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Posted: 2021-03-05T21:27:18Z | Updated: 2021-03-05T21:27:18Z

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said he wanted to introduce a variety of new, sexy ideas regarding transportation in a Rolling Stone interview published on Friday.

Theres nothing I love more than bringing attention to an unglamorous topic that deserves more attention, Buttigieg said, in response to the interviewer noting that he was bringing name value to a governmental department that is often overlooked. Even as mayor, I was an evangelist for smart sewer technology because it was, in my view, really exciting. So Im relishing the opportunity to do that with a lot of things in transportation, some of them well understood and already considered fairly sexy in the policy world, some of them pretty obscure.

During his time as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg signed off on a move to upgrade the citys sewer system with so-called smart monitoring sensors that could detect water congestion. Ultimately, this saved $100 million that would have otherwise gone towards replacing pipes.

Buttigieg told Rolling Stone that he wanted to apply the same fresh thinking to his new role, adding that infrastructure needed to be a bipartisan priority due to Americas slipping competitiveness in comparison to countries that have not hesitated to make big infrastructure investments.