Hello, welcome to Talking Operations. The title of today's webinar is How to Implement a Congestion Pricing Project: Alternate Delivery Models. I will be giving a brief introduction before turning the session over to Darren Buck from the Federal Highway Administration be he will be serving as the moderator. Today's seminar will last approximately an hour and a half an hour allocated for our presenters and a final 30 minutes for the audience question and answer. Please be aware that our seminar is being recorded. We have added a new feature so that you can now hear the audio through your computer or over the phone, whatever works best for you. If you wish to hear it through your computer you must have the computer speakers turned up. If for some reason you cannot hear it for your computer speakers you can always calling to the phone line. We will be having a four minute video during this the manner that you will only be able to hear their your computer speakers. So if you are on the phone during that time we recommend that you turn off that and turn your computer speakers on for that portion. During the presentation if you think of the question you can type it into the smaller text box in the chat area. The presenters will be unable to answer questions during the presentation but Darren Buck will be something of the questions for the question and answer session for the last 30 minutes of the webinar and it will be posted to the Web site within the next week and I will be typing that's into the chat box shortly. We encourage you to direct others in your office to ask for recording on London the presentations are available for download in the file download box. Click on on the name of the file and click save to my computer. At this point I would like to introduce Darren Buck. Darren Buck is the Marketing specialist for the Office of operations in his duties included overseeing the are reach activities and -- all transportation operation coalition in prior to joining Federal Highway he worked in similar roles in a small federal program cream jobs for people with disabilities. He received an M.B.A. from the University of Maryland and is currently studying transportation planning in the Virginia Tech masters of urban and regional programs. Now I will turn things over to Darren who will start us off. Thank you very much. We hope that you find this webinar somewhat interesting piece you will hear the nuts and bolts of to pricing projects, Texas and Florida. The unique aspect of these is how they were able to deliver these projects and get them on line for the partnership paid without further ado I will introduce the speakers were kind enough to join us today and tell us about their projects. First of all, for presenting the Harris County Toll Road Authority, Ms. Lisa Castaneda. She has been with Toll Road Authority since 1988 and she was project manager on the I-1080 lanes in Houston, Texas and after that we will be hearing from Mr. Paul Lampley who serve says the construction project manager and is responsible for oversight of construction as well as operation and maintenance. He is a 1989 graduate and completed his master's degree at Florida International in 1985 and is a registered professional engineer with over 24 years of civil engineering. Also in joining him is his colleague Mr. Joe Borello and he has been with FDOT for 37 years and he has been the lead designer of the FDOT, NDOT inhouse design section it has previously completed projects with interstate reconstruction including development of new interchanges and Pritchard for crossing over day intercoastal waterways, reconstruction of urban arterial roadways and other facilities such as rest area facilities and more. Joe is currently the FDOT project manager with $1.3 billion reconstruction of the I-595 corridor. First of all, I will handed off to Lisa Castaneda with the Toll Road Authority. Hi, I am Lisa with the Harris County Toll Road Authority and we are an agency that is run by the county, Harris County in Houston, Texas can the freeway is on Interstate ten and that is where we implemented our project. Back in 1984, they opened for buses and van pools only and date Bennett introduced the HOV lane lanes and been so much demand that they had a quick ride program and a half plane was implemented and that started out with HOV 2 users with HOV3 being able to ride in the afternoon peak periods. In the 1980's the corridor was moving to thousand 12 vehicles per day and has six to 12 main means with four to six frontage Roads and that goes to say that the conditions were right to consider a managed lean project and you already had a congested freeway with a HOV lane that had been in place since the mid '80s and we have a tolling entities of the conditions were right to consider the management leaned project. Occupancies were raised to three are occupancies and the HOV lanes were turned to free flow and excess capacity was greeted in the general purpose lanes continue to see increase vehicle miles traveled of vehicles per day and longer peak hours. There we are. So I again that all goes to say that it seemed to -- I do not think we intended to invent the mantling idea, we just had a corridor that had a lot of demand and it seemed the best thing that we could do is take advantage of the excess capacity in the HOV lanes. Our goal was to manage capacity and keep traffic moving and offer more reliable traffic times while making capacity available to the HOV drivers through toll options. So the project at a glance is 12 miles long. Two lanes in each direction between the state Highway six and Interstate 610 and replaces the single reversible HOV facility answers mass transit and HOV needs and the unused land capacity is made available to single drivers for a toll. They are separated by a flexible Candlestick barrier and operates 24/7. The designated peak hours are between five of 5:00 this back and 11 sped and 2:00 and 8:00 p.m. and we utilize electronic toll collection up in this facility. I do not know if you can see from my pointer but there are three points of tolling and they are located at the entrance locations and the main Chileans are separated by Candlestick barriers. It was basically modeled after SR-91 in California. And trying to put this project together, we were already entered the reconstruction of the Katy Freeway lanes and it was a major reconstruction of the freeway and there existed the HOV corridor in the middle and there was a funding shortfall and so we entered into a triparty agreement isn't they represented the HOV which would remain. TxDOT, the project is in their right of way on their corridor and Harris County entered into this to contribute $250 million was tasked with operating and maintaining the facility. The enforcement was a critical factor in trying to decide what how to operate the facility. I think what makes us a little bit different is that since we are part of Paris County we also have our own enforcement we have constable's that work the Harris County area and officers that are dedicated to just are agency and this facility so in trying to -- communication runs pretty well between us and our officers and we have thank you tea contact with -- have day-to-day contact with them. Also locally we had a good relationship with our local TXDOT partners as well as the Metro folks. Everybody had something to gain. TXDOT receive the funding and Metro got to keep their HOV patrons as well as their mass transit. Their original one lane facility was expanded to four lanes, two lanes in each direction. So their service was expanded and then Hector was tasked with the operation and maintenance of the facility and also would receive the repayment of the $250 million through tolls. In trying to make this project work we have modeled it after SR-91 in California and SR-91 is HOV3. Gas prices climbed and conditions were not right to takeaways service so HOV2 riders, we did not want to make a harder than they have three people in their vehicles and we decided to go with HOV2 and we had to make a lot of operational changes and we knew we needed to keep as simple as possible because this was a new concept in this area. As simple as we could get meant. Click pricing the facility with price changes for times a day instead of dynamically every five minutes with redesigned to do. The electronic collection is through EZ-Tag and we do have extended vehicles. Police, emergency, military, school buses, METRO buses and motorcycles are free during designated HOV hours and SOV drivers and trucks pay toll at all times. With the pricing and can we were trying to keep it simple. And when we decided to go out HOV2 we also rebought after visiting with SR-91 in California the use a table to do their pricing. We decided we'd better keep this as simple as recant and only complicated as demand required. For the preceding we spoke with our consultants and we came up with a range of pricing, the peak toll is $4 the off-peak price is $1 we shouldered that on each side with a $2 toll so that you did not have a jump for $1 to $4 in the accident causing potential. We tried to keep S simple as possible operationally -- as simple as possible operationally and everybody knows how to drive the free highway lanes. Everybody knows how to drive in a HOV Lane. And our local community was familiar with that idea of so when we first opened up the facility in October 2008, we loaded its only with HOV and METRO buses so it was more of the same for them. They were used to driving the Katy Freeway and used to having carpoolers. We let that go six months while we studied the volume. In April 2009 we brought on the toll paying customers. We tried to take small steps one of the time. In April when the toll customers came onto sure the road with the HOV users you had to follow the site in the big hero were you -- and figure out where you were going. Off HOV hours it was simply a toll road. So they looked for compliance of the HOV riders during HOV hours. We have a declaration in the zone I suppose you could call we were going to have them leave out of the two lanes into a lane that was close to the booth so that the person sitting in the group could validate that there was two plus occupancy in the car but knowing that the ridership HOV2 would be a great more, you simply in the left lane or right lane. The SUVs drive through the right lane during HOV hours and during nonpeak hours all lanes are open for use and all except exempt vehicles pay a toll. We do have here is a county Toll Road Authority staff located in the booth at the gantries. And they can coordinate that through their officers and law enforcement is located near the gantries to detain by leaders and this has proven to be somewhat of an art or balance if you put too many vehicles with too many law enforcement vehicles out there use the everybody down for the wrong reason and did you do not put enough nobody respects your HOV requirements so we have had to work their trial and error getting the most efficient amount of vehicles out there to keep traffic moving. And again the violation enforcement system that we use on the rest of our toll roads here in Houston we use on the Katy managed lanes and if you go through without a transponder we see your image and find you through the mail and the drive for will be sent a notice. What we have seen is an average time savings of eight minutes not including instant occurrences where savings can be substantial and our average speeds are 58 m.p.h. and are general-purpose liens are 36 m.p.h. -- and our and general-purpose lanes are 36 miles per hour. Our average peak our throughput has climbed to 17,200 for the HOV lanes and almost 2100 for the SOV lanes. All were writer ship is about half and have so we feel like we're providing a service to both types. Usage we have claimed from the opening month of 350,000 to over 1.2 million in March of 2010. In the years touting -- time the EZ-Tag has been fine .51 million transactions with a total of 1.5 million transactions. Lessons learned and I think the biggest lesson we learned was that there are some different components with these managed Lane Spring you can not necessarily take one and copy it and it worked in your local area. We had the good fortune to visit all of the operating managed lanes before we opened our eyes and there was not one that we went to where we did not come back and make some changes that we really learned a lot from. So our conditions are probably most similar to Florida and California as far as the traffic volume and also we had an established toll road in the area that people are used to using it and EZ-Tag to pace toll. The only part that should have been new is you're putting them in the same lanes as well as the price changing based on the time of day. We really have not had many complaints about how it operates. The Senate has been extremely challenging, the DMS signs we underestimated how complicated it was for our software to work with the signage. That was the most complicated part to make the signs say what they're supposed to say and we do get the out-of-towners' that do not know what a EZ-Tag is pitted they get on the facility and see that this says EZ-Tag and HOV and say, well, I did not know what a EZ-Tag was so we did have concerns we really were uncomfortable with that and we thought that we would have a lot more maintenance issues than we were having. That we would have a lot more people cheating, and diving in and out of the planes because the gap between candlesticks is 10 feet. We do have a part it you have an accident and a general purpose lanes it does not quit growing so if accidents are generated in the general-purpose cranes they end up clogging up Arlene's as well because of the location -- our lanes as well because of the location, the debris. What we tried is to keep it simple. As simple as we tried to keep it it was still little bit complicated. So I am grateful that we got to visit the other seven agencies otherwise he would have opened up a facility that was very complicated and I think we would have had a lot more problems. We are trying to keep it as simple as we can until the demand forces us to modify it to accommodate the demand. That is all I have. Thank you very much, Lisa. Before we go on to Joe and Paul I does wanted to add a couple administrative notes. If you have any questions please feel free to write them into the chat box and went to come to the entity formal presentation we will take those questions. A reminder that we have a video that goes along with this presentation and unfortunately we are restricted to only been able to have the sound through the Internet sound connection so if you are on the phone line you might want to turn on the speakers of York computer or plug in some headphones so you can hear that. Without further ado I will pass over to Mr. Paul Lampley and Mr. Joe Borello. Thanks if not, we were asked by Federal Highway on how and why we chose -- we were asked by Federal Highway on how we chose our payment method here in Florida so I will go over a little bit of background. This is improper -- Brower County Florida and connects the expressway so it is a critical link in the county which is where Fort Lauderdale is located. This is the first that has been done in the United States and the first P3 project and can operate and maintain project with a 35 year concession agreement. The corridor on I-595 is 10.5 miles long and we're also doing 2 miles on Florida's turnpike so a total of 13 miles. We have a short video click here and if you cannot hear it you can go to our website and you can see it on our website. We have the nine minute video on the web site and this is the four minute video and it is a little shorter. So we will go through that really quick. [ music playing ] The following commands provide an overview of the new principal express lane system along with other proposed safety and operational improvements. We are trying to get the video running. We have not gotten it running yet. Okay. It looks like it is locked up -- just a second. Many of those current movement and the congestion and operations challenges that they create are also leave a did it by eight braided ramps by separating exit and entrance ramps. Exit ramps will be combined as select locations to decrease the number of entrance and exit points. Traffic that exits we bypass Rambo have the option to bypass the crossroad or continue over the Cross Road thus reducing traffic. We're having some technical difficulties, I do not know if you are able to see it. These lanes give motorists the ability to choose a reliable travel option when their time is more valuable. These will be tolled at varying rates with the higher tolls during peak traffic periods. EDS David Road, State road 84 will be continued to provide a continuous State Road 84 in both the eastbound and westbound directions. I-595 Express will operate in the East found only in the mornings and West found only in the afternoons and a host of safety features will keep traffic from entering the lanes. Those entering from the 75 Expressway interchange or to the east of State Road seven will be separated from mainland traffic electronic message science place prior to the entrance will display the current toll based on time of day as well as real-time traffic information. Congestion levels will be managed by a. Told rate in this is known as congestion pricing which will provide for continual brief look conditions. They will have the option of exiting to the turnpike via a direct connection at the median. In a collaborative effort between, improvements to the existing configuration of the I-595 as interchange will improve safety and traffic operations and include a new westbound I-595 to northbound turnpike ramp which will eliminate existing weaving movements. The I-595 for westbound improvements will require the placement of bulkhead in order to maintain its capacity and flow characteristics. Another key component of this project is the construction of noise barriers. A detailed traffic study has been performed identifying noise barriers at 14 locations and both at 8-foot tall and up to 20-point halt ground mounted a noise barriers have been recommended. I-595, moving board together and for more information on the project please visit the Website, www.I-595.com. I am going to turn it over to Joe and he will talk about the feasibility and some of the objectives and how we'd dance the project. Thanks, Paul paid -- one thing we wanted to go over is how we move the project board as a public-private partnership after the project development was completed and we received the environmental document from federal highway and started the process of implementing the projects it became apparent we were not going to be able to implement the entire project and we had probably have of the project was funded from a construction design standpoint so they undertook a workshop with floor -- with Florida DOT in the turnpike management group to talk about ways that we could implement the project and think about a financing mechanism. We looked at a lot of different the alternatives and put together an action plan to do the next stage of the project. We also started our communications more regularly with the Federal Highway Administration to talk about how we could implement some of these projects and we looked at congestion pricing as part of the interstate system. What we did as a way to move forward some of the additional evaluations that the department undertook is we had to add additional expertise to the team. We have already hired a consulting engineering firm to do additional planning and implementation on the project. We had them on board already and we added a financial consultant to our team that was Jeffrey Parker and associates and we also hired will % -- hired Wilbur Smith and associates to give us an idea of what the expectations were in a congestion pricing environment. We also added a procurement Team out of California that helped the department put the document together. We started meeting with differ representatives from the P3 industry and we started doing some of our own research and some similar type projects. Before we got too far into evaluating all the different alternatives we had to set some clear objectives. In this case our objective was not to maximize the revenue for the project but was to maximize -- optimize mobility in the corridors. Those were important distinctions that had to be defined by senior management and the DOT. We also wanted to encourage long-term efficiency. Paul mentioned that this project connected with I-95, I-75 an there is a regional network that we had to ensure some kind of a seamless operation with the adjacent roadways for our system. As we went through in the objectives were clearly defined we looked at what we could do from a technical standpoint that even if the department decided not to implement the project, what could we do technically that would be of value even if we chose to go in a more conventional procurement method. We had danced a lot to the issues that would be of importance and we did a complete design survey, additional contamination assessment, the technical investigation. We've identified the right of way corridor to the base requirements. They were identified but we did additional design development to narrow those items down. And we really went on a pretty comprehensive public involvement campaign on the project and solicited more public input. That was on the technical side. Then we also had Jeffrey Parker help us develop a model for the financial project and we had to update and refine the capital costs. As I mentioned, we have a -- had Wilbur Smith help us and we had to use our experience and asset maintenance and plug goes into the financial model. And sensitivity analysis to see what areas were going to have the biggest impact. It so we would see where the biggest barrier Bulls were and what had the most impact on financing the project. One of those items that we used was to determine the contract. Paul mentioned that we had a 35 year term but we looked at different terms. Anywhere from 25 up to 75 years to see how that affected the availability payments by stretching them out either making them less or if we could spread them out over a longer period. Paul is going to go over the different payment mechanisms that were studied by DOT and some of the performance measures better in the contract. Thanks free this is -- excuse me, Joe. We want to explain some of the different types of payments and one would have been a True Toll deal with the concessionary would set the toll rate and they would make their money back. That was not a good option because only about a third of the cost is in the express lane in the other two-thirds are for the frontage Road which is State Road 84 and also the turnpike and entrance and exit ramps onto the facility. We looked at the possibility of doing a shadow toll pitch that is where they would be paid based on the volume of path traffic that used either facility. It so that was one option that we looked at. The last option was an availability payment method. Like Joe said before, for the DOT had about 50% of the funding over the long-term. This provided an option for us we thought was a pretty good option and we will use the tolls in the outer year and we kind of used a it variation of the mechanism -- a variation of the mechanisms. So we chose the 35 year concession agreement and a first five years will be the construction. Florida DOT does not make any payments to the contractor until construction is complete. That will be in five years and then they will start the repayment the availability payment method what ensues is that the facility is open to traffic. That is how you get the name for that. I will give you a simple explanation of how the availability payment works. Basically it's like building a home and after you were done building the home you pay back the contractor and your bank over a 30 year term. You make monthly payments. We have set up a map, maximum availability payment over the 35 year term. Actually 30 years just like your mortgage and we paid that monthly. The way that works is we will pay them 95% of the MAP each month and we will set aside 5% based on the availability of the facility meaning that all means are open to traffic and their deductions if it is that open to traffic -- if it is not open to traffic. The next slide it into a good bit more details. You see that there is availability. How does the road work if the lanes are closed and there is also an availability fault. What it means is if there is some O&M criteria that is not been meant basically like having one lane been closed like if it is flooded or instead response was not provided timely enough for the toll collection system is not operating. Even though it is not a true closure it is called an availability fault meeting these lanes are not available due to some maintenance deficiency. In other one of the deductions in the contract for the maximum availability payment is what we call a O&M violation, operation and maintenance violation if they are not meeting our MRP, Maintenance a reading program which have to do with signing, striping, RPMs, quality of the roadway itself so those are the basic deductions. Once-a-year through with the construction period that we are in right now. This shows the unavailability events. This is just an example and showing you if they use lane on I-595 is unavailable for two hours than the deduction would be $24,000 or basically $12,000 per hour. The same thing with the State Road 84 we have a similar system and formulas to calculate this. And then we get into the O&M violations at did something like graffiti removal there is a penalty of $10,000 a day or if the card bill fails to meet standards -- guardrail fails to meet standards so we probably have 40 or 50 of these requirements that they have to meet throughout the life of the agreement. This is how we do the quarterly adjustment. Basically we're saying P. in them a monthly payment of 95% of the MAP and then we settle at the end of each quarter based on what deductions there are. If it is the O&M violations or the availability violations. Joe is going to go over why we selected the availability payment method. Thank you, Paul predicts the availability method of -- and the availability method best Alliant DOT's objective of maximizing put in the corridor. We did not want to create disincentives for the concessionary as he was maximizing his revenues and why that might be against DOT's objectives. So it basically a lines both of our goals and objectives on the projects best of all the items that were evaluated for public perception there was going to be a tolling component and we wanted to make sure that there was public trust there and the pricing was not to maximize revenue but to maximize throughput and traffic flow. As a bat was a big -- that was a big part in keeping considerations on the project. We met with the industry and we had quite a few meetings. Everybody agreed as Paul mentioned that the project had a mix of improvements and not only improvements for the polling components, two-thirds were not for the tolling components so it seemed a better project based on the scope of the work. And also the tolling was not sufficient to finance the project at best it was probably somewhere in the nature of one-third of the cost of the project that we could generate in the early years because we did so many improvements to the other toll free lanes that the demand on the express lanes would that be great in the early years -- would not be great in the early years as. As originally conceived we have over 15 projects to deliver this corridor. We did not have all of them funded and, in fact, the past the component of this project was the express lane was the last component that had to be built because we had to create a high wave with more space in the median and you could not build the express lanes until the entire corridor was improved pins of the capacity component was the last component to be built which the main reason we needed to do this project and it was out at least ten years and unfunding. With the public-private partnership we were able to bring the entire corridor and and we had a five year implementation the projects have been let and we are scheduled to be complete with construction in 2014. It did provide is the funding that we were missing with our shortfall. That was a huge component of the private partnership. It did allow, the ways the contract was written we did allow for industry innovation and to help deliver the project and make it affordable. Part of this project we went through a risk allocation. We are just going to go through this quickly it is a simplified table to go over some of the key items and this more applies as we went to the predicament how the document was written and every project will have a different risk profile pick on this project for us DOT, the risks that we were taking on was primarily traffic and revenue, political risks in any costs associated with procurement. We pretty much shifted all of the majority of the conventional risk that you would see on the rate to their project to the Concessionaire -- are in regular project to the Concessionaire group for example permitting and utility was a major point of discussion as well as contamination we developed a way to have with deductibles to share those risks with the Concessionaire. As Paul mentioned as also stated earlier the traffic risk and all of the revenue, DOT will detain that on this project and they are a small percentage of the overall payments but in later years they will become more significant. It significantly lowered the Finance cost on the project because it lowered the risk of the Concessionaire. We did talk about a way to look at if the traffic was significantly higher in the later years than was originally complicated. It would there be a way to compensate the Concessionaire for increased pavement cost, may be additional we're on the pavement -- wear on the pavement but as we went through the process with different teams we decided it was not worth the amount of accounting and paperwork that had to be tracked. Generally all of the teams that we had talked to decide it was not a good thing for this project. So generally the funding -- Paul, do you want to go through the funding? The funding is more complicated than this but we wanted to give you a simplified version. The the Concessionaire is spending 100% of the funding and like I mentioned before the DOT does not start repayment until the construction project is complete and they got a loan from the U.S. DOT office for 603 million different banks providing loans of 781 million then the Concessionaire has $207 million of equity. This adds up to more than the $1. 2 billion a but this is a real simplified version of how we are repeating the Concessionaire. We have eight interim milestone bonuses and of the total payment, it is $50 million. Those are things that DOT wanted to make sure that we events such as some of the new breed ramps, a new direct connection between I-595 and the turnpike and some of the noise walls we wanted those to be also. The final acceptance payments those are the ones that DOT had from 2014 to 28 TB that is upfront payments made to the Concessionaire over and above the MAP. That allows them to get a lower financing because they have a lot of the money up front once the construction is finished on the project so they are able to pay down a lot of their initial debt and then we have the maximum availability payments which is the $65.9 million a year over the 30 year term and those payments will start in 2014 and go through 2034 which is the term of the agreement. We have a schedule here to let you know how long this took. We finished the PD&E in June 2006 and talked about having a P3 in 2007. We had a request for qualifications in 2007 and in 2008 we had the best value selection and award. We were able to execute this agreement in March 3rd 2009 and obviously there the number one Concessionaire in the words of the financial strength of the Concessionaire that we were able to close this deal when financial markets were collapsing are on the world. They were able to finance a $1.2 billion construction project. We started seven bands construction activities which was the sound walls in the summer of 2009 and they took over operation and maintenance July 31st, 2009. They are providing everything from mowing the grass to our road Ranger Service. They manage our Traffic Management center. They are responding to all accidents and respond on average about 1200 a month. They have done a great job with the O&M and everybody at DOT is impressed. It -- the actual response to motorists stranded in less than five minutes. Major construction we started in February 2010 and are substantial completion is 2014 and final acceptance is also in June of 2014. And that is the end of our presentation so we will turn it back over to Darren to moderate the question. Great. Thank you Perry -- very much guys. I will run through these questions in the order that we received them. The worst one was directed towards Lisa. It is their static HOV signage in the toll zones and is this in force off teak? Yes, there is static HOV signage and says the hours, so outside of those times is a toll road. Does not matter how many people you have in your vehicle, you paid the toll. Does that make sense? Yes. There was a follow-up question related to those designated lanes. It does the use of those designated lanes for HOV and EZ-Tag users does that impact the capacity in any way? We had the same concern ourselves and we waited six months between allowing the HOV people on there and then introducing the toll paying customers and we were wondering if we would have enough capacity to operate it this way because you have a HOV and toll lane during peak hours. We were concerned with the same thing knowing that we might have to change it to HOV3, increase our toll rate, introduce a second transponder and go through the registration process so that the usage could be maintained. We know that there are other options that we have thought about and we just have not been forced to implement one because traffic seems to be steady at these numbers. Also I know this sounds -- I should not say it but I am going to be we look at the traffic on the rest of our program and we have seen 2700 cars per hour in a lane, not at this facility. I know that does not follow the guidelines in the book but people seem to be able to move pretty quickly. So we are paying attention and we are not seen any accidents because of we know when you get a slight break down it does have an impact and we know that we will be forced to operate this facility differently in the future but right now we're trying to make it simple and make one change at a time. There were a couple questions about your delineators and barriers. And how has this affected the violations? How often are those delineators replaced on a monthly basis? This is the only managed lane facility in Houston so it is the only one that has this kind of barrier. And the HOV lanes to have the hard concrete barriers. We are surprised that we only replace about 150 candlesticks' a month which is about $75,000 a year. We were worried that we would have a lot more of this. Not that people do not jump in and out of those candlesticks, we'd to have officers located during peak hours at these facilities as allows people in the booths. We are not seen it as far as it been a problem and also just knowing people who drive the corridor on a daily basis unless there is an accident or something we're not seeing too much of that yet maybe that is because the freeway has been expanded after 30 years of living in congestion so maybe they have not been forced into desperate measures just yet. Here is a question for both presenters. What reimbursements to read you provide to local services in order to enforce HOV -- Do you provide a? Do you want me to go first? Sure. Are enforcement is part of the agency. Have a department within the agency that is charged with handling this. We already paid their salaries. Does that answer your question? Yes. Joe and Paul, do you have an agreement set up? The Florida Highway Patrol and forces the HOV lanes on I-595 currently and we have a separate contract to increase there there in and in our county geese spend about $400,000 a year and in Miami Dade County we spend $4,000 a year. So the enforce as part of their normal duties but then we have extra details that we put out there on that the city. We do not have an agreement set up for I-595 but I am sure that will, but before we go live with the facility. Lisa comment to you guys know or track HOV -- Do you guys know or track HOV usage and off-peak hours? No, we don't. In off-peak hours it is just a toll road. We do not have any way of tracking them. What you can kind of see when you are out there there is really not much reason to use the managed lanes and unless it is a heavy rainstorm or whatever reason someone might feel safer in does lanes we do not see much traffic in the off-peak hours. Most people do not want to pay a toll when the general purpose lanes are open. Okay. Could you elaborate on some of the issues that you encountered with the software that put a price on the DMS signs? I was afraid you were going to ask me that I do not know where to begin and I am not the right person that I can put you in contact with them he is the person from our agency who has had to deal with debts. But basically we thought you had a dummy sign and that you just type things and and it's that easy but it just was not. It is part of the software so what they're for software that we use it has to be pushed out for the software and our software, you know, it was great in instate but the signal aged now and we had a little bit of a spaghetti code: none. Has been challenging the only to get the right message to the software but also the speed and how they worked. The other DMS signs are for messaging purposes and give the General message and it's not so critical that you know at to 22:00 p.m. that you know exactly what that sign said and the rate. We underestimated how complicated it was freed if anybody has any questions or are planning on using this ID suggest that they get together with this fellow from our agency and he can tell you what we learned. There was a question for both presenters' asking to describe in more detail the public involvement efforts and for FDOT, the P3 component of the project. Joe and Paul, if you want to address that first? When we did the study in 2003 we had a huge public outreach on that. We met with pre much all of the committee's along the corridor. The facility is so much overcrowded right now most of the people that we dealt with, and they were very supportive of improvements to the facility. They understood the congestion Management and the tolling component of it. We have the Florida turnpike that has been in place since the '60s. It also prior to starting construction on this we did it the project on Interstate 95 marriage Chileans were we switched HOV it to -- where we switched HOV lanes and everyone knew there was needed improvements on the facility. Most all of the community was supported. The biggest question that we got as the most of the time is how long is it going to take, why can you started sooner? The other parts, they gave DOT clear direction that we had to preserve a corridor in 595 for future transit options predicted not want to pre click transit in the future and by that there is an ongoing east-west corridor transit study within 595. That was one component of the project from the public perspective that both the government and a lot of the feedback myself received along the way to maintain the flexibility in the future for public transit options. The biggest question that we received and we had so much support was can you do it quicker? And the communities that are directly adjacent, the biggest concern that they had was a sound barrier walls which was offered to every community that joined the 595 corridor. Is to let you know, Joe and I and our POs, we probably do a presentation at least once a week whether it be Rotary clubs, we go to different businesses and talk to them about the project and how it will implement them. We keep our website up-to-date and we have our lane closures updated daily on there and our video. We have done a tremendous amount of public outrage to keep the public informed and let them know what is going on and we have maintained support since restarted in 2003. And the last part in closing on that topic is, we have incorporated a group of elected officials and staff members from all of the different communities. 595 is bordered by the city of Plantation, Fort Lauderdale and we have a group that meets on a monthly basis. We go through the upcoming changes in traffic patterns and things that they can do to help their businesses or other companies that do work in their town to how we can mitigate some of the impacts of the traffic on the committees and that could be, for example, cut through traffic when we do certain closures and trying to mitigate those types of improvements so that is an ongoing group that meets on a monthly basis that tries to look at issues before they get out of hand. The other thing is we met with every PIO in the county and they are all directly linked in sync they get all of our lane closures and what we call our 511 system will be disseminate any kind of lean closures immediately. We're also using, we have a Twitter site the Concessionaire has their own website where they do all other solicitations and the DOT web site is hooked up to the Concessionaire's Web site so you can see it is a public-private partnership so we do share in responsibility for the public-private outreach. Lisa, anything to add on the topic of public involvement? We would have preferred to have a whole lot more public involvement but it was an election year and ours was not public/private, it is strictly public and it may have been in a little bit more people in the election year. We did not get to do as much as we wanted on the public we did what we were allowed to do which was controlled. As with our law enforcement officers be included the communications group and the development of the operations so that we could make it as simple as possible of a message for them to be able to communicate and they would tell us when that is too much information or let's do that to make it simpler we weighed heavily into what they had to offer on how to operate it. That was a big piece. But they had to say and what our law enforcement officers had to say. Okay. And we did have -- we did have a few public meetings and we did change the way that we intended to operate its based on those public meetings. The very first public meeting we went to we thought we had discovered, we thought we knew we were talking about. And wow, that was such a disastrous meeting we came back and lick our wounds and decided to do it differently. Listened to what they had to say and it helped to shape how we operated its. When it opened everybody kind of -- We did not have any complaints so we're thinking that most people understood it. I will say that Florida DOT, we did have to changed the scope of our effort because the original project when they got approval from federal highway was an elevated three lane reversible section in the middle of I-595 and we got the design concept approval in 2006. We had a committee along the corridor that started a grass-roots effort to get that feeling elevated reversible section brought down to grade. We worked with them and worked with the Metropolitan Planning Organization and the local elected officials and their municipalities to overtime, probably about a one year period to give the Wheat the project can be brought those three lanes down back to grade. That was our biggest change to the project. Federal highway worked with us and allow us to do that under re-evaluation. Lisa, just to clarify one point did Howard vehicle occupants to verify? By visual inspection -- how are vehicle occupants the verified? Simply HOV observation. They give in the left lane and we have people looking to check occupancy. That is all we have for now. We might move towards a registration process if the occupancy continues to grow. The right now out the HOV people have been writing those planes for 20 years and we did not ask them to do anything differently, this drive in the left lane and and the future if we cannot manage the demand, we might opt for HOV3 hours or have been the HOV writers register or have a separate tool. Maybe in a if you use somebody will find something but right now is in the visual appeal and a -- it is simply visual. But the officers tell us is they say they think we have 75% HOV compliant. All right. FDOT unfortunately I could not hear the video -- the deal might have answered the question and I did not know how you guys are collecting tolls bid had been challenged on the notion that you need to use a transponder to be legal on the road during the HOV period? Right now Florida DOT and Florida turnpike we do have a transponder. When this facility opens in 2014 we would expect that system to be in place. Lisa, do you guys have any plans or do you have the functionality to eventually go to in an image based tolling? We are not considering it at this point. Okay. For Florida, a questioner states that he appreciates the repair of the penalty and deductions that you have in your Concessionaire contract and how they measure up to other standards and do you hold yourself to some of the same standards? Florida DOT has a pretty extensive track record in using a private entities for our maintenance. We have an asset maintenance program and privatize much of our maintenance operation so we have established standards for almost every Standardbred that was our basis for establishing the criteria and the contract before -- for the pavement, paint, signage. We basically have taken for the's standards of maintenance assets program and placed it into this contract to. But we had to deride a mechanism for what the consequences would be for not meeting that to be that was a cold machine developed in the contract for planes and deductions in the payments and had to be based on what the impact of the public. It was not intended to be a penalty paid more like they had to earn the money they were getting every month and by them that doing certain things they would not get their full payment. It matched up pretty well to the department's standards but we're finding out that they are exceeding the performance criteria that was established so we're pretty happy with the way that things are progressing. We had a comment that stated the primary reason for the P3 approach on the project would be a shortfall for the overall I-595 project. 30 to 35 years seems to be a short-term. Do you think this would be counter cost-effective pour FDOT? Is that due to the smaller scope of the project? We evaluated all the for concession terms of four when we looked at -- four when it looked at the financial model in sensitivity analysis. We also did extensive interviews with the industries as part of the picture and and had one-on-one meeting speed and also from the Bank's perspective. We thought for this project the term that was selected gave the Concessionaire the opportunity for innovation and looking at long-term solutions for the corridor over a 35 year period. That is long-term even though many of our structures are designed over 75 to 100 years. Generally the 35 year term gave enough land in the contract and some people disappointed a design bill to finance with a straight payback. I think for this project the term basically pits with the department -- fits with what the department could afford and bring private industry to bring the project more palatable for DOT. I think one thing that we had seen comity with other projects and other states that have not gone well was the law of return you make the agreement the more it seems a cue are selling -- it seems like you are selling the assets and we wanted to keep the term shorter more so than rereleasing the facility or selling the facility. For Lisa, did you have to counteract any public resistance to changing what was previously a "free HOV lane"? Was that a significant point of public protest? It was not because the original lead the HOV users had to be HOV3 during one hour. They only had one lane and did not have as many access points so we increased their service. They planned from having one reversible lane with Alex many access point and having to be HOV3 compliant to being HOV during both morning and evening peaks in two lanes they did not have to do anything differently and could use that road more than they would have used it before and we did not take anything away from them. So they came out with more service instead of less. Okay. For FDOT, a couple of questions about the assignment. The availability payments. Does any part of that future payments have to be placed in escrow? No, the Florida DOT, we have a transportation trust fund and there was legislation put in place to about was to do public-private partnership and a certain percentage can be assigned to public-private partnership. Basically our trust fund and work program those payments would come out the top. That is the the blood -- the simplified term. I think you might have partially addressed this in the presentation but how did you go about putting evaluations on the identified risks in the assignment process? Well, we conducted -- for example, when we looked at contamination. We had done a preliminary screening on the corridor and be right back and did another level and looked at the worst-case scenario printed that having all of the design complete and not knowing how they would design their drainage or some other components we assigned a rough value to what the contamination would be if they had to clean up all of the areas and that is what they used. And the way that the contamination is setup the Concessionaire is responsible for the first Henley and dollars in decontamination project that we share the next $50 million in cost and after that DOT assumes all of the risk and that is based on some analysis DOT did prior to the procurement. The other risks sharing items were not all financial. For example, utility the risk sharing is done if they have the utility agreement to relocate lines and the utility owner -- and they both signed that agreement, both parties and the utility owner does not perform up to the requirements in their agreement then we give relief to the contractor in the warmth of days they are impacted -- in the form of days they are impacted if they could prove it was a critical path they could receive the eligible the payments to much sooner than they would have that model Curtiss. So those are the types of shared risks that we have had paid the same goes for major permits. The permit agency was being arbitrary and not cooperating and time frames established in the contract there were similar reliefs in the contract for permitting. Okay. We are running a bit short on time so I am just going to ask FDOT one last question. A lot of questions about HOV today. There was a question on who is responsible for on going HOV Marketing and specifically the I-595 corridor. We have a contract that does the latter part reached for DOT on time of day use, setting up carpools, van pools and a to our registration for I-595 express. We use them in God and boast of our events that we go to war and the are reach that we go to we have them come with us and date -- we use them and any of our events that we go to it, we have them come with us and try to work with them on encouraging HOV use and also work with the county transit a lot. Ultimately we would like to have some transit facility on 595. As part of the agreement we will be purchasing express buss to provide some alternative to the Interstate like in parallel corridors. All right. Thank you very much. With that, I think we will wrap things up and I will turn it back to Jocelyn Bauer to provide some clues the notes. Thanks, Darren. I am going to give you all some information on the National Transportation operation coalition and you will see the member organizations of NTOC and we encourage you to go to D NTOC website -- to the NTOC but said that contains information of upcoming Web casts and we will have a slice of today's presentation and the recording and NTOC also has to discussion forums. One focusing on high level issues in the other focusing on ITS deployment and lessons learned. You can also sign up for the NTOC newsletter that is mailed out twice monthly that gives announcements of the upcoming web casts. Darren, would you like to close us out? Sure, thank you very much. Thank you most about two or three presenters, Lisa Castaneda, Mr. Paul Lampley, and Mr. Joe Borello. Thank you to everyone who tune in and listen to and in early August we will be having another webinar with regards to our continuing series of looking at pricing projects. Until next time thank you very much, and have a great rest of the day. (end)