Deputy Director, Transportation Department
Alan Martin is Deputy Director, Transportation Department, at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
PUF: What is your role in the commission?
Alan Martin: The irony is that we were founded as the railroad commission. The PUCO was not originally interested in electric, gas and phone. We were interested in railroads. In the 1800s, it was all about railroads and the monopolies from railroads.
The roots of this agency go back to transportation. Today, we are the deregulated part of the agency, truly deregulated, because there is nothing here that's economically regulated in the same way that you have traditional utility regulation. Now it's all competition.
PUF: What's left for you to do?
Alan Martin: Our mission is all about safety. When people ask us what we do, we save lives.
A lot of it is due to grants from the federal government, MOUs with other agencies, and technology programs that are all aimed at making the world safer for people that drive big trucks.
We are making railroad grade crossings safer. For trains, we have inspectors that inspect the tracks. We have inspectors that inspect trucks. We sub-grant money out to the state highway patrol to do driver vehicle inspections.