I have had little to add to the cabinet picks thus far, but I do have some experience with transportation infrastructure and I would like to express my strong enthusiasm for @PeteButtigieg as the pick for Sec of Transportation. https://twitter.com/WSJPolitics/status/1338928201683394571

To me, Buttigieg represents a stock of young innovative technocrats that have been slowly but steadily entering DOT leadership positions in recent years. I have met a few of them in state DOTs and I have been wowed by what they have accomplished and what they are setting up to do

Infrastructure is a complicated business and the #1 most important thing is to work closely with and listen to the expert engineers, operators, managers, etc. who make sure that things are built safely, sturdily and with minimal risk or disruption.

But the #2 thing is to look for ways to make infrastructure better and more efficient both in construction/maintenance and in usage. The nature of large stable systems like those in infrastructure is that momentum is against change or innovation.

But technological change has made a lot of the systems being used archaic. Lots of DOTs around the US are listening and modernizing. Big changes are happening. But each change takes political leadership and courage. Buttigieg would do well to learn from examples that come to mind

The federal gov't plays a major role in transportation infrastructure. During the great recession, federal money funded a large chunk of construction across the country (which coincidentally was most of the construction going on at the time since the private market was sunk).

There's a lot that we know about how to improve infrastructure and a lot more that we don't. I will leave more concrete thoughts on what needs to be done for another thread.

But here are my broad hopes for Buttigieg in his new role:
(1) When infrastructure week/month/year comes, make it count. Fund projects with high yield for access and mobility as cities develop; be mindful of the long run & how usage of roads will change; don't forgo maintenance

(2) Build a compendium of state DOT knowledge -- there's so much variation in how states do things. The current state of knowledge is bits and pieces in research, and coffee chatter at conferences. A systematic knowledge base would let us learn so much more about what works.

(3) Experimentation at the state level is a great way to vet innovative ideas, but federal guidance and standard-setting is often what's needed to scale them once they're proven. Build a mechanism to streamline this process, and incentives for reluctant states to buy in.

(4) It's hard to build knowledge without data. Some DOTs have amazing data collection, but for many, the process of extracting enough data to say something about efficiency is so hard and costly it's barely worth it. We *need* accessible, standardized data to find out what works.

Coincidentally, I wrote a short note advocating for standardizing infrastructure data https://www-nber-org.stanford.idm.oclc.org/books-and-chapters/economic-analysis-and-infrastructure-investment/comment-procurement-choices-and-infrastructure-costs-vasserman#.X9ksyoXTy2g.twitter

Working link here: https://shoshanavasserman.com/files/2020/12/comment_procurement_choices_and_infrastructure_costs_BookChapter.pdf
This is a comment on a chapter of this forthcoming book.
Thanks for the catch, @autoregress!