This thread has nothing to do with politics, so please don't interject them. The intent is to get down to deeper truths than things that can change every 2-4 years. The core question is this: should transportation be a top-down or bottom-up proposition? Who is best qualified?

I'll make a strong case that transportation begins at home. If you can make a living where you're living, and walk to the grocery store, many things work out better. And leaders who understand this and find ways for this to happen for many are better equipped to lead DOTs.

These are not just transportation issues. The ability to walk to most if not all of our daily needs is a huge economic health, environmental health & public health issue. Top-down auto domination is brain-dead to these benefits & unlikely to change without a major shakeup.

As @clmarohn & @JoeUrbanThree have long pointed out, the top-down auto-domination policies of institutionalized sprawl will break America, and its Ponzi scheme may extend that day, but cannot avoid the final reckoning. Auto domination has an expiration date.

Give me a US DOT leader who implicitly understands the grassroots patterns of local transport done right all day, any day over an implementer of auto domination. Hasn't America suffered enough from these decades of quality time with our steering wheels instead of those we love?

Put another way, transportation policy that begins at home is more likely to produce sustainable (financially & environmentally) results than transportation policy that begins on the interstates. Interstates are fine going state-to-state, but not home>school>work>shopping>home.