Interviewed: Jerry Wray, Director of the Ohio Department of Transportation

Ohio’s top transportation official, Department of Transportation Director Jerry Wray, spoke with the editorial board of the Cincinnati Enquirer recently. The publication presents excerpts from that conversation on "five hot topics": mass transit, the Brent Spence Bridge, the Eastern Corridor, reauthorization of the federal transportation bill, and "who controls the transportation purse strings."

The excerpts include a few hot buttons, to be sure, including this statement from the "mass transit" excerpt: "Speaking for myself, not the governor, we should be responding to the public need and to some degree public want. We shouldn’t be doing social engineering. We shouldn’t try to force people onto a highway, nor should we try to force people into a bus or onto a train." Interestingly, Wray returns to the social engineering trope when discussing transportation funding in calling for more state control over state transportation decisions.

Regarding the Brent Spence Bridge (which made news recently dude to concerns in the business community about EPA smog rules), Wray offers another interesting insight: "Wherever you are in the country these days if you’re going to build a project this size it’s going to involve tolls."