Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT)

BVM: How is Enhancing Mobility being addressed? Thibault: “Enhancing mobility is defined by the community. Mobility in Tallahassee is different than other parts of the state. It’s working with our local partners, regional representatives of counties and cities, to determine and enhance the mobility needs in those areas. One initiative with that occurred during the pandemic. Back in April and May, we saw a lot less traffic on the highway. Most of the DOT staff and our construction and maintenance workers were considered essential. So, we took the opportunity of reduced traffic to accelerate construction that was already underway on some significant highway and transportation improvements throughout the state. “For example, the I-4 private-public partnership we have in Orlando, which is a major $2 billion plus project. With the lower traffic in the Orlando area, they were able to accelerate, by months, five new system-to-system interchange ramps at the I-4/State Road 408 interchange, right in the downtown. When traffic started coming back in the summer, they saw the benefits of those improvements right away. During this time, the Florida Turnpike also became part of the E-ZPass Network. We’re working on the processes to get the technology and the policy statements to jive, so the hundreds of thousands of customers in Florida can now merge with the large E-ZPass Group in the north. That was also a major initiative. “In Florida, we’re moving people and goods by many modes of transportation. We actually have 32 urban transit systems and 15 deep water seaports in the state, as well as two FAA licensed spaceports (Cape Canaveral, and Cecil Field, just outside Jacksonville), and we’re working with entities in the space industry – NASA, Space Florida, SpaceX, Blue Origin, etc.– on that next mode of transportation. We have created our own spaceport office at FDOT for this unique partnership opportunity.”