Are you tired of hidden airline fees, frustrating delays, and feeling powerless as a passenger? Get ready for this insightful conversation with US Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, as he reveals the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) ambitious plans to revolutionize air travel and transportation in the United States. In this exclusive interview, Buttigieg pulls back the curtain on new passenger protections, including automatic refunds and transparent fee disclosures, designed to empower travelers and hold airlines accountable.
But it doesn’t stop there. He also shares exciting developments in high-speed rail, improved accessibility for passengers with disabilities, and the DOT’s unwavering commitment to safety. Whether you’re a frequent flier, a daily commuter, or simply curious about the future of transportation, this episode is a must-listen. Discover how the Department of Transportation is fighting for your rights, enhancing accessibility, and making transportation more equitable and sustainable.
Key Takeaways:
- Enhanced passenger protections: The Department of Transportation (DOT) is introducing new regulations to strengthen passenger rights, ensuring automatic refunds for canceled or significantly delayed flights and more transparency regarding airline fees.
- Introducing – Flightrights.gov: The DOT launched a new online tool, flightrights.gov, providing travelers with a dashboard comparing different airlines’ customer service policies and commitments, empowering consumers to make informed choices.
- Fee-free family seating: The DOT is developing a rule to eliminate family seating fees, aiming to ensure that families can sit together without incurring extra charges.
- Improved accessibility: New regulations are being developed to enhance the travel experience for passengers with disabilities, particularly those who use wheelchairs.
- High-speed rail development: The DOT is actively investing in and promoting high-speed rail projects across the United States, including Brightline West in California and projects in the Pacific Northwest and Texas.
Notable quotes
“We lose as many people to car crashes as we do to gun violence in this country… the only acceptable number of roadway deaths is zero.”
“The whole point of politics and government is to make everyday life a little bit easier, and we’re hard at work on that.”
“Everybody should be able to sit next to their kids.”
Episode at-a-glance:
≫ 01:35 Airline fees and consumer protections
≫ 02:12 Pete Buttigieg’s background and achievements
≫ 03:22 Airline consumer rights
≫ 13:33 Upcoming rules and family seating fees
≫ 17:48 High-speed rail and mass transit
≫ 22:24 Vision zero and road safety
≫ 24:34 Future plans
Links:
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Meet Secretary Pete Buttigieg
Pete Buttigieg serves as the 19th Secretary of Transportation, having been sworn in on February 3, 2021.
His focus as Secretary is to deliver the world’s leading transportation system for the American people and economy. He has worked to achieve organizational excellence in the department’s operations, and to focus the department on five policy goals: safety, jobs, equity, climate, and innovation. In his first year at the Department, he prioritized supporting the development and passage of President Biden’s signature Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Since the law’s passage, Secretary Buttigieg and his team have focused on effectively delivering the investments provided by this legislation, enabling the most significant improvements in U.S. transportation infrastructure in over half a century.
The Secretary has also focused on intervening to support American supply chains dealing with shockwaves from the pandemic, including measures to help cut in half the long-dwelling container congestion at America’s largest ports. Other major initiatives in his early tenure have included a comprehensive national roadway safety strategy to reduce deaths and serious injuries; delivery of emergency COVID-19 relief funds to transit agencies across America; and awards of over $9.5 billion in discretionary funding to enhance transportation through over 800 projects in communities across America.
The first openly gay person confirmed to serve in a president’s Cabinet, Secretary Buttigieg previously served two terms as mayor of his hometown, South Bend, Indiana, where he worked across the aisle to transform the city’s future. Household income grew, poverty fell, and unemployment was cut in half. His work on transportation as mayor was nationally recognized, including an award for innovative streetscape design from the U.S. Department of Transportation where he now serves.
He also served for seven years as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, taking a leave of absence from the mayor’s office for a deployment to Afghanistan in 2014.
The son of Joseph Buttigieg, who immigrated to the United States from Malta, and Jennifer Anne Montgomery, a fifth-generation Hoosier, Secretary Buttigieg is a graduate of Harvard University and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and completed a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. He lives with his husband Chasten, their two children, Gus and Penelope, and their dog.
Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
Hello, Financial Feminists. I’m so excited to see you. Welcome to the show. If you are new here and you’re just here for Pete, just go forward two minutes and we’ll get into the interview. But if you’re an oldie but a goodie, welcome back. My name is Tori. I run Her First $100k, which is a money career platform for women. I believe I was put on this earth to fight for your financial rights and here on this show and in our work in general, we talk about how money affects women differently. We teach women how to save money, pay off debt, start investing, start businesses, feel financially confident, and we fight the patriarchy by getting you rich. Hell yeah. Okay.
Today was a very fun experience. We love when we just have people that we recognize and respect, and it’s just so fun having them on the show. And I will say, candidly, I was just telling Kristen this off mic that every time we have some sort of politician or some sort of person that I’ve followed for a very long time, I don’t get nervous per se, but I do the, “I need to be very formal and very official.” And then I also do the thing where I’m like, “Yeah, but they’re just regular people and they want to have a good time because doing back to back to back interviews,” and then I end up being too formal, but at the same time trying to crack jokes and it’s just funny. It’s just that’s what happens.
But Secretary Pete Buttigieg is on the show today and we’re very, very, very excited to have him and we’re talking about something that is affecting your everyday life all the time, which is not only transportation, because he is the Secretary of Transportation for the United States government, but also, specifically, we’re focusing a lot of our time together on airline fees.
And if you haven’t seen this before, they are doing some really incredible legislation to make sure that if your flight gets delayed or if something happens, you are entitled to compensation and not having to, as I jokingly say, but not really a joke, in our conversation with him, “You don’t have to yell at them on Twitter anymore to give them what you want and what you deserve.” We’re really excited for this conversation and it’s very applicable to your everyday life.
So, Pete Buttigieg serves as the 19th Secretary of Transportation, having been sworn in on February 3rd, 2021. His focus as secretary is to deliver the world’s leading transportation system for the American people and economy. He has worked to achieve organizational excellence in the department’s operations and to focus the department on five policy goals, safety, jobs, equity, climate, and innovation. The first openly gay person confirmed to serve in a president’s cabinet, also, we recorded this for Pride month, so hell yeah, Secretary Buttigieg previously served two terms as mayor of his hometown, South Bend, Indiana, where he worked across the aisle to transform the city’s future. Household income grew, poverty fell, and an unemployment was cut in half.
His work on transportation as mayor was nationally recognized, including an award for innovative street scape design from the US Department of Transportation where he now serves. He has also served for seven years as an officer in the US Navy Reserve, taking a leave of absence from the mayor’s office for a deployment to Afghanistan in 2014. Secretary Buttigieg is a graduate of Harvard University and Oxford, no big deal, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and completed a degree in philosophy, politics and economics. He lives with his husband, Chasten, their two children, Gus and Penelope and their dog.
So, today we are discussing all things transportation, but really focused on airline transit, delays in the cancellations and what you are entitled to. So, this is very practical and very informative. We also talk about high-speed rail, which makes me very excited, as well as other things that the DOT is doing to make all of our lives easier. So, without further ado, let’s go ahead and get into it.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
So, I’m sitting in the office in D.C. but our family’s in Michigan, so that’s home.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I went to D.C. for the first time last year. It was very lovely.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Really?
Tori Dunlap:
I had never been. I did the whole monument tour and everything, so it was great.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
It’s great. It’s a great city. It’s a complicated scene, but as a city it’s great.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. It was World Cup time at the time too, so the whole city was just… Everybody was so excited. We’re so excited to have you. One of the questions we like asking is what your first money memory is. Our podcast is called Financial Feminist and we love talking about money and women and feminism. So, what is the first time you remember thinking about or encountering money?
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Oh, wow. I remember I used to get an allowance. It was a buck and I would use it on baseball cards mostly. I guess that was my first kind of concept of saving and consuming and all of that.
Tori Dunlap:
Do you remember a particular baseball card that you had to save for?
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
If I was lucky, I’d come along to the grocery store and then I would get to pick out a pack and then I would go home. I was very nerdy. I would alphabetize them all. I was more interested in baseball cards than I was in baseball, to be honest. I became briefly and very obsessed.
Tori Dunlap:
My partner collects them and still has multiple containers worth of them. So, yeah. It’s the thing that he loves too. It’s so funny. The big thing we wanted to talk to you about today, especially with summer travel in full swing, is about the new proposed protections for consumers on flights. And we’ve all been there where I think we’ve had some sort of terrible experience on a flight and gotten stranded or multiple hour delays so can we talk about what is happening with airlines and flyers and why was it so important to build this legislation?
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
So, the bottom line is we are out to make sure that airlines take better care of passengers and we have got a lot of authorities as the Department of Transportation that we knew if we used them in a tougher, stronger way, we could get better results.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Part of that has to do with refunds. So, if your flight is canceled or if you get such a long delay more than three hours, that it doesn’t even make sense for you to take that flight anymore, we are specifying that the airline not only has to give you your money back, they have to give it back to you without your asking. One thing that we’ve been paying a lot of attention to is the difference between opt-in and opt-out. See opt-in is how it used to work, which meant you could ask for your money back and in theory they had to give it to you, but you had to push for it, maybe they’d offer something else instead, you had to get them on the phone and so it meant that many people, maybe most people-
Tori Dunlap:
Yell on Twitter.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Yeah, exactly. Or you had to complain to us and then we would chase it down. We wound up fining airlines millions of dollars to get people billions of dollars of refunds back. We’re changing it to be automatic. So, unless you ask for something else, unless you’re saying, “I’d rather have miles,” or, “I’d rather you rebook me,” otherwise you’re going to get your money back. They have seven days to put it back on the same card you used to book the flight in the first place. And that’s an example of how we can make it simpler and easier.
Another thing we’re doing is just transparency. We’re requiring the airlines to put up more information about what the fees are. Sometimes you see this ad for an airfare, looks great, you go to book the ticket, somehow it’s double that because there’s all these fees and we’re requiring that that be more transparent. The airlines are pushing back, they’re actually suing us right now over that requirement, but we think it’s on strong legal ground. We also think it’s the right thing to do. I even think it’s good for the airline industry because if they have more trust from their passengers, I think they’ll run a better business.
Tori Dunlap:
So, you’re talking about when we go to book and it turns out you also have to buy an extra bag and you have to choose to pick your seats. All of that is going to be more transparent upfront.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Exactly. Yeah. We’re requiring that that information be communicated upfront. Wifi fee, seat fee, change fee, cancel fee, all that has to be clear so that you really know what you’re getting and, if you pay one of those extra fees for something and you don’t get it, like you pay extra for a bag and it doesn’t come on time or you pay for wifi and the wifi doesn’t work, you got to get your money back.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. How does this legislation allow airline consumers to just change the experience of travel? Because, I mean, to your point, and I’ve been there, I think we’ve all been there, where it was jumping through hoops and, yeah, I would yell on Twitter to try to get the refund, but it seems a lot more streamlined. So, you mentioned just it happening without people having to ask for it and then the seven day period. Anything else of… Walk me through somebody traveling. What is changing about from where they book to where they’re getting to their destination?
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Yeah. So, first of all, before you even book, we’ve set up a new tool. It’s called flightrights.gov, and if you go there, you can see a dashboard of different things that the airlines will do that go above and beyond the legal minimum, but that we can also go back and enforce now that they’ve promised us, promised the government that they’re going to do it. If you get stuck and it’s their fault, are they going to get you a meal? Are they going to get you a hotel? Are they going to get you ground transportation?
Tori Dunlap:
Right.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Are they going to rebook you on another flight even if it’s with a different airline? So, I would definitely encourage everybody, go to that website, flightrights.gov before you buy so that you know how each airline will treat you if there’s a problem. Then, when you’re at the airport, you know your rights and this website has good information about that too.
And again, yeah, we’re trying to make it so you don’t even have to ask for a lot of these things. And then, on the backend, if you have a problem, let us know. I mean, first go to the airline and they should take care of you, but if they don’t, then we have an office of consumer protection that has, just in the time we’ve been here, we’ve actually issued more and tougher fines just in the three and a half years I’ve been here than the last 20 years combined because we’re trying to make sure that the airlines behave differently.
Now, on top of all of that, we’re trying to make sure problems are less likely to happen in the first place. It’s why we’re investing in better airports. Part of the Biden infrastructure plan, it’s not just roads and bridges that we’re fixing. We’re also improving the airport terminals. Things like baggage systems that you might never see, but fixing it up is going to help make sure that you get your bag when you thought you were going to get your bag.
We’re also pressing the airlines to have more on time performance and they’re doing better, I have to say. Compared to two years ago, when we had just off the charts cancellations and delays, right now, we’re actually on track to match last year, which was the lowest rate of cancellations in a decade. So, all that pressure is working. I think it’s changing how the airlines behave. We’ve got a long way to go, but they are responding if only because we’re making them and we’ve got more rules that we’re developing right now to reach into some other areas where we think airlines need to take better care of passengers.
Tori Dunlap:
Are those same rules and regulations relevant, whether it’s a budget airline or something that is more of a standard airline?
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Yes. This is important. Look, those low cost airlines, their whole business model is there are no frills. They’re not going to offer some of the same flexibility-
Tori Dunlap:
Right.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
And you pay for that difference if you take a different airline, but everybody has to meet the same floor and we’re raising that floor. So, I don’t care if it’s a last minute, super cheap fare or if you’re on mainline first class, whatever, those refund rules apply, those transparency rules apply, and we have the authority to enforce on any of those airlines.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. So, when do refunds come into play here? With this new rule, when, as a passenger, am I entitled to a refund? What has to happen?
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
So, first of all, if your flight is canceled for any reason, you’re entitled to a refund.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
If they rebook you on another flight, great. Sometimes you’re on your way to a meeting or a wedding or something and the new flight is not going to even get you there. You get your money back. Also, if there’s a significant delay and you decide not to take the flight. So, if you’re delayed by more than three hours, or more than six hours if it’s an international flight, and you wind up just booking a different flight or you don’t even take the trip, you get your money back.
Similarly, if they change the routing or they make a significant change, which airport you’re going to, that kind of thing, that can also qualify. Bottom line is these kinds of dramatic changes, you need to be empowered to get your money back if it means you’re not even going to take the trip at all.
Tori Dunlap:
I’ve heard a lot from airlines because I’m the person that negotiates and tries to get whatever I’m due. They will tell me, “Oh, the weather was bad, so it’s not our fault.” Does this cover weather as well?
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Yeah, it does. So, there is a difference. There’s definitely more that you’re entitled to if it’s the airline’s fault than if it’s weather but just to be clear, when I’m talking about you getting your money back, if your flight’s canceled, that’s for any reason, whether it’s mechanical, crew, weather, you name it.
Tori Dunlap:
Got it.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Now, everybody gets the airlines don’t control the weather. Right? That’s fair enough. But if it’s something that they are responsible for like maintenance or staffing, then they also take care of other things. And this is where that website comes in handy so you can see how just about all of the top 10 airlines will now guarantee that, if you get stuck and it’s their fault, they’re going to get you a hotel or they’re going to cover your meals. And by the way, that was zero out of 10 when we got here.
So, this transparency has really had an effect because what we did was, when we had the idea to put up that website, I wrote a letter to the airline CEOs and I said, “Look, we’re going to be putting this information up in a couple of weeks. It’s going to be real easy for consumers to see. You might want to change your customer service plans before we put this out into the world.” And they did. They responded to that, I think because they knew it would be important for passengers making decisions. But yeah, it’s why I can’t say enough about that website, flightrights.gov. And again, we’re working on more regulations to come. We’re not trying to regulate for the sake of regulating, but when we see a need or an issue or we’re getting a lot of complaints about something, we’re going to step in.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. We can link it down below in the show notes too so people have access to it.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Great. Good.
Tori Dunlap:
Can you talk about some of the upcoming rules you’re proposing, including getting rid of family seating fees and then expanding rights for passengers with disabilities and those who use wheelchairs?
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Yeah. So, the fee free family seating, I always thought this was the right thing to do, but I care about it a lot more now that Chasten, my husband, and I have two twin toddlers, and we’ve had that experience often of being on a plane and just all the wrangling that goes on with little kids. The last thing you need in that situation is to find out that you are being seated separate from your kids and being told that you have to pay extra or you got to beg or bargain with some other passenger or make your case to the flight attendant just to sit next to your kids. Everybody should be able to sit next to their kids. So, we’re developing a rule that would make that a requirement that airlines do that.
Now, there is a lot of legal process you have to follow to finalize a rule like that. Our message to the airlines is, “Don’t wait until we do the rule. We’re still doing the rule, but you could make this your policy now.” And several of them have. It’s another thing you can see on our website. I think we’re up to four now of the top 10 that have agreed that they’re going to do that. My message to the other six is, “We’re going to do this regulation, but don’t wait.”
On the wheelchair side, this is extremely important. Passengers who use wheelchairs often tell me that they’ve just decided to stop flying altogether because they’ve had terrible experiences with their wheelchair being mishandled and sometimes damaged or destroyed. And, if you think about that, especially if you have a specialized wheelchair, which a lot of people do, that doesn’t just mess up your trip, it messes up your life until the chair is back and they’ve compared it to arriving at a destination without your legs.
So, we’re developing a rule that will require airlines to do better. It specifies the training that has to go on, the condition of it. It even says, “If they screw up your wheelchair, you, the passenger, get to choose your own vendor to fix it instead of the airline sending it off to their vendor.” That’s actually something that can make a major difference in how quickly you get results. That is right now in a process of getting public comments, we’re trying to get more information from wheelchair users and we’re accepting information from airlines too, anybody who wants to weigh in on that before we finalize that rule. We think it’s really important because passengers need safe and dignified travel.
And, just a reminder, sometimes people think about these disability issues as kind of a specialized issue, and, “If I’m not part of the disability community, maybe it’s not for me.” In addition to thinking about how this is just the right thing to do, you should also remember that many people, most people sooner or later age into disability of some kind. So, this is for people who are impacted by it now and people who will eventually be impacted by it.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I think about my nana. She had an incident on a plane where, yeah, didn’t have everything she needed to be able to get off the plane safely and get her luggage and, to your point, if you’re not disabled currently, that might be something that you end up aging into so-
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Exactly.
Tori Dunlap:
… I really appreciate you all focusing on that and highlighting it. When we’re talking about all of the changes that are being made to airlines around fees, when can we expect, as an average consumer, for those changes to start impacting us on a day-to-day basis?
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
So, a lot of these changes are taking effect quite quickly. The coming months, that refund rule will go fully into effect.
Tori Dunlap:
Great.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
It’s already become law through the FA reauthorization. We’re just nailing down the mechanics of how to enforce it. There’s a six-month period, which started about a month ago, so we’ve got about roughly five months to go this fall on the fee transparency rule. And again, our message to the airlines is, “Don’t wait till the last minute. You can start doing this now,” but that’s when it kicks in as a legal matter. And then some of these others, they’re still in development, so it’s a good time to weigh in and let us know your view before those rules get finalized.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Something we chatted about with a housing economist recently was the importance of mass transit and so we’re kind of switching gears here, but considering the urgency of climate crisis especially, how can the DOT accelerate the development of something like high-speed rail in addition to when we’re talking about plane travel, airline travel?
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Yeah. It’s a great question. We really think about housing and transportation as closely connected.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Whether you’re thinking about it from a climate perspective, the less you have to travel around your city or town or area in order to get what you need, the less you have pollution and that largely comes to how we plan communities, but also just affordability. So many people live in a place they can’t really afford because they need to be close to work, and other people live impossibly far away from work and have this ridiculous commute just to be able to live somewhere they can afford.
Part of how we can solve that is transportation and making sure that transportation is better connected with housing and work. It’s what we call transit-oriented development. So, we’re actually funding financing for transit-oriented development in more and more places, and we’re just making sure we take it into account the same way a family has to think about… It’s not like you get to think about housing one year in transportation the next, that’s part of your costs every month. And we know that we can better financially empower people by giving them more and better options. That’s part of what’s at stake when we’re funding transit and modernizing transit.
It’s not just the most dense places. It’s one thing in Manhattan, but a place like where I grew up, South Bend, Indiana, it has a bus system, but we could do so much more with some of the newer technologies instead of assuming that the kind of fixed route, fixed schedule, hub and spoke 40 foot bus system that we all grew up with is the only way to do this. And we’re leaning into new technologies, things like micro transit, micro mobility, scooters, bikes, trying to fit that all together into a bigger picture of how we make it easier, safer, and more affordable to get wherever you need to go from where you live to where you work, to where you shop, to everywhere else.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And I live in Seattle and we just got our second light rail line, which is very exciting because the other one was just north to south and it wasn’t spread out beyond that. It was just north Seattle to the airport basically. And so now we have from Seattle to Bellevue, which is the neighboring city, and it’s over water on a bridge and everybody’s so excited. Everybody’s so excited about that second transit line.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
It changes everything and it is going to make a big difference at Seattle. And these transit links, they change the shape of our neighborhoods and our cities, but most of all, they change what our lives are like because it turns out, if you think about it, we don’t really experience distance in miles. We experience it in minutes when it comes to our commute.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes, yes.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
If you live 30 miles away from someplace, but you can get there in 30 minutes, that’s very different than if you live five miles away, but it takes you an hour and a half to get there and I’ve seen examples of both.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I’m recording this from Los Angeles, which is the perfect example of-
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Yes. Exactly.
Tori Dunlap:
… “Okay, it’s five miles away, but I’m going to going to be in the car for 50 minutes,” and I will plus one high-speed rail. I want it so badly. Please, if we can make it happen somehow. Trains are fun, exciting. I would take a train over a flight any day so, if there’s any possibility of that, that would be just divine. It’d be lovely.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
So, look, we are on it. We just funded a project called Brightline West. They’re going to run a high-speed train from Las Vegas to Southern California.
Tori Dunlap:
Cool.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
They hope to be in service by 2028, so they’re moving very quickly. There’s the California high-speed rail, north, south. That’s going to take longer, but could connect huge parts of the population on the West coast. We’re funding some planning actually in the Pacific Northwest, a vision called Cascadia-
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
… which would benefit Seattle. There’s a project or a proposal, I should say, in Texas, taking shape to link Dallas and Houston. And that’s a good example of where you got two cities that are a short flight or a long drive apart from each other with a lot of people in them. It makes a ton of sense to have them connected by high-speed rail. And, of course, we’re improving the Northeast corridor. The closest thing we have to high-speed rail in the US right now is the Boston, New York, Washington corridor. Really there, what we’re doing is we’re making up for lost time. There is infrastructure there that’s more than a hundred years old. We’re actually working on a tunnel in Baltimore that’s 150 years old-
Tori Dunlap:
Wow.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
So, we have just got to bring that up to speed, no pun intended, just to make it reliable and then over time make it faster too.
Tori Dunlap:
What are you excited about next with the DOT? Obviously it sounds like high-speed rail you’re working on. Anything else that you’re really excited about that you want to tell folks about?
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Yeah, I mean, some of the stuff is dazzling. I mean, autonomous vehicles, we’re not that far away from flying cars. I mean, that’s not going to happen while I’m secretary, but we’re already doing work on the safety approvals for what are called eVTOLS, basically starts as a helicopter and winds up as a plane. That could be a really important part of air mobility in the 2030s. Commercial space launches are going on, but actually some of the stuff that most excites me is maybe a little more low tech and a little closer to home. It’s safety. It’s the work we can do to make it safer to just be a pedestrian or a driver or a person in the US. We lose as many people to car crashes as we do to gun violence in this country, about 40,000 a year and everybody’s kind of used to it, which is something I’m trying to break.
We’re trying to set America on a course for what we call Vision Zero, the idea that the only acceptable number of roadway deaths is zero. Some people think that’s really pie in the sky, but I would point out that the number of people who lost their lives in commercial airliner crashes last year was zero. And that’s not just something that happened randomly. That’s a lot of work and regulation and inspection and technology went into that. And if we can do that for a form of transportation that involves flying through the air, we should be able to do that on the ground.
And we’re funding everything from new technologies like automatic emergency braking, we’re going to require that on cars in the future, to stuff like better lighting in crosswalks and road designs that we’re doing in hundreds of cities around the country that are going to make a difference. We’ve finally seen the numbers start to come down a little, but we’ve got a long way to go.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and I would imagine, I don’t know the data on this, you probably do, that if we get more people off the roadways and onto public transport, there’s less likely of fatal crashes. Yes?
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Yes. There’s a safety benefit for sure. Transit is much safer than driving.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
There’s also a congestion benefit, right? Even if you don’t use transit, you benefit from the people who do because there’s less competition for those scarce roadways. It’s part of why we’re really big on transit.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. Anything else we didn’t talk about that you want to talk about?
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
There’s so much I could geek out on but, look, big picture is we’re determined to make this a period of the biggest expansion in airline passenger rights in history. We’re working to make our transportation cleaner, greener, safer, and a lot of what we’re doing is part of a bigger agenda that President Biden has laid out.
I’ve got one piece of it here on the transportation side, but it’s really about just lowering costs because we know what people are up against, especially with what happened after Covid to the economy. The economy came back, but prices really went up. So, it’s why we’re doing things like getting insulin down to 35 bucks a month for a senior. By the way the president wants it to do for everybody. Congress won’t let them do that, but that could change in the future. In the meantime, got it at 35 bucks a month for seniors. Prescription drugs capped at 2000 bucks a year. Health insurance costs are down. Cutting junk fees, whether it’s the stuff I get to work on or credit card fees and overdraft fees, which were a big deal, and I know you’ve been empowering your audience with information about this because those dollars really add up and we’re going to keep pushing on that. To me, the whole point of politics and government is to make everyday life a little bit easier, and we’re hard at work on that.
Tori Dunlap:
That was super informative. Thank you. I’m even… I’m like, “Thank goodness I don’t have to yell at people on Twitter anymore,” because that was half the battle sometimes. This is just like, “Oh, you won’t answer my call. I’m going to go to Twitter.”
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Yeah. It’s like, “How do I get your attention?”
Tori Dunlap:
Truly, truly.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
And then people copy me on Twitter or some people even guess my email, and then they copy me on their customer service email so the more we can just not have that problem in the first place, the better.
Tori Dunlap:
Just bcc Secretary Buttigieg and expect him-
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Totally.
Tori Dunlap:
… to stop it.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
I appreciate your time, Secretary. Thank you so much.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Same here. Thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you so much to Secretary Buttigieg for joining us today. Such a pleasure having him on the show. Pete, you’re welcome back anytime, and thank you so much for listening. As always, we appreciate it and feel free to share this episode with somebody in your life who might not know about all of the incredible work that they’re doing, especially, I think, the focus on accessibility around disability, and I’m literally going to send this episode to my nana so that she can listen and know that her wheelchair is going to be better protected, which I really appreciate.
So, thank you as always for being here, financial feminist. We appreciate it, and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye bye.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields, associate Producer Tamisha Grant. Research by Sarah Sciortino. Audio and Video Engineering by Alyssa Midcalf.
Marketing and Operations by Karina Patel, Amanda Leffew, Elizabeth McCumber, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Taylor Chou, Kailyn Sprinkle, Sasha Bonar, Claire Kurronen, and Daryl Ann Ingman.
Promotional Graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolf. And theme music by Jonah Cohen. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K team and community for supporting this show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First 100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
