U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy speaks at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials 2025 Washington Briefing

I was going to say good afternoon, everybody. I think we’re in the afternoon. Good to see you all. Thanks for having me, Garrett. Thanks for that kind introduction. I don’t have some fabulous, flowerly, beautiful speech lined up for you today.

We have had a hard week. Our country has had a hard week. And the victims, the families of the victims of this past week have had an experience that I don’t think many can imagine. So, I know that the country and all of you and from me and my family our hearts go out to the victims from here in D.C., but also up in Philadelphia. I got a chance to meet with a few of the victims and it’s numbing. You can’t imagine. One night you’re ready to see your loved ones and the next night you’re in a hotel trying to get information from FAA and the NTSB. So, my heart goes out to them.

I’m going to talk to you about the issues that you care about but if I could do one thing first, I want to talk about what happened, because I imagine that a lot of you didn’t drive here. Many of you flew here, I would imagine. So, I want to talk a little bit about what happened and then we’re going to talk about surface transportation.

But when we look at the air crash in D.C., we’re going to have to look at what happened in the tower. Before this crash took place you had a consolidation of two air traffic controller positions. One was for helicopters. One was for aircraft, for airplanes. Those positions were consolidated into one before this crash took place. So, we’re going to look, I’m going to look at the policies and procedures inside the tower, why that happened? How did they get the authority? And we’re going to pull back that authority to make sure that we have the right policies in place inside our towers to make sure that when you fly, you’re safe.

Many of you have heard that we don’t have enough air traffic controllers. We need to surge more of them into the system. You can’t, listen, you know expertise, you know expertise well. You don’t get expertise by flipping a switch. It’s going to take us time to get more air traffic controllers in the space, but we have a plan in place that’s going to allow us to surge that. We’re going to announce that in the next couple of days.

But I also think we have to look at, I’m all about the military being well-trained. I’m a supporter of the military and a well-trained military and the best and brightest in the military. But we also have to look at missions that are flown in the D.C. airspace. And potentially a mission that’s flown—and I don’t know this yet, we’re going to hopefully find this out, but if they had night vision goggles flying a mission like that at 9 o’clock at night and not at 1 o’clock in the morning is unacceptable. You can fly that mission at a different time. And the Blackhawk helicopters, they were told that there was a landing American Airlines flight and they told the tower they had visual sight of the airplane and they would maintain visual separation. They told the tower that twice—and they didn’t. And they flew right into the landing path of this airplane. They have a flight deck, a max elevation of 200 feet. They were flying at 300 feet when this crash took place.

We have to take a real look at the safety around this airspace and the airspace around the country. And again, we can fly training missions at a different time of night. And if we have Generals who are flying in helicopters for convenience through this airspace, that’s unacceptable. Get in a damn suburban and drive. You don’t need to take a helicopter.

We need a whole upgrade of the airspace.

I had a conversation with Elon Musk yesterday. He’s a pretty remarkable guy. He thinks differently than I think a lot of us do, but he has access to the best technological people, the best engineers in the world. We’re going to remake our airspace and we’re going to do it quickly. And we have the support of the Congress I think right now to say ‘you know what, we’re using like 1960’s World War 2 technology’ and much of the components of the airspace—we’re going to upgrade it and make sure that America has the most innovative, technologically advanced air system, air traffic control system. That’s going to make it safer and it’s going to make it more efficient. And so, that’s the mission that we have on the FAA side.

But as we saw what happened this week, we refocused. There’s been a lot of priorities at the Department, a lot of priorities that I might disagree with. Some of you may love, some of you may hate them but the only mission of our department is safety. That is the founding principle in which we were formed and we are back on the mission of safety. And I know for all of you, this is a year I think of safety, if I heard Garrett say that right. So, I think we’re all on the same page.

I want to talk about surface transportation. I did come to talk about surface transportation, and I want to start off by telling you what the President told me when he gave me this job. He said he cares, he cares about a lot of things, but the three things he mentioned is: Fixing the airspace—number one. Number two, he said that the average price of a car in America is $48,000 and the average teacher on a teacher’s salary can’t afford to buy the average price of a brand new car in America. Cars cost too much. And then third, he said I want to build American infrastructure. I want to build big and beautiful roads and bridges across the country that connect our people that move our products. I want us to build again in this country and I don’t know if I’m supposed to say this here, but then he said if I could pick, and I don’t want to offend Pete Hegseth or Kristi Noem or anyone else, but he did say if I could pick one department that I could be the Secretary of and then he said I want to be the President. I want to be the President, but if I could pick one department, I would want to be the Secretary of Transportation because our President is a builder, and he wants me to help you build more and build faster and build bigger and probably more beautifully as well. So that is the mission and we’re going to have to partner together to figure that out. How do we do this? And so, I do want to build more. I want to build more with less money, and I want us to build in a shorter period of time. It’s taking too long to build projects and time is what we’ve seen in the last four years prices have gone up in one study it was 70% and it’s gotten really expensive so we have to build more quickly. And so to that end, when I became the Secretary I rescinded the greenhouse gas emissions requirement and the national performance management measures. So, that’s gone.

I directed the DOT to identify and eliminate all Biden-era programs, policies, activities, rules, and orders that promote climate change activism and partisan goals. We’re getting rid of that stuff and getting back to the basics of, how can we help you build? And build faster and more cost effectively.

There’s a paperwork bureaucracy. We’re going to streamline the paperwork, we can’t do it all, but from our department’s perspective we’re going to streamline the paperwork bureaucracy in which you all have to deal with as you do these projects. I want more time spent building and less time complying with all the paperwork requirements that come from the Department of Transportation.

We want to reform the requirements around the studies and permitting process and some of you might go ‘how do you fix the permitting process?’ and all the studies that have to be done. And I would say that’s probably kind of hard. However, when I went through the confirmation hearing, it’s interesting that both Democrats and Republicans are all complaining about how long it takes to build their projects because infrastructure isn’t republican or democrat. There’s just as many Democrats as Republicans that are telling me that their project is the most important project that has to be done and should be funded by the Department. Everyone wants their projects to be funded and fast-tracked and so I think there’s a real understanding right now in Congress that it’s taking way too long. And that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do environmental studies. And that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go through a permitting process, but we can’t have it take as long as it’s taking right now. So, I think there’s a real appetite on the Hill to help us streamline this permitting process to move our projects far more quickly.

And from my perspective, I want aggressive change. I don’t want incremental change. I want fast change that’s going to transform the way that we do business. I want to use more private capital. I want more technology, and I want more innovation in your space. And from my perspective, I’m going to reward the innovators who create and find ways to better build and more effectively build the projects that you guys care so much about. And for those who innovate and are creative I’m going to give you more freedom and I’m going to give you more money to do your projects.

I also think that we have to rethink the federal-state partnership. I don’t know that it’s been working so well. I think that you guys know how to do your jobs, and I think we should rethink the way we’re doing business together by giving you all a lot more autonomy and a lot more authority, a lot more freedom to do the projects that you know are important in your communities. And so that’s going to take a dialogue, and a back-and-forth that we all have to have together, but I think in this room you have some of the best ideas and the most creative ideas. And we need those great ideas that all of you have in this room to make sure we accomplish the goal of, again, building big, beautiful, projects that connect the country.

And so I look forward to partnering with you, working with you, taking your best ideas. How do we make this more efficient? Cost effective? How do we build more projects with less money? That’s my goal and I think, maybe some of you don’t agree with that, but I think most of you probably want to build more and would love to do it more cost effectively.

I’ve been the Secretary for a week. I think. It feels like a long time but over the course of the next weeks and months, I want us to begin that dialogue and start that partnership to make sure that we’re unleashing all of you to do the great projects that serve your communities.

And I look at this as, this is making people’s lives better. What you do makes people’s lives better. We’re able to get to work and back home to see our loved ones more quickly. If we don’t have our systems that are delayed and we don’t sit in traffic we get to spend an extra 15 minutes, maybe an extra 45 minutes a day with the ones that we love as opposed to listening to music or a podcast or, I don’t know what you listen to in the car, but whatever you’re listening to in the car, or on the train. We can make people’s lives better and spend time with the people we love as opposed to going to the grind of our transportation system.

Us doing our jobs better makes people’s lives better and makes them happier and the quality of life improves. And so, you all, with our help, are going to improve people’s lives in this country and I look forward to working with you and partnering with you and moving at the speed not of government but moving at the speed of Trump to make this stuff happen.

So, with that, thanks for having me. I’m sorry I wasn’t very flowery today but that’s the mission that we have. That’s what we’re going to do, and I commit to you that we’re going to partner and make big changes and make big strides in building out infrastructure.

God bless and thank you.