The Need to Get Around

(upbeat music) (camera clicking) (upbeat music continues) (air whooshes) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) - Welcome to "InFocus."

I'm Jennifer Fuller.

In this episode, we're taking a closer look at modes of transportation and how people have challenges and have sustainability issues in getting around rural Illinois.

One of the projects that may help alleviate some of those challenges is the Southwest Connector.

We talk more about that with Murphysboro's Mayor Will Stephens.

Will, thanks for coming in.

- Jennifer, thank you for the invitation.

Appreciate it.

- So people may be familiar with what's known as the Southwest Connector.

Sometimes it's been known as the Four County Highway Coalition.

It's been around for a little while.

What is it?

- It's the concept of taking current two-lane roads, specifically 127, 154, and 3, and expanding them from two lanes to four lanes from Murphysboro to Interstate 255 south of St. Louis.

It's an idea that's been around since the 1960s.

It was first studied in 1967 and it's been studied every decade since then by the Illinois Department of Transportation, by area elected officials, like the current push has been.

And it really comes out of the fact that Interstate 24 was originally engineered to connect St. Louis to Nashville, Tennessee.

And as we know today, there's been a lot of auto accidents and issues between Marion and Mount Vernon where all of that Interstate 24 traffic, all of that 57 traffic, gets shoved into a bottleneck between those two points.

And so we've looked at this in one way as simply completing what Interstate 24 was originally designed to be and that's to better connect Southwest Illinois to the population center in St. Louis.

- You mentioned that studies have been done once a decade roughly for the past 50 years.

What have those studies shown, and what's the hangup here?

I'm guessing that it has something to do with money.

- Well, you're right.

I mean, the hangup has always been money and the studies over the years have shown the same things over and over again and it's that, one, this section of highways is in the top 5% of two-lane highways in Illinois for fatal accidents and serious injury crashes.

A lot of them are crashes that are due to lane departure crashes from people trying to pass in no passing zones, issues with agricultural equipment coming on and off the highways because this is, you know, primarily a area of Illinois that is driven by agriculture.

We also obviously have economic development reasons that have been brought forth over the years for doing this, as well as access to healthcare, you know, for ambulance and police, fire, et cetera.

So all those things have been stated over and over again in reports.

The hangup every time has been, how is this gonna be funded?

In fact, SWIFT was, in the 1980s, was the group that organized to try to push for it, and that was called the Southwestern Illinois Freeway Tollway, where there was the concept of, okay, we're gonna make this a tollway and we'll build it that way.

Wasn't able to get sufficient support.

The reason we feel like we can maybe get something done now is because the $1.4 trillion infrastructure bill that was passed is a generational sort of funding mechanism.

And, you know, if you're going to have that kind of money available and there's already some of the engineering been done on this project, let's get our ducks in a row and try to get some of it.

- Let me play devil's advocate if I could.

So there are a lot of people saying that, you know, we need to just repair and maintain the infrastructure that we have and not expand, not create new.

What's your answer to that?

- I think that there's room for both of those things to be done.

And I think that when you look at what the infrastructure bill specifically says they want to do with that funding is create good paying union jobs expanding infrastructure in areas that are being left behind by the transition to clean energy.

And so this money that is available is not necessarily earmarked to fill potholes or to resurface roads.

Your local motor fuel tax dollars that you pay for at the pump year in and year out that are then let by, you know, the Department of Transportation and your municipalities, that's the funding pool that ought to be used to make sure that those are being maintained.

This type of generational spending, much like the WPA project or the Civilian Conservation Corps kind of spending, in my opinion, needs to be spent on things that can make generational change for a region.

And I believe that this project is the most shovel-ready thing that can meet the goals that the Biden administration has laid out for that money.

- You and other members of the coalition have been talking a lot with both state and federal leaders about the fact that you've got some of these studies already done, that you're ready, all you need is the funding so that you can let those bids out.

What kind of reaction are you getting from them?

- I have not met any one of our elected officials that thinks that this is a bad idea.

Representative Bost just gave a speech on the House floor last week in support of it.

Last week, I was in Washington, D.C.

I met with Senator Durbin.

I met with Senator Duckworth's staff.

We have letters of support from Governor J.

B. Pritzker, from the comptroller, from the treasurer, from all of our downstate Republican state reps and state senators.

We have support from Jay Hoffman and Christopher Belt, who are Metro East legislators.

We have support from the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce.

We have support from the St. Louis Freightway.

We are advocating and trying to get support from the City of St. Louis.

And so this isn't just a Southern Illinois project.

I should point out that we have built out some support on the St. Louis side of the river because they're facing some of the same challenges that, you know, all sectors of the country are in terms of finding employees and whatnot.

And so as much as we think about getting connection to them, you know, they see opportunities in being better connected to us.

And so the reaction has been positive and we're thankful for all of that support.

- Sure.

Now, what about, you mentioned the freightway and you mentioned support from a freight alliance, I believe, in the St. Louis area.

What about freight?

That seems to me, as I've traveled those roads, a very direct route for quite a lot of freight, whether it's agricultural, industrial, any number of different types of goods.

- Well, the freightways are very important because when you walk to the store shelf at your grocery store, you're paying for the cost of that freight when you buy that box of cereal or you buy that gallon of milk or whatever.

And so beyond creating the construction jobs, we feel like, you know, Imo's Pizza is a good example.

We have a letter of support from them.

They have a factory just southeast of St. Louis and they're a huge supporter of this because right now they're working on a bunch of roads that are just not really practical for them to move their freight and to deliver their product.

If we're gonna talk about doing big things in Southern Illinois like the Carroll Port and we're gonna be offloading container ships there, then we're going to need to build out the spider web of our infrastructure here to help support that.

And when I was meeting with the governor recently, he said we are going to build out the Carroll Port project, you know, despite the challenges and despite the problems.

So, you know, if we're gonna grow and if we're gonna do big things, we're going to have to, you know, reach out and advocate on our behalf, and that's what we're trying to do.

Not for tomorrow, not for next week or next month, but for 10 years from now.

And I think this project is the type of thing that fits in that theme.

- What about the transition, let's move a little bit to sustainability, the transition away from people having a car that they jump in and drive?

They're looking for things like mass transit.

They're looking for, on major highways and interstates, refueling stations that are not fossil fuel based.

Is that something that's a part of all this plan and looking that far down the road?

- It's interesting you bring it up because one of the ways that IDOT funds projects is through their data-driven decisions tool.

And as we've looked at the scoring for this project, it has scored well in a number of ways.

It's scored well for economic development, scored well for safety.

Our sustainability score is a one out of three.

And so one thing that we are looking at and trying to re-tailor as we're talking about this project with folks is how we could incorporate those sorts of charging stations, et cetera, along the way.

I'm a big advocate for public transportation.

I would hope that, you know, we would have an opportunity to also advocate for, you know, high-speed rail in the state of Illinois, and I know that former Governor Quinn and others have.

This project is just perhaps more shovel-ready and a little bit more of low-hanging fruit than some of those other types of larger public transportation projects and that's why I've been focused on that.

- Sure.

I know when you talk about projects like this, particularly with small communities, you get what people call a NIMBY attitude sometimes, not in my backyard.

They don't want a high level of traffic, they don't want a lot of construction that close to their home, or they don't want it to impact the flavor of their small town or their downtown area.

How are those thoughts and those emotions being addressed?

- I think one thing that people should understand is that if this project would receive funding, there would be public hearings.

There would be a long public process about how exactly this would be engineered.

And we would by law have to do that.

And we want to do that because we want to make sure that we can expand our economy, make ourselves ready to attract new jobs and careers so that we don't see the brain drain, so that we don't see all the young people trying to look for another place to go to find employment.

And so how all that would work out community to community I think would be up to the community because we want that feedback and we'd be required to get it.

- I'm gonna ask you in just the short amount of time that we have remaining to gaze into your crystal ball.

Tell me what you think the region will look like should the Connector project be completed.

How does that change those counties that would be impacted?

- I think those counties would be able to advocate for not just jobs, but careers for their communities.

The Sparta Industrial Park.

The governor has said that the SI airport and the automotive technology school there is a prime place for electric vehicle manufacturing to locate.

If something of that scale were to locate there, they're gonna need not only the airport, but the four-lane highway.

So I think what it would do is, over the next two decades, allow us to grow to a place where we don't just have jobs; we have places where people can call it a career.

- Will Stephens is the mayor of Murphysboro and the chair of the Southwest Connector Coalition.

And you can learn more about it by going to siconnector.com.

Mayor Stephens, thanks for coming in.

- Jennifer, thank you.

- Another aspect of transportation is air traffic.

Regional airports across Illinois face a difficult balance: maintain routes for travelers and the destinations that they'd like to get to as well as keeping costs low and prices, and ridership, I should say, up.

WSIU's Benjy Jeffords takes a closer look at the transition to a new carrier at Veterans Airport of Southern Illinois.

- [Benjy] Starting August 1st, Veterans Airport of Southern Illinois will begin offering a new destination with a new airline carrier.

Cape Air currently offers flights to St. Louis and Nashville on a nine-seat plane, but some big changes are coming soon.

The US Department of Transportation provides federal funding to the Essential Air Service program to guarantee small communities maintain a regular schedule of flights with access to the National Air Transportation System.

Veterans Airport of Southern Illinois is one of those airports supported by the subsidy.

Airport director Doug Kimmel says those contracts are up for bid every few years and only covers one airline.

- Cape Air rebid and Contour and another company called Southern Airways also bid and the community, the airport and the communities, are able to make recommendations to DOT as to which proposal they would like to see.

- [Benjy] Kimmel says they get input from all the stakeholders in the region before they choose a proposal.

- The federal government doesn't want to put federal dollars into a product or service that from the get-go isn't what the community wants.

And by and large, the input we received through surveys and communications directly with individuals and businesses favored the proposal submitted by Contour Airlines with their regional and jet aircraft providing service daily to Chicago O'Hare.

(audience applauds) - [Benjy] Contour Airline CEO Matt Chaifetz says the jet used to have 50 seats, but it was redesigned with the passengers in mind for the 12 weekly flights.

- Two roundtrips a day Monday through Friday with a single roundtrip on Saturday and Sunday aboard our beautiful Embraer regional jets that have been reconfigured to seat only 30 passengers with extra leg room at every seat.

- [Benjy] Kimmel says they expect to see passengers from the north utilizing the new service, which will also stimulate the economy in Southern Illinois.

- Not just the ability for us to fly to the third busiest airport in the country and have all those options for connectivity and good airfare, but opening up our economy to the rest of the world.

And that's part of the point of air service.

It's the facilitation of the flow of transportation and commerce and the benefits that that can provide.

And with a larger airplane, a faster airplane, people will take advantage of it.

- [Benjy] Carbondale economic development director Steven Mitchell says the city saw the advantages of being able to get to or from Chicago in an hour-long flight.

- Because it's connecting the two ends of the state and there's so much potential, Chicago O'Hare, it's so much easier to get anywhere in the world from Chicago now, we just connected basically Southern Illinois to the rest of the world.

One of the biggest complaints I've ever heard from businesses outside the area is there's no easy way to get to Southern Illinois.

Now there is.

- [Benjy] Mitchell says the city conducted a travel study just before the pandemic that produced some impressive results, which is why Carbondale leaders pushed for Contour Airlines.

- That showed 700,000 visits between Chicago area and Southern Illinois.

600,000 of those originated in Chicago, a hundred thousand originated in Southern Illinois.

35,000 of the ones that originated in Southern Illinois came from Carbondale.

- [Benjy] Kimmel says the roundtrip flights to O'Hare will be another part of the region's transportation infrastructure and will add to the regional economy.

- You look at I-57 and development around Marion, you look at the importance of Highway 13 as the region's corridor and the businesses that continue to be developed around that, the importance of Amtrak to Carbondale and the surrounding area.

- [Benjy] Chaifetz says they were keeping the fare under a hundred dollars to motivate people to try out the jet service and then become frequent users.

- We're intentionally setting the fare low enough to try to get people to come out and recognize that this is a very different offering than what the airports had in the past.

You know, not having had jet service in 40 or 50 years, it's going to take some awareness and reeducation for people to understand that this offering is very different.

- [Benjy] Kimmel says if there's enough usage, then Contour Airlines could add more destinations from Veterans Airport.

- That's what the end goal is really: to get an airline in here increasing ridership to the point where they can be less reliant upon, and at some point totally not reliant upon, the federal subsidy.

In here operating on their own, making money, adding flights, destinations, outside of any federal contract, but just because it's the thing that, the right thing to do for their business model to make money.

And so the larger aircraft, the more comfortable, you know, faster aircraft with service to the larger airport, all are gonna bode well for that aspect.

- [Benjy] Kimmel says the last time the airport had jet service was 1986 and they saw 30,000 passengers depart from Marion.

- Our market has not decreased in size since then.

If anything, obviously we've expanded.

The demographics are huge as compared to what they were back then.

The potential is huge as compared to what they were back then.

It just takes the right product, the right service, to capture and we've never been as close to capturing that as we are here today.

- [Benjy] For "InFocus," I'm Benjy Jeffords.

- Back on "InFocus," you may have already heard there's a pilot shortage not just in the United States, but really across the world, and that impacts travel, supply chains, and much more.

We'll talk about that with someone who's trying to impact that shortage and that's Joe Ruiz, the interim director of SIU's School of Aviation.

Joe, thanks for coming in.

- Oh, it's a pleasure to see you, Jennifer.

- If I say pilot shortage to you, I imagine I start to see some stress and some smoke coming out of your ears.

- You know, it's a bittersweet double-edged sword because we want our students to have these opportunities within the aviation industry and many of them have aspirations of becoming airline pilots.

And right now the climate is such that I've never seen in almost 30 years here as an aviation educator.

Our students, I'd say at least 90% of them, have the opportunity to work for the airlines almost immediately after graduation, certainly within two years, once they build up their flight time.

But we're also having to compete with trying to keep these folks resident within our program so that we have enough flight instructors to meet the demand.

So it's a double-edged sword.

It's a great opportunity for our folks, but by the same token, SIU and other collegiate aviation institutions across the country, across the world, are having to compete with a shortage of bodies and qualified personnel to fill those slots.

- Now, it wasn't that long ago that we were talking about pilot burnout, that we were talking about pilots who had to fly so long and for so many years that they just couldn't take it anymore.

They chose early retirement or even left the industry.

But now, perhaps because of that, you're looking at a need that seems insurmountable.

- It's really amazing when you look back, I think back to about 2007, and at the time, I was president of the University Aviation Association.

I recall that timeframe.

And we were lobbying with regional airlines because at the time, they were paying their pilots something like $25 an hour, a really minimum wage, a low wage, given their expertise.

And they said they were having difficulty being able to fund those positions.

Well, here we are now, 2023, and it's not uncommon for these folks to start off at 55,000 to $60,000 a year and then billing upwards and then once they transition from the regional carriers to the major air carriers, they're making well over six figures.

- What should people, the traveling public, the people kind of outside the industry, keep in mind as they're booking flights, as they're looking at travel plans when it comes to this?

Is this something that's going to continue for years?

- This is gonna be in place, it's basically reality.

The airlines are being impacted by it.

To say that there's something the flying public can look for, some indicator that the flights are more reliable than others, honestly, I think all you can do is look at the track record of cancellations associated with each individual airline.

But to say that they can do anything else other to assure that they'll be able to complete their travel plans, really this is a circumstance that's beyond their control.

We're talking about supply and demand.

And it's not that the airlines don't want to accommodate you.

It's simply that they can't.

They're having to curtail flights, limit the number of flights, cut back on flights, all sorts of things to try to address it.

Reducing the number of routes they typically fly because they just don't have the manpower for it.

- Well, let's talk a little bit then about the preparation.

As many people know, SIU's aviation program is world-known.

You get students from all over the globe, and it's full.

- Yeah, ooh, you know, I would say that six, seven years ago, our aviation flight student enrollment plateaued at about 200 students every semester and that was something comfortable.

Last semester, we had over 300 students in the program, and this semester, we have over 270 in the program.

Typically, spring is a bit lower than in the fall.

But the point is it's stretching us and we have to be able to accommodate our students.

So it's an issue that all of collegiate aviation is having to deal with because we're all taking on more and more students to meet the demand.

We're increasing class sizes, for instance.

It may have been limited to 25 previously.

Now it might be 30 or 35 students per class.

We may be offering classes on the weekend.

We're doing things to try to meet the demand.

But it's a struggle, it's a real challenge.

- As many people might look at this, they'd say, "Well, you know, if someone gets a degree, they go out into their career."

Aviation needs a little bit more hands-on experience.

You've gotta have those folks in the planes.

- Yes, you know, and there is a regulation that says to be an airline pilot, you have to have a total of 1,500 hours.

Well, SIU has the ability to distinguish itself as a Restricted Airline Transport Pilot certified program, which reduces that 1,500 hours by 500 hours.

So if you graduate from our flight program, our aviation management program, or aviation technology program, you get that 500-hour reduction.

Well, that's tremendous when you think that each hour of flight time, say, on average, is about $200 an hour.

Holy smokes, you're talking big money at that point.

So to go from 1,500 hours to a thousand hours is something that our kids try to aspire to.

And a lot of our kids, not all of them, but a significant number, stay on a flight instructors.

And, you know, not every pilot is a flight instructor.

They have to be qualified for it.

But they stay on as flight instructors, typically stay with us for about two years till they build up their thousand hours, and they're very transient, they're gone.

They go off to the regional carriers, they go out to some other organization, and then they become airline transport pilots.

- That's just talking about the people that are in the air.

But there's also that whole infrastructure on the ground.

- Oh, yes.

- With maintenance and upkeep and things like that.

- Absolutely.

- Do you have the same issues there?

- Sure, absolutely.

Right now, one very reputable source of information is the Boeing Market Outlook.

They come out with it annually.

And one component of it is the pilot technician outlook, and they forecast over the next 20 years, we are gonna need over 610,000 new pilots, over 610,000 aviation technicians, and almost 900,000 cabin crew members or flight attendants.

So absolutely, it runs the gamut.

And we have, you know, a fairly vibrant aviation technologies program as well within the School of Aviation.

- Lots of trends.

Do you see things getting better?

Maybe not resolving, but getting better?

- I think they're going to get better because we're gonna try and come up with new strategies to deal with these greater numbers of students.

You know, we're looking at possible satellite programs in different locations to try to take the burden off of our Carbondale program.

But I think they're going to get better.

We just have to adapt to the challenge, and it really is a challenge because it's not gonna go away.

So either you get on board or you get left behind.

So we're gonna do our best to get on board and make the necessary adjustments and try to deal with this challenge.

- I imagine we'll continue talking about this well into the future.

Joe, thanks so much.

- Oh, it's my pleasure, Jennifer.

Thank you for having me.

- Sure.

Joe Ruiz is the interim director of SIU's aviation program.

You can get more information on SIU's website and you can find more about "InFocus" at our website, wsiu.org, and at our YouTube channel.

I'm Jennifer Fuller.

Thanks for joining us for this edition of "InFocus."

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