Business View Civil and Municipal | February 2021

25 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL FEBRUARY 2021 FLOR IDA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTAT ION ( FDOT ) of Directors of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America), the nation’s leading advocate in the deployment of transportation technology. In a recent interview with Business View Magazine, Secretary Thibault spoke candidly about the vital role of FDOT, its new initiatives, and plans for the future. The following is an edited version of our conversation. BVM: How is FDOT fulfilling its mission statement? Thibault: “Florida is a growth state; more than 800 new people a day call Florida home, even during the pandemic. And most of the growth is migration, whether domestic or international. Florida is also a tourism state. All those influences create the situation where we have to emphasize the business of delivering our mission statement, which is: how can we efficiently move people and goods throughout the state. To do that, we have four key focus areas: Improve Safety, Enhance Mobility, Inspire Innovation, and Foster Talent.” BVM: What initiatives are being implemented for improving safety? Thibault: “We’ve been building upon what we’ve done foundationally with safety and how we can “plus it up” as Walt Disney would say. One example is increasing safety at rail grade crossings, not only on the rail segment but on the roadway segment, as well. In December 2019, we implemented Operation STRIDE – an acronym for Statewide Traffic and Railroad Initiative using Dynamic Envelopes. Operation STRIDE employs advanced engineering applications – beyond the normal gates, signals, Kevin J. Thibault, Secretary of the FDOT