Infrastructure Technology Podcast: How construction materials and supply chains affect infrastructure projects

In this episode of the Infrastructure Technology Podcast, the team dives into transit data and infrastructure innovation shaping the transportation industry. Mass Transit’s Noah Kolenda joins Gavin, Brandon and Jessica to examine five years of ridership recovery across New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s system, highlighting how different transit modes—from commuter rail to subways—have rebounded since the pandemic. Later in the episode, Gavin Jenkins speaks with Keith Plokhoy from CMC about the role of construction materials, supply chains and industry partnerships in delivering major infrastructure projects.

Episode length

50:50

About the guest

Keith Plokhoy works as a director, bridge systems at CMC.

Here is a transcript from the episode:

GJ: And welcome to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast. I'm Gavin Jenkins of Roads and Bridges, and with me, as always, we have Brandon Lewis from Mass Transit, Jessica Parks from Roads and Bridges. And with us, we have one of our special guests. We have Noah Kolenda. What's going on, Noah? 

NK: Hello. Thank you for having me back for season three. 

GJ: And Brandon, what day is it?

BL: It is Tuesday, which means it is a podcast day.

GJ: All right. Okay, Jessica, how's it going? Happy New Year to you.

JP: Happy New Year. Happy to be here.

GJ: Okay. We got some really great cities represented on this call. Yours truly from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We got Jessica, who's in suburban Boston. Brandon, who is in suburban Cleveland, and Noah, who is in Brooklyn, New York. So we've got some great cities represented. We're going to be talking about roads, we're going to be talking about bridges, and we're going to be talking about mass transit. Later in this episode, I have an interview with CMCs, Keith Keith Plokhoy, who we'll get to him in a little bit, is a great interview. I recorded just at the end of 2025. So before we get to that, we have Noah here, so that means we're going to be talking about some data. So Noah, why don't you tell us what you have in store?

NK: Absolutely, so it's one of my favorite times of the year, the beginning of the year because that means a lot of great data sets were either just completed or had another year of context added to them, so we can get a look at the bigger picture that they tell. And so to kick off the new season, at least for me and the new year, I thought it'd be worthwhile to take a look back at the last five years of ridership recovery from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, just to kind of see how they've come back from COVID, especially as the largest subway system in the nation and just a massive transit agency. So the MTA provides this data through the state, the state open data portal, excuse me, and provides daily trip totals for Access-A-Ride bridge and tunnel trips, buses, the Long Island Rail Road, the Metro-North Railroad, the Staten Island Railroad and the New York City subway system. I know how we like our games on the show. I've kind of designed it to…

GJ: Wait, Staten Island has a railroad?

NK: Yes, it's a single line. It's operated, has a subway and it has already gone through subway car updates and everything like that, and it's also truncated, so you can't connect to it from another subway line, but yes, there is a railroad on Staten Island.

GJ: Staten Island seems like just a weird place to live and even travel to, and it seems like either you're taking a ferry or you're going on a train. Yeah, it's just… anyway, alright, I'm sorry, I'm jumping in. Keep going, please.

NK: You're all good, so I know we like our games here, especially our high and low, so we're going to get to that, but to lead us in, I'm really curious if you guys can guess what mode of MTAs transit, so of the ones I just recapped, had the strongest recovery from its 2021 ridership figures to its 2025 ridership figures? So just to recap, your choices are Access-A-Ride, bridges/tunnel trips, bus trips, Long Island Rail Road trips, Metro-North Railroad trips, Staten Island railroad trips or subway trips. So who do you think saw the strongest recovery over the last five years?

GJ: Jessica, other than Noah, you're the only other person here that's lived in New York, so let's just go with you.

JP: Yeah, so I lived on Long Island for a little bit, so I was a frequent rider of the LIRR. I am really split on what I think. I do want to go with the LIRR since with the return of people going to the office, it is largely a lot of people who ride the LIRR taking it, commuters to work. However, this subway was completely barren during COVID, so anything is more, so I think I am going to go with the subway.

BL: I was going to agree with Jessica. I think that New York is such a big subway city that I think that, as you mentioned, if it was bare during COVID, from what I've seen in terms of their ridership recovery, I know it's going to be large. I don't know if it's going to be number one, but that's going to be my best guess.

GJ: Yeah, so the key to this question is the recovery aspect. What is the greatest recovery? Now you're saying that I understand what you two are saying is the subway since it was next to nothing during the pandemic, but I don't know that I agree with it that it was barren or next to nothing. I think that there were people who were essential workers taking that, whereas during the pandemic, the lowest points, no one was coming from next. Even fewer people were going from Long Island into Manhattan, so I'm going to go with the Long Island one.

NK: Okay. Very interesting trains of thought here, and Gavin, your train of thought happened to be correct. Right idea, wrong railroad. The Metro-North was actually the system with the largest recovery and experienced a 162% jump in ridership between 2021 and 2025, and surprisingly, even though the subway by far has the most ridership of any of the systems with trips totaling in the billions, it was actually smack dab in the middle for recovery. So that gets us onto our game of high or low. I'm curious if you guys can place the other modes of transit around subways and see if their recovery, if they brought back more ridership percentage or less ridership percentage than the subway's 68.7%. 

GJ: Oh my goodness. And we're just talking New York City here, right?

NK: Yeah, we're still talking bridges and tunnels, buses, Staten Island Railroad, Access-A-Ride, Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North. Well, we already know Metro-North is number one, so of the others, do we have a guess as to where, for instance, Access-A-Ride places versus the subway?

GJ: I don't even know what Access-A-Ride is. You have to explain that.

NK: Okay, so that is New York's like dial-a-ride, paratransit service, so that's something you make a reservation, get picked up and brought to a specific destination. It's more door-to-door than a fixed-route service would be. 

GJ: You mean like an Uber?

BL: So it kind of is, but it's like anybody with mobility challenges, anybody in a wheelchair or cane or anything like that. It's like a door-to-door service where they pick you up, and they take you to a specific destination.

GJ: Okay. I'm going to say that that's the lowest one just because it seems so unique. And then I would say long, I would say the Staten Island one is second to last. And then the other ones, I have no idea. If I were to nitpick this, I would say there's too many options. New York is too complicated. And also I think that there's probably a lot of people, a lot of our listeners, and please right in at [email protected], a lot of our listeners are probably just like to hell with New York. There is definitely, am I allowed to say h.e. double hockey sticks?

BL: Well at my radio station in college we were allowed to say that.

GJ: Okay, well I think that a lot of people just hate New York in general so am I right on what is last and second to last?

NK: So no, actually you are not, unfortunately. Access-A-Ride was just above subways.

BL: I was going to guess that bus would've been pretty low because I think that most people, if they were an essential worker that they would be taking more buses than trains would've been my guess, so I think bus recovery would be lower.

NK: Okay, perfect. So you did nail that bus recovery is in second to last place with 14.97% recovery in that timeframe, and that was kind of from interviews I'd been doing with experts over other stories. That was a similar consensus that I'd heard Brandon was very much that a lot of those trips just didn't stop because a lot of essential workers were using bus services so astute observation. And so I can just run through the rest of the list, save us some time. There were six other options. So at the very bottom were bridge/tunnel trips at just 10.08% recovery. I kind of figured that one, too because again, if you're driving, your trips are probably like you're already contained in your own car, you're probably not needing to change that much. In second to last place was buses with 14.97% recovery. In third to last place was the Staten Island Rail Road with a 56.02% recovery. In the smack dab middle was the subway at 68.7% increase in ridership since 2021. In the top three spot was Access-A-Ride with a 99.21% recovery rate. Number two was the LIRR with 130.9% recovery rate. And in the number one spot, as we discussed, was the Metro-North Rail Road with 162.41% recovery. 

GJ: Tell me a little bit more about Access-A-Ride. Is that in most major cities?

NK: So yeah, we report on paratransit pretty constantly, and it is one of a wide range of services it's offered, and it is expanding quite a bit throughout the country and is offered in a lot of major cities. And so for instance, APTA just did a session where they discussed paratransit funding and learned that Michigan was actually one of the biggest states for paratransit services. 

GJ: Oh, really? 

NK: Yeah, and they tend to fill in, from what I've seen, in more rural areas where there aren't as many fixed-route service options that can fill in those gaps because for instance in New York, they're undertaking a lot of major accessibility projects that are going to eventually probably replace quite a few Access-A-Ride trips because people are able to navigate the subways with accessibility improvements that are being made. And so it's kind of shifting more towards those areas where fixed root services may just be coming up or still be in the process of getting upgraded or just kind of to accent. They may not be as perfectly spaced or as closely spaced as they are in New York.

BL: The other thing about that, too, I would add is that some of them have different names. Here in Cleveland, it's just a part of the GCRTA paratransit. Some places it's called Dial-A-Ride, some places it's called Access-A-Ride. So it's all under the same umbrella. It's just some transit agencies call them by a different accessibility name.

GJ: Okay. Alright. Yeah. Do they sometimes come in the form of a small white bus?

BL: Yes.

GJ: Oh, okay. I've seen, of course I've seen this.

JP: And they'll just pick you up from your front door if they can. It's like a cab service that's paid for by the state in a way or federally.

BL: So for example, where I live in Cuyahoga County, I can go anywhere in Cuyahoga County with that service. I have to give them the address of where I'm at and where I need to go, and I can call or use an app to arrange my ride, and they will physically pick me up in a van and take me, sometimes by myself, sometimes with other passengers, to the destination where I'm going within a specific time period.

GJ: So you could even go down to the stadium to watch the Browns lose?

BL: Yes, and I have done that. Not for the Browns because I'm not wasting my money on that team.

GJ: Okay. Alright. Well Noah, are there any other stats that you want to quiz us on?

NK: We pretty much wrapped 'em up. I just really wanted to touch on the recovery efforts. But however, I will say over the past five years, all of these services have been seeing progressive increases in their ridership. The MTA tracked something like over 1.2 billion trips this past year, and it just keeps climbing. Unfortunately, this data set did not go as historic as I would typically like because I would've pulled numbers from 2015 to see how they compared pre pandemic, but unfortunately the data set just wasn't up to that task. So yeah, this has just been a really interesting process to observe, especially I'm curious to track the data for years in the future as congestion pricing and more of those Access-A-Ride, or excuse me, accessibility upgrades get in process to kind of replace some of those Access-A-Ride trips just to kind of see how these numbers ebb and flow.

GJ: I was once on the subway in Manhattan on a Halloween, and New York City's Halloween celebration is one of the biggest in the world, and it was a packed train, and it stopped in the middle of somewhere and then the lights went out, and it just sat there for what seemed like forever, and there was no announcement saying, ‘Hey, we're waiting for this’, or, ‘Hey, it's just going to be a couple minutes’. It was just like no communication, dead silence, wall to wall people. And I wanted to scream. The New York subway, the biggest in our country, also not perfect by far and hasn't been perfect for a very long time. 

NK: Oh, definitely not. 

GJ: To our listeners, please email us at [email protected] with your New York City horror stories from traveling, any type of mass transportation, many of us have visited New York, it's a great place to visit, wouldn't want to live there. And one of that reasons is because it is so crowded, and you're taking mass transit and sometimes when you take mass transit, some funny things happen, you think you're going to die on Halloween.

NK: I will say a lot of those issues, I know that this is going to sound kind of shill adjacent, but a lot of those issues are getting taken care of. The capital projects that are in the 2025- 2029 budget addressing a lot of those issues that kind of culminate in those service outages or electrical losses. A lot of that is getting covered in the future, and as someone who rides New York City Transit almost every day, I am noticing improvements, and I'm not seeing as many outages or incidents like that in my day-to-day travel as I did when I moved here three years ago, so it may be slow and methodical, but I do feel improvements as someone who lives here.

GJ: Yeah. How many plaza rats have you seen? 

NK: I honestly, you lose count after. You can't keep them on 10 fingers.

JP: I have to say living in New York City versus Boston, I really think that when I'm in downtown Boston, I've seen way more rats on transit than in New York City. I don't know why, but I really have.

GJ: Okay, that's another one for our listeners. If you think that your city has more rats than New York City, please write us at [email protected]. Okay. Noah, thank you so much for that little data data download session, and we will be right back with my interview with Keith Plokhoy.

GJ: Keith, welcome to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast. Just so I am fully clear, your last name is Plokhoy?

KP: Correct. You pronounced it well on your first try. That's awesome.

GJ: So there are people who, what are some of the mispronunciations?

KP: Oh, yeah. I get all kinds of different things and apparently I've learned over the years that phonetically in Russian, it's got sort of a negative connotation. It's like the bad man or the bad person, so I most recently got that going through TSA, I got a funny look from the guy checking IDs, but yeah, no, you got it. You nailed it.

GJ: Well it's an interesting last name, and you are the director of CMC Bridge Systems, so we're going to be talking about technology and bridges today, and first off, just tell us where are you based out of?

KP: So I'm based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Beautiful part of the world. So when InQuik first came over into the U.S. market, the team was based in Colorado, so we had a little office in Denver and kind of started the business and tried to grow it from there. Just three of us crammed into a little co-working space that was probably only meant for one person to sit in. But yeah, we got it done.

GJ: It feels like a lot of technology companies start off, that's like the backstory. Do you guys have to all start off in garages or basements in real small cramped spaces? That's how genius launches.

KP: Yeah, everyone is trying to recreate the whole Jeff Bezos trajectory I guess so got to start small.

GJ: Alright, well let's dive in here. Walk us through the background of the Adams County Bridge Replacement Project, and why was it so urgent?

KP: Yeah, so this is a county in rural Colorado, or at least partially rural. You got part of the county that abuts the main highway that runs north and south of the state but the further east you get and the further you go towards Denver International Airport, the more rural and agriculture based the county becomes, so you got limited connectivity between one side of the county and the other. And this particular project on 144th Ave connected the western part of the county. So a more populated part of the county with the airport, and I guess probably more importantly for the context of this discussion and this project, the farm communities surrounding this road. So you had pretty big parcels of agricultural industry and essentially this bridge being out caused the need for a pretty big detour. I mean, again, there's not a lot of options in that area in terms of how to get from one side of the county to the other, how to connect to a major interstate highway like I 25, so you had a pretty significant break in the connectivity within that county for a lot of reasons. It's the farm activity, but it's also a school bus route, So this is majorly disruptive to the people who live in the area and the residents of Adams County in general.

GJ: And it was a flood that knocked out the bridge, a flood damage to the bridge point where it had to be replaced urgently?

KP: Yeah, so this is, I guess for anyone listening who's not familiar with Colorado weather patterns, this is one of those areas that's dry probably 350 days out of the year, but the way we get our water out here in the west is it just dumps in really intense bursts. So that combined with sort of seasonal snow melt, a lot of these waterways or lower lying areas are collecting snow melt water. They're also collecting the drainage from really a large watershed, so you've got this big flat area and then a very limited low spot where the water is collecting, and that's sort of what happened here. So a huge amount of water comes through, you get scour around the abutment, so essentially just fast moving water that's pulling all of the soil and the structure away from the abutment itself. So you would normally have had some rip wrap and some stone and some grade to accept some of that water coming through. All that's washed away and now you're starting to actually eat away at the backfilled soil that's surrounding the abutment, and that's really what happened here. The water got behind the abutment, the roadway behind that abutment starts to collapse and now you've really got that bridge supported by nothing. I mean you had some piles going into the ground to support the existing abutment that was sort of faced with a little bit of timber lagging I believe, but yeah, the flood came through an intense amount of water, and the bridge was out of commission in the course of a single event.

GJ: Wow, that's crazy. So then InQuik Bridge Systems is called in to help replace this bridge. Walk us through what happened after that.

KP: So when we launched this technology, we were a little bit resource constrained, so a lot of the early focus in, what I'll say downtime, so between major activities and things that were part of our strategic plan in terms of getting the system out into the market was like, ‘How do we engage in the state that we're in?’ Proximity matters, boots on the ground matters. So our business development manager, Steve Noble, had made contact with a local contractor probably within a couple of months of us starting up, had gotten some initial interest, but there isn't always a fit. We had talked about a couple of different potential projects to work on with them, but when this thing came up, Zak Dirt is the name of the contractor, they immediately thought, ‘Hey, this is the right fit. We finally found something where this solution clicks’, and the main driver here is speed. You've got a pretty critical crossing in an area that has a major impact to the surrounding communities in terms of that detour we just discussed. And the operations manager or VP of operations at Zak Dirt had been contracted by the county to complete this replacement. So it's the ACMGC model, where the county or the asset owner selects a contractor first and then builds the design and works the implementation, gets all the engineering put together in a collaborative way. So instead of a design bid build where you would have an owner go out, select an engineering partner, the engineer would design the site, select a solution and then it would go out to bid. This kind of works it backwards. So the asset owner, in this case Adams County, selected the contractor and then the contractor kind of built that theme to support getting the project done, so they had some critical things that they had to accomplish, get this open as soon as possible, is really the main one, but there's a general idea on budget. There's a general idea on the type of solution that's going to be put in place here, so they were able to bring us into the project fairly early, sort of as soon as they were selected, they coordinated with a local engineer. We brought in our structural engineering partner, Arup, a pretty large internationally recognized engineering firm who's kind of been with us since the beginning of operations here in the U.S. and really bundled this solution together. So how do we get a structure in here as quickly as possible, but also a structure that is going to withstand the next major flooding event that this site is going to experience?

GJ: And so when you said that time was of the essence, and I read that this project was finished a year early or more than a year early, and it came in under budget by, was it you saved three or not maybe under budget, but $3 million were saved. Can you talk about those two things?

KP: Yeah, so as part of this CMGC project delivery method, Zak Dirt had to bring forward option analysis to the county, so they were going to look at a multitude of solutions. In this case, they looked at adjacent box beams, they looked at some steel girder options, some other precast options, and there's cost associated with all that options analysis. And then there's also the lead time and the engineering time and then also just the time spent on site. We were in a unique position to jump on this very quickly, new technology, obviously we were very eager to move on this as soon as possible, sort of a flagship project for us in the west, so I think that was a part of it and part of what drove the quick turnaround was our newness to the market and our ability to quickly fulfill the project in terms of budget. Something that we are really eager to talk about is the whole project cost savings versus just the on paper in your face material cost savings. 

GJ: Alright, let's dive into it. 

KP: Yeah, so when Zak brought the options analysis forward, you're looking at us and maybe we'll just take adjacent box beams so a pre-stressed concrete member versus what we were bringing to the table. And on paper the InQuik solution is going to be more expensive than that precast box beam solution, but when you start to really look at what the final cost implications of those different option selections are, the value that a solution like InQuik brings to the project starts to come out. One of the things that the contractor highlighted at the end of the project is that there were probably 400 man hours into this thing versus probably 3000 man hours with a traditional built bridge, so that would've been a little bit lower for an adjacent box beam structure probably would've been slightly higher if they were forming and pouring a bridge on site. But the whole project analysis of what goes in terms of cost and time is something a little bit nuanced, and we're always encouraging people to look at it beyond just the initial sticker value. What we're bringing to the site is a set of components that's essentially ready for concrete, so when we show up on site, we are in the final days of the project, whereas if you were bringing another solution on site, potentially you would have to come in and build your abutments. You'd have to form and pour abutments and wing walls in a traditional way and then you'd have to bring in steel girders or box beams to lay on top of that. And then after that, you're going to have to form and pour a deck surface or pave over it with asphalt overlay to create a deck surface and then you have to come in and pour your barriers. What the InQuik system allows is for all of that work to be done in sort of a single phase, so we're able to bring the substructure, the superstructure and the deck surface out, have it done in two or three pores and then you're off the job site as opposed to having to bring in a whole bunch of different solutions that get paired together to create a final structure, so I mean these are the things that really drive the cost savings and really drastically drive the time savings.

GJ: What makes the InQuik bridge systems different from traditional bridge building methods?

KP: So this is another kind of interesting thing because when we first came to the market, we were really focused on being this new, exciting, innovative technology and then we quickly learned that the bridge building world, the bridge engineering world, the civil world in general is a little bit less excited to see something new, so it kind of forced us to look back at our own assessment of our product. So instead of thinking about it as something that was radically different, we sort of had to rephrase that to the market as, ‘Hey, we're doing something really familiar, we're just doing it in a different way’. So what makes us different is that we're taking a lot of that risk off of site. Like I said in the previous answer, when we get to the job site, we're kind of in the final days of before you can open that project to the community. The thing that's different about how InQuik approaches that is we're taking all that work, and it's all the same work. We're building a reinforced concrete structure, a conventionally reinforced concrete structure. We're just doing all that work offsite and letting the final assembly be the last couple steps before they open the bridge. So you're de-risking the install, you're obviously shortening the duration that a bridge would have to be out, maybe not exactly the same in the Adams County example because that bridge was closed, right? But if you had a bridge that you saw was by your biannual inspections, you saw that that bridge was deteriorating and needed to be replaced soon, you get a little bit more control over that project schedule. You wait until the components are fabricated and are ready to be dropped in, really shorten the closure there and say, ‘Hey, we've got two days to demo this a day for site prep. We're going to drive piles for foundation and then drop in quick components in really, really just gives the owner and the installer a lot more control over the project duration, the timeline and ultimately driving the ability to get that open on schedule.

GJ: That was a great answer. I don't know if you can hear it, but my neighbor has decided right now to start nailing into the wall right behind my desk. Are you able to hear that?

KP: No, it's not too bad. I heard a dog.

GJ: Well, my dog has been barking at the hammering, and I love my neighbors so much. We'll probably keep that in. So we'll just go from there. So I want to talk big picture technology now. So where's the question… hold on. In what ways is pre-engineered bridge technology changing, especially how is it changing the industry overall?

KP: Yeah, I think a lot of that is just about expectation. The days of closing a crossing and forming and pouring a concrete bridge are maybe coming to an end. I mean there are some situations where that has to happen. If there's really specific bridge geometry that has to be addressed or if there's some other constraint, you might see that, but I think it's just becoming less and less common. We are seeing in terms of specifications, precast has been a huge part of the industry now for a long time. There's a number of other A, B, C accelerated bridge construction products on the market, and I think it's really just changing the expectation of asset owners and also the people who live in districts where they've got across these structures every day. People don't want to see a bridge closed for three months. They don't want to have to deal with a five-mile detour or in some cases a lot longer than five miles, so I think the development of A, B,C solutions InQuik and our competitors in the market are changing what people and asset owners expect from people serving the market.

GJ: Yeah. Well, what about durability? Does this technology balance the speed with the long-term durability?

KP: Yeah, I think that's one of our key differentiators. If you think about the other sort of prevalent options in the market in terms of accelerated bridge construction, and we do see a lot of precast, and I mentioned box beams a little bit earlier, the box beam solution in most cases what they're representing to an asset owner is meeting that Ashton minimum of 75-year design life. I think in practical or in the real world, we'll say those kinds of structures are being replaced a little bit more often than 75 years. And then the other consideration there with a solution like a box beam is that the entire superstructure is bearing supported, so there's a big structural member that carries the load, the live load of cars crossing it carries the thermal expansion of contraction but all that is sitting on an elastomeric bearing like big old piece of rubber that sits underneath between the superstructure and your abutment, and what is going on here is now you've introduced a joint into the structure, and if we're talking about a flood similar to what happened in Adams County, it's just another opportunity for one element to separate from the other. So you've got a big superstructure that's carrying the roadway and a joint, and there's probably some kind of tie down apparatus that helps connect that superstructure back to the abutment, but ultimately, you're introducing the opportunity for the deck system to separate from the abutment in a flood event. What's unique about the InQuik system is that you don't have that, so you can still accomplish a really quick build on site, but the vast majority of the bridges that we supply to the market are integral bridges, so we've got a structural connection between our super structure and our abutment. What that translates to in the real practical terms is a big solid hunk of concrete that sits on usually a deep foundation that is really difficult to pull out of place so instead of having these different components, so a concrete abutment with a bearing and then something else sitting on top of it, what we've got is hundreds of thousands of pounds of concrete in a single mass that's really just better suited to resist the flooding events that we're talking about here. And then just a general comment on durability. If you look at other solutions that have joints, like those box beams, pieces of precast, even a steel girder bridge, anytime you have a joint in the structure, it's something that has to be maintained. So whether that's the longitudinal joint that's running between those box beams or on a steel girder bridge, the bearing that sits underneath the girder and connects it to the abutment, that's something that's got to be replaced, so in the case of the InQuik structure and it's durability, eliminating joints is really what's driving that durability and driving that lack of go forward maintenance for the asset owner compared to other solutions.

GJ: I mean all of this talk, especially following a flood like the one in Adams County, it begs the question about other weather type disasters. We have a lot of extreme weather events that just keep happening, and they seem to be getting more and more extreme. So how can state DOT’s, local agencies prepare and do you think that disaster responses will increasingly rely on pre-engineered solutions like this?

KP: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean it goes back to the comment about expectations of the market. Increasingly these types of solutions will be leaned on, and I think there'll be a necessary response to some of the code changes that we're going to see. We're already starting to see 500-year-old flood being referenced in spec documents and plans as opposed to a 100-year flood, which we would've seen for the last probably five or six decades, so as the code change starts to roll out, and we start to see these 100-year floods becoming realistically 20-year floods, asset owners are going to start to look at this. They're going to start to recognize the need to build more resilient infrastructure and InQuik is part of that, right? We're not the only disaster resilient solution out there, but I think we're uniquely positioned to serve our sweet spot in the market, so in terms of the response, we really focus on those county bridges or those township bridges. We're not replacing the Francis Scott Key Bridge within quick panels or not yet anyway, but the importance of making sure that those small structures are disaster resilient and that things are, that the increased frequency of major flooding events is recognized in the code. I think solutions like this will be continued to be leaned upon and will be a really mandatory part of solving for infrastructure replacements going forward.

GJ: Alright, well thank you so much for coming on the podcast and talking to me about this. I appreciate your time, and this is a fascinating piece of technology that helps get infrastructure up and running faster than normal, and it's really important to talk about, so I appreciate you joining us.

KP: Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks very much for having me.

GJ: We are back. That was my interview with Keith Plokhoy, the director of CMC Bridge Systems. So what did you guys think? We talked about innovation that was used in Adams County and a bridge project out there. Brandon, what were your impressions?

BL: Well, Gavin, as, always, phenomenal interview. You knocked it out of the park. My biggest takeaway from the interview is all about the evolution of bridge construction, right? Keith talked about people don't want to wait years and years and years for these bridges to be done and the time it takes and the hassle of having to go through detours and not being reliable on these bridges and the modern use technology to get these projects done not only faster but make them safer and last longer. It is just the evolution of time was sort of my biggest takeaway to how fast this technology has developed.

jP: For me. I thought it was really interesting about how they're addressing bridge construction on a more local, smaller scale level. I feel like usually when we're discussing technology, it's large bridge projects and how they can be utilized on that scale, and I felt like it was a smaller scale solution that we need more of.

GJ: Okay. Alright. Well thank you. Yeah, I completely agree. I thought Keith was an excellent interview, and I really enjoyed his insight into the evolution of bridge construction and bridge technology. It was really great. Alright, so before we head out of here for this episode, Brandon, let's talk a little bit more about Mass Transit.

BL: So we are going to be looking at recent news items, and all of these questions are from the past few months of Mass Transit weekly news quizzes. We have five questions every Friday that comes out on our website and we quiz you on recent news items that we posted throughout the week. So make sure you go to masstransitmag.com to fill out those news quizzes. And the first question I have for you is based off something that we had talked about the last time Noah was on here in season two when we talked about the different types of gas powered buses, CNG buses, electric buses. So the Redding Area Bus Authority, which is in Shasta County, California, which is in Northern California, they are making an effort to bolster its fleet. And the question that I have for you guys is what are they transitioning their buses to? Are they transitioning its fleet of buses to a B20 biodiesel fuel blend, are they replacing its fleet of buses with battery-electric buses or are they retrofitting hybrid systems to its diesel buses to make them more efficient.

GJ: Well, this is California you said, right?

BL: Correct. 

GJ: Okay, so they're not going to run these buses on sunshine and good intentions, so I think that they are going to use the battery.

JP: I think the last option, retrofitting hybrid systems onto the buses just because hybrid runs longer I think in a day.

BL: You guys are actually both incorrect. They're transitioning its 16-bus fleet to a B20 blend of biodiesel, providing an estimated 15% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. The next question dates back to a little bit of season one of the ITP when I did an interview with Sound Transit on their infrastructure projects. And in December they had launched the federal way one link extension, which begins light rail service. The question I have for you guys is now again, Sound Transit, it has done a lot of extensions on the one line, which is basically now at this point going throughout the state of Washington. How many extensions have they opened in the last three years? And your options are one, five or 10?

JP: I'm going to go with 10.

GJ: Ten! Part of me wants to say five because it's three-years, right? It's how many in three years? Three years. Ten would be a lot.

JP: I missed the three years, but okay, I'm changing my answer to five, but I do think it's high.

GJ: I think both of those are wrong. I think they've only opened one extension.

BL: Well, Gavin, you should have gone with your first guess because it is five. The others are the T Line service to Hilltop, the 2 Line between South Bellevue and Redmond Technology stations, the Lynnwood extension into Snohomish County and the 2 Line extension to Downtown Redmond.So again, a lot of different transfer options, a lot of options there for people in the state of Washington area to use sound transit to get to where they need to go.

GJ: So envious of cities that have rail like that.

BL: Okay. The last question I have for you guys, so Bay area rapid transit starting on January 1st of this year, they raised fares by 6.2%. The question I have for you is why did they? Did they raise fares to A) raise fares to construct new infrastructure? B) did they raise fares to purchase new fleet vehicles or C) did they raise fares to keep pace with inflation and restore financial stability? 

GJ: What was the third one again?

BL: Raise fares to keep pace with inflation and restore financial stability.

GJ: Yeah, I think it's that one, and I think it's because first of all, San Francisco, one of the most expensive places to live in the world. And second is the inflation is out of control right now across the country and they got to do something to try to keep up. What do you think, Jess?

JP: I think the same. That was also my guess is that every day I'm writing about how inflation is impacting projects and everything, and especially there's also been some funding shortfalls in a lot of areas, so that would be my guess.

BL: I'm glad you guys both guessed C because you are correct. BART says its current funding model relies on passenger fares to pay for operations, and fares continue to be an important funding source to meet the needs of riders who rely on its services and to attract new riders. Of course, we all know how important fare collection is for these agencies to keep operations going. It’s sad that during my trip to DC I witnessed fair evasion, so is happening out there in the world. And this is a public message from me to everyone: Just pay your fair.

GJ: Alright, well Brandon, thank you so much for those questions and thank you to our listeners for listening to us next week. We have a special episode where we will be talking to some college kids.

BL: We are talking to a student from the great state of Pennsylvania. We talk about Pennsylvania a lot.

GJ: But the college kids aren't from Pennsylvania.

BL: Yes, we are. No, Gavin, it's mine. You messed up. We got to redo that bud.

GJ: No, let's keep going. It's fine. So we're starting with your college interview. Oh, al right. Well, It's funny when we make mistakes, we can keep this in. It's good when I look like a fool. Alright, Brandon, thank you so much. Jessica, thank you. And thank you to our listeners, and also of course, thank you to EndeavorB2B. Please write us at [email protected]. And until then, goodbye.