let traffic just freeze.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker B: That's why my blue cruise won't work. It's because of that, because of that stuff.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker D: You can't just let traffic willy nilly cross where they want to cross. Right.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker B: Our tractor with. They got 40 foot plow going across
• 1:06:55
  Speaker D: design for Your agricultural movement to be able to move up and down the frontage and cross. And cross over.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker D: You got to design for that.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker B: Well, you would think it would be so much easier here because we don't have any rivers or mountains or anything like that. I mean, even that whole corridor you're talking about, I mean, you get. If you're going to go through Raton, I guess there's some stuff. But. But, but you wouldn't go through Raton.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker D: No, you don't.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker B: You don't.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker D: We're tying to I25 at Raton, so we don't have to build through the mountain.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker D: Trinidad. We don't have to do that. We're done. It. We're done.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker B: So you tie in there and then you skip back over to the east. Is that what. Well, well, just keep going north.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker D: Yeah. Well, we just pick up the i25, you know, into Denver. Right. That's where our. Our. Basically our quarter ends at Raton.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker B: Okay. All right.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker D: But the other segment out of Dumas goes north up through Oklahoma, Panhandle, and goes through Lamar, Colorado, and ties into Lyman. So you do have to go through that part.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker A: That's also going to have to go through national grassland, but it's still flat. National grassland is up there.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker D: And speaking of that, the Theodore Roosevelt today has a construction project in the. In the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker D: And it's trying to. And it's pretty expensive.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker D: You know, they're trying to build through the park. Right.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker D: You know, and it's been a pretty expensive project because of that.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker A: Yeah, because that's. I mean, because you go into that stuff, you're talking about having to do.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker A: Extra archaeological surveys and paleontology and stuff like that's going to go into that stuff. So if you're looking at becoming an archaeologist or a paleontologist, there might be some work.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker B: Oh, there'll be.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker D: There'll be a good job with that.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker C: That's amazing what they do find. Like they found those dinosaur bones on the loop.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean. And we have to. And of course, the highway departments have to take a whole different approach to that than we used to. Right.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker D: The way we built highways, we pretty much just blew through the stuff. Case in Boyne. I was district engineer out in Odessa, Midland. Odessa for 10 years. And I have a historic. There was a historical document that I found they were describing when we were building 285 from Pecos, Texas, up to Orla, up the Carlsbad area. And it describes building across that river, that Pecos River. And he talks about excavating dinosaur bones, you know, and there's a dog that says that, but what do we do with that?
• 1:08:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker D: You know, they're just buried. They're just buried.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker A: I mean, there's one in Illinois or Iowa where they've got the mounds up, some of the mounds up there. And one of them is. I saw a lidar of it. And you can see clearly one of the. And I don't know what they call it when they build a mound that's shaped like something. It's like they've got them in. In South Carolina and South America. And anyway, they had one of those and the legs just get cut off by a highway. Just came in with a bulldozer.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker D: Level it out, did it? So that lidar. That's interesting to bring that up because so much technology. We're seeing things now. We're seeing things now because we're able to see it. It's allowing us to design highways differently, build, you know, to accommodate the environmental elements of it whole differently. Case and point. Today on the Today show, they were talking about the Amelia Earhart plane, possibly with some of that satellite technology. Now they're going to spend an expedition to go see if it is actual, the plane really out of the remote Pacific island that's hard to reach. You know, they said it was easier to get to the moon than it is to get to the sky.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker C: Wow.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker D: But they're going to go see.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker B: They're going to see. That's the way.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker D: But that would. That wouldn't happen without satellite technology.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker A: Right. Well, I mean, yeah, we've had the. We've discussed NASA, what NASA Acres does on the agriculture side and how frequently they track. You know, they can check changes in. In altitude.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker D: Right.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker A: You know, from what, you know, just go out and they can map the whole thing.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker C: Right.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker A: You know, and it's. It's, you know, that everything's changed so much.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker A: You know, some of it's. And it's. It's ironic that it costs so much to build a road when we can do it so much. Kind of technically easier.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker A: With some of the stuff that we've got now versus, you know.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker D: Yeah, we're moving into 3D digital. We're moving into digital construction, digital building. So the new construction of the future is going to be. We're going to build a 3D model of our highway the way it looks with the flyovers and everything. And then we will send that document out to our engineers out in the field and with the contractor, they'll start building it. And they've got a lot of technology on their equipment to build it that way. And then interesting enough, you're going to see this in the future, the way you pay for it. Instead of having a highway inspector going out there and having to keep records, you know, this much dirt's move today or this much asphalt's laid today, they're going to take a robot again, another one of those, you know, those flying drone robots, and they're going to fly the project within grids and zones and they're going to do a payoff. They'll take off payoff for their contractor for their monthly work based on the amount of percentage against that digital model. Right, that's happening as we speak.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because you can have like AI can look at amount of dirt and tell you how many cubic yards it is, right?
• 1:11:26
  Speaker D: Yes. Like an estimated for you.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker A: Well, I mean, and all those, you know, now they've got, you know, all those, the big road graders and all that's all got GPS on it.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker D: Oh, yes, it does.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker A: I mean, they just, you know, you gotta have somebody sitting on it running it.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker D: So.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker A: But he's not actually controlling the hydraulics like he used to.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker D: So funny story about the technology and the lack thereof is. So we use, you know, we use this satellite survey to do a lot of our survey work. You know, we've just been talking about it. Prior to that, the way you used to survey for your highways was. It was a. You'd have just a theodolite. You had a middle instrument.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker B: Meets and bounds.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker D: The Indiana Jones, where Indiana is actually trying to locate the. The tomb, you know, for the ark.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker D: I get real tickled because he does a major faux pas by putting his arm on.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker D: You're not supposed to touch that instrument
• 1:12:13
  Speaker B: after you get it.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker C: Right.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker D: But he leans on it and says, yeah, yeah, you can't. But it's kind of funny.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker A: It's kind of.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker D: But to that point was we used to. There's a USGS survey markers that are all over the country. The United States Geological survey. And in 1964, when I was. In 98, when I was in Anchorage, those engineers took me on a drive of some of the highways around Anchorage. They told me the story, said, yeah, he said we had the 64 earthquake in Alaska, he said, and things moved and things shifted and the mountain roads got blown out. So they let these two contracts, these highway contractors and they say, go to work on from here, from this point this guy. You start on this point and, you know, they're kind of like the golden spike.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker D: We'll meet in the middle. Right. Well, they started building, they started working and they took their surveys off of those GS, those USGS markers. They're on mountains, they're on mountain ranges. And they got together at the end and the road was 18 inches out of grade. And they couldn't figure out what in the world. World happened. It turns out this mountain fold line, the whole mountain had slipped. The whole marker. The whole mountain moved. Dropped 18 inches on that earthquake. Their survey off of that.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker C: That is so interesting because I know that, like, NASA can tell, like if a building has moved a centimeter.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker D: Correct. Yes. I like it Blows your mind.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker A: It's a long ways from. I remember my granddad telling me, you know, growing up during the. The Great Depression and them working on the. I can't remember if it was a WPA project or CCC that they built a lot of the county roads in Terry county and his dad going out and working on it. And once a week, everybody got to bring their mule.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker A: And so they could bring their mule and hook it up to harness it up to the graders and run the graders. So the family would get extra money.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker D: Yeah, that's that. That was the way we built our highways in Texas in the 20s and 30s. As you're a resident of this county, you could. You could. You would work. They would. Basically the. The highway department back then, they relied on prison labor for some of it maintenance. And then they relied on just local people. If you had a mule to supply you, you were. You got a little extra money, you know, other than yourself. You know, you got. You could provide the mule train.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker A: Right. That was at work.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker D: That was a lot of our highways out here.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker A: Yeah. And it was. It was. You know, some of our daily roads
• 1:14:24
  Speaker C: still look like they were made by mules.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker B: Well, the funny thing, like, if you. A lot of these counties, too, don't like the roads, like, they would start a surveyor and then meet the same thing, but they might be off like 30 foot. And so you're just going down this county road that should be straight and you take a job. Yes.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker A: My personal favorite is going from Terry county to Hockley County.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker A: When they go from sections, from miles and sections to leagues and laborers.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker A: And everything is not right. And if you look at it that. I don't know what it looks like now, but the old platte book, it actually had a wedge in there where they didn't. Didn't line up.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker A: And it's like nobody really knows who owns that part there because it's not actually in the survey.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker D: Yeah, I get, I get the same case in point. I get tickled when you. If you drive over here around the Andrews area where the panhandle turns and goes out to El Paso, you know that corner? There's a. There's a survey there where both New Mexico and Texas both had to validate the location of that marker because that's the free J said New Mexico corner.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker C: Oh my goodness.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker D: Because we've had that debate, you know, we had a debate about how much this is New Mexico, how much is Texas.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker D: There's an oil well or two over there. There's a lot of money, you know, just depending on how far that line moves.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you still got Texas and Oklahoma in the Red River. That wasn't settled. I mean they kind of finally came to some kind of an understanding not that long ago.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker D: Exactly.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker A: And it just.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker B: Now we're just trying to buy eastern Oklahoma. I mean not New Mexico. Eastern New Mexico. They try to give it.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker A: Come on with thing about it. It's like if you ever read the story about the. The Oklahoma panhandle and they tried to give that to every state and. No. And Oklahoma basically got stuck with it is what it. It wound up. Didn't want it.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker B: Texas didn't want it, New Mexico didn't
• 1:16:02
  Speaker A: want it, Colorado didn't want it.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker D: Yeah. It made sense for Texas just to extend.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker B: Well, but they couldn't because of the Civil War.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah, that's a good point. You just have parallel. Parallel, isn't it? Yeah, it is the parallel line.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker B: And Texas used to go way up to almost to Wyoming. We had all the mountains and everything. And then they're.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker D: Well, it was a compromise of 18 something.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker A: The original Republic of Texas, I think was claimed to the headwaters of the Rio Grande.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker D: Correct.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker B: Yeah, we're way up there. Yeah. But then, but then if you were below a certain 42nd parallel or something, like it's a compromise of 18 something.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. It's like 32nd barrel.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker B: Yeah. That's why they cut it off.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker A: I think that when Texas joined it, they said we'll let you join, but you're only going to be this big.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker A: And so. But I mean it was wild. It's funny how many things that we do today are affected by something that happened 150 years ago that nobody remembers. Well, other than some.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker C: Well like calling something a turnpike. Yeah.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker D: Well, case in point. Case in point.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker A: My personal favorite, walkways and driveways.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker D: Why does our. Why does our highways run where they run? You know, you think about it.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker C: So.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker D: So this is a story about how I40 gets created. You know, it was Route 66 right before 40 and Route 66. You know, you look at the water sources between the Texas panhandle coming out of the Padre Canyon and you look at the Indians, the way they. The way they traded with the people in Santa Fe. And you look at water sources between Amarillo and Santa Fe carry Santa Rosa water sources.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker D: And it was the water sources that drove, you know, where the. Eventually where the cattle drove.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker D: And this is where the highway get built and eventually where the. The interstate goes.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And you see the same, I mean well, just on the ports to plains deal that we're talking about now you see, you know, agriculture, you know, the original laid out because this was going this way. Now all of a sudden you're seeing like, hey, it actually makes sense to go here because this new technology is coming in here.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker D: Right.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker A: You know, and it feeds in more and then you can get, you know, better flow through and.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker A: So yeah, I can't imagine how much traffic it would take off at 35.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker D: A lot. I mean going to San Antonio really that's gonna be the biggest thing for us on 27 out of is gonna take 35. It's gonna take all the traffic it wants to go west on it. California or go up to Denver. It's gonna take all that 35 traffic out of San Antonio area and get it, get it over to.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker C: Great. So it'd be worse going to Denver now.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker D: Well, it'd be an alternate route. It'll give you an alternate roots of Denver, you know, that's what you're looking for.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, but I mean just look just the mess that 35 is and the
• 1:18:33
  Speaker D: cattle trade with Mexico, a lot of it is plugged up in Santa Teresa crossing, its Las Cruces area. So we think that we can. We think we can provide a Del Rio currently today and Acunas today working on improving the agricultural inspection stations improvement there. So we can actually maybe start moving some of that cattle through the Port Des Plains, Port Des Plaines that way.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker A: Right.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker D: The other thing about our corridor, two things that tie in also real quick is the rapid deployment platform for the US military since it's an interstate highway. It's also a straynet military highway. So today the rapid deployment platform comes out of Colorado Springs down the ports plains through Raton to Amarillo. At amarillo, it follows287.287 through the Dallas Fort Worth area and then works its way down to Beaumont. If we can get the ports to Plains portion built especially we've already got Lubbock to Amarillo. If I can get from Amarillo, Lubbock south to. To San Angelo.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker D: Now there's a future interstate called I14 that runs from Midland through San Angelo. It runs parallel. It runs congruent with us and it's going, it's going all the way down through Fort Hood or Fort Cavallo.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker B: I just say Temple or whatever.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker D: Area and it actually skirts the Houston area. So it stays out of your metropolitan Houston and it goes into Beaumont.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker D: And it ties into the Mississippi and all those ports in the.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker B: See, I think that's a great point because all these big city. I wonder how we like, you know, such a small percentage of the population lives west of I35 or whatever. Right. So like all the money's going in where all these people are going. They're building more. But if you could do something and say, hey, we could do this.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker D: Yes.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker B: And instead of you having to build more, we could save money by route rerouting that truck capacity of the truck traffic and out.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker A: And if, you know, even if you just take a portion.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker D: Yes.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker A: 35 routed it this way, that still the economic impact of that to every town on the. I mean on the board on the.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker B: Is. Is that big project that they were going to tie like Houston, San Antonio, Austin to Dallas. Is that thing dead? What was that thing called?
• 1:20:31
  Speaker D: Well.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker B: Or is it Houston? Was it Houston to Dallas? They were going to do like a high speed rail and like the high
• 1:20:36
  Speaker D: speed rail is probably dead from Houston to Dallas that off the 45 corridor. But, but I'll tell you what, Elon Musk is playing. He's still playing with this.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker B: He got bored.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker D: He's kind of his hot. He's going to bore. Yeah, he's playing with that hyperloop thing still. He's still.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker B: Really.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker D: Yeah, he's still playing around with that about putting.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker B: Okay, what's hyperloop?
• 1:20:53
  Speaker D: Well, it is actually. Have you ever seen the Kingsman Service? The, the.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, the.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker D: The movie and how the guy gots in that gets in that little taxi thing inside. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. It's a tube. It's a tubular travel.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker D: And they actually have it out in Las Vegas. Yeah, yeah. Las Vegas actually has a tube. You get in a tube and you, you zoom you through a Tube to the airport, Right? For the airport. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker B: And they're building another one somewhere where the. I don't know. I mean, he keeps doing it. I mean.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker D: Yeah, so he has that. He has that. He has that tubular every day. Yeah. It's kind of crazy.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker A: Just wild.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker C: So he gets in and he's just like. He just shoots himself underground.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker B: It's like going through the Eisenhower Tunnel, but it's like one lane in a Tesla like that.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker D: You just.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker B: You just go right down through it.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker D: The Big Dig in Boston, I think they're using magnet. I think they're using magnetic levitation. So that's what really.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker B: So there's no friction.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker D: Yeah, there's no friction. It's just maglev and it just. Just zooming on.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker A: My first thought was the. Was the.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker C: It's almost like close, but not quite.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker A: My first thought when you talk about that was the bank deposits, like.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker C: That's what I.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker D: It's the same concept. You're exactly right. It's a pushing the tube, bro. You're from one point to another point.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, man.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker C: It's like you just ride a roller coaster.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker C: Every time you get in there.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker B: I don't like roller coasters. That's bad for me.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker D: Don't give up on that. But there's conversations about that that.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker B: So is it. So let me ask you this. Is it cheaper to build to bore a hole like that than it is to build a. Like a roadway?
• 1:22:23
  Speaker D: I don't.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker B: Interstate.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker D: I mean, I do not know. But here's the problem. You. The reason you. You would build it for certain reasons. Like for example, if you can, you could build it just. It'd be predominantly just a people mover or maybe a freight mover. Containerized freight. You could probably do a containerized freight. But it's the same problem that I have in Colorado. When Colorado comes up with a freight plan that says we recommend more public transit for your freight plan, say, well, how in the world are you going to put a cow on a public transit? And that's been my argument with Colorado guys. Come on, get real. I mean, you're not going to stick a cow on a public transit system for your freight movement. So you have to have your trucks. So it's that purpose and need driving, whether you design it this way or that's that way.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker C: You need a people moving and you need a goods moving.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker D: You need. We need to figure out a way to blend them, you know, blending away what's good for everybody.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker A: And when you're talking about boring. You're talking about, you know, all the different soil types you got to go through. I mean, you know, try to go, you know, boring through the Edwards Aquifer is going to. Would be.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker B: Yeah, but that'll go that deep. I mean, but you, I mean you would. And then another thing, right aways would be like easier.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker D: Well, it wouldn't. It wouldn't. I'll just give you an example. The, if you try to bore something up here in the Permian Basin, for
• 1:23:33
  Speaker B: example, that would be trouble.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker D: Well, if you look at your, if you look at your underground grid, your infrastructure grid underground, your pipeline well and
• 1:23:40
  Speaker B: then all the oil wells you have to go around, you could never. Yeah, there's one ever. At least one every 40 acres.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker D: It's kind of, it's kind of detrimental to that.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker A: I talked to a guy today that's talking about. He just leased out some mineral rights to a company that's going to put a. It's going to, it's. They're doing horizontal drilling and it's a three mile horizontal shaft that they're. They're putting in.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker D: Wow.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker A: On this place. He said if it hits, they're going to do another one on the other side of the section. And so I'm not going ahead.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker B: That sounds familiar. I work for her husband who's a landman. They have a landman company. So I like. Huh.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker C: I've heard of that one.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker D: Yeah, that one's new. That's not new, is it? I knew. So they're, they're actually the sand frackers up there in Andrew's area. You know that Kerman area. They're. Those companies are actually. Well, when they discovered that sand is usable like you go to get the Dakota Sands or whatever.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker B: It's amazing how like price makes something more usable.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker D: They actually have autonomous trains. You know, they're not trains, but they're,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker B: you know, kind of like what you see in Australia, like five or six trailers being pulled by a truck.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker D: They're autonomous US now they're doing that all over that area right now.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker D: So that technology is being used there.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker C: Well that. I tell you what, that's one thing it would be good for because there's so many bad, horrible wrecks there are in the Permian.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker A: Every time my wife has to go down there to. Oh, I know. Do something, it. I worry the whole time she's going down there and the whole way back.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker C: It is really bad.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker B: It's just, man, we weren't, we talked this whole time. We Never took one break. We usually take a break and like do a commercial. We just kept talking. That's awesome times.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker A: Take a break.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker D: Are you commercial folks? Are they upset when you don't take a break or.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker C: No, everybody's. Everybody's pretty chill. And we could use some more sponsors if anybody else wants to sponsor.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker B: Hey, let me ask you a question before you leave. Like, how are y'. All. How are y' all funded? Is it through like leaders or different economic development organizations?
• 1:25:39
  Speaker D: We are membership based and we got a membership dues and we invite everybody. Join y'. All. Can everybody enjoy. Y' all can join. Y' all can join it. We've got individual memberships. We've got corporate memberships. We got city and county memberships. It's based on population, the size of the city and size of the county and. And you know, we've been growing it. Yeah, we've been growing quite a bit.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker B: Is that part of your job is to help do that too?
• 1:26:00
  Speaker D: I've got to market that too. So. Yeah. So my pitch would be. Yeah, our website, www.portstoplanes.com and we've got membership opportunities to join the Alliance. And I kind of like think about like the Star wars, you know. You're gonna join the. Join the Rebel Alliance. Yeah, just join the alliance, you know,
• 1:26:19
  Speaker B: rebels with the Rebels with a cause.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker D: We're rebels with a cause.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker C: If you sponsor us, we'll stop and have a break every. Every week.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker B: I believe.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker D: I believe we can do something here.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker C: And we will say port to planes. Port to planes.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker B: Yeah, we'll have you on every, every anytime you in l. Be sure and get a hold of us. We'd love to visit and see what's going on. This has been great.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker D: I think we can reciprocate for sure.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker A: It is so cool. And to wrap things up now because we've been about the last 30 seconds, which this will go longer than that. But. But it is so amazing to watch what Portrait Plains has. Has done and has become. And it's one of the things that I can look at in my life and say. I remember when I thought these idiots were talking about talking stupid and I was like, okay, it's. It's actually coming.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker B: Yeah. They were, you know, prescient.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker B: They knew the future.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker C: Well, I appreciate too, you know, projects that people school don't. My. Our mother used to say her worst nightmare as a parent was having to tell me no. And I feel like that's support to planes. It's like, we're not going to take. No, we're just going to keep, get. Keep going until we get a yes.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker D: Yeah, we'll get there. Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna keep going.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker A: I'm so excited.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker C: I love it.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker A: Lauren, thank you very much.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker B: Yes. Thanks for coming. It was great.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker D: Yeah, I enjoyed it. I really had a good time with y', all, so.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker C: Yeah, it was great.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker A: We'll be back the same bat time, same bat channel. Next week on the dry side. Dispatch brought to you by HSI Water.