Hello and welcome to the Talking Operations web conference on Managing Travel Demand to Mitigate Congestion: Part II – Operational and Infrastructure Strategies to Manage Demand. My name is Jennifer Symoun and I will be giving a brief introduction to the web conferencing environment before turning the session over to Deepak Gopalakrishna who we are very pleased to have as our moderator for today’s seminar. Please be advised that today’s seminar is being recorded. Today's seminar will last approximately an hour-and-a-half with 60 minutes for presenters and the final 30 minutes for questions and answers. During the presentation if you think of a question you can type it into the smaller text box in the chat area on the lower left side of your screen. Indicate who your question is directed towards unless it is for all presenters, and please make sure you're typing in the thin text box and not the large white area. Please make sure you send your question to everyone rather than the presenters. The presenters will an unable to answer questions during the presentation but dei Pataki will use some of the questions typed into the chat box in the last 30 minutes of the seminar. There will be a few times where the presenters may ask questions of the audience. Tilt please type your answer into the chat pod and send to everyone. We will also be doing a few polls, and we'll be asking you to in-put your answers into the polling box. A file will be posted to the national transportation coalition website within the next week. I will type the address into the chute box shortly. We encourage to you direct others in the office who may not have been able to attend the conference to access the recording. The PowerPoint presentations for today as well as the presentation from part 1 are available for dop load in the file download box in the lower left-hand corner of your screen and there are directions above the box on how to download the presentation. A list of useful web links is also available for download. The power point will be available in the next week on the website. At this time I would like to introduce Deepak, the moderator of today's webcast. Deepak is a research scientist at Battelle. He is a deputy program manager for technical support and assistance under contract to the federal highway administration office of operations. He was one of the key contributors to the managing demands to managing services publication which provided some of the content for the seminar series. He is also part of the national evaluation team for the urban partnership demonstration. Now I will turn things over to Deepak to start things off for today. Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you for hosting this webinar series. Thank you all for participating in this webinar. This is the second webinar we're doing in a series called managing freight demand to mitigate congestion, new perspective and innovative strategies and integrated approaches. The webinar series is primarily an attempt to disseminate some of the results from a scanning tour by the highway international scanning program. The scan was conducted in the summer of '05 and the webinar series is from one of the recommendations to provide some outreach on some of the lessons learned, some of the strategies that were found in Europe, and this is our attempt to bring the strategies back here. The road map for this series, before we go into the road map, if Jennifer, can you bring up a poll today just to find out if the participants today attended the first part of the webinar series. Sure. I am bringing them up now and also the part about what organization everybody works for. We had some really good mix of participants last time and the questions in the first webinar series I think was comment. They raised a lot of good points. I hope it was a growing experience to everybody on the call. Just going to giver a minute or so for the answers to come in, and then . Just a couple housekeeping notes. Please type your questions in the chat box, maybe all questions will be answered at about 30 minutes at the end of the two presentations we will reserve for question and answer session. We're able to go through all the question that is came up, but strongly encourage to you keep typing as you hear the presentations. I see right now there is about at least 30% of you haven't attended the first part of the webinar series, so I will quickly go through my introduction and the rest of you can tell me if my introduction skills have improved or not. Move ago long to the road map of the series, as I said, this is the second part of we are actually going to be doing the operational and infrastructure strategies today, the first part on June 19th for executional strategy. On July 10th we'll have a session where we try to bring all of these strategies together. One of the key messages we learned from Europe was how demand management is integrated into planning and operations and is part of their planning structure, so that's going to be a very interesting webinar and I strongly encourage to you participate in it to see how all the pieces that we talked about on June 19th fit in. Again, this is an attempt to disseminate results of the scanning study. We had the scanning study in the summer of 2005 sponsored by federal highways and ( indiscernible ). We had state DOT representatives, federal highways, we had a metropolitan transportation commission from Oakland, and the scan team was to ( indiscernible ), Stockholm, Sweden, and Netherlands and London, and there is report available on this program describes the findings and the scan summary, but this is a webinar series about that. A couple of quick introductory remarks before I hand over the floor to Grant and Eric. The need for managing nabbed is fairly obvious to all of you. In a nutshell the growth and demand is far outpacing our ability to accommodate it through increasing supply. The VMTs are growing up, the number of lane miles available is growing and also at a much smaller rate, so managing travel demand is taking on new significance especially given the cost of congestion. Every year the costs keep going up, and the cost in bays of time, fuel, congestion costs in urban areas are increasing and not only in urban areas but also in smaller and smaller and mid-sized cities, so in this context what does managing travel demand mean? For us the definition that we really hammer on the point is managing travel demand very simply is about providing choices and providing choices for regardless of whether they drive alone, work, location, route, time of travel, mood, mode, it is not just about commuters and more about traffic demand and in the broadest sense it is about providing travelers with effective choices they make to improve the trip reliability. This is the fundamental definition of travel demand that the scanned results can fit under. One of the other interesting things from Europe that came out is the travel markets and applications for demand management as we know it have been broadened. They're no longer just associated with purely work hitch based trips like employee, trip reduction, et cetera, but moving more towards school, leisure trips and shopping. The markets are expanding, but also the application settings. It is no longer purely employer level but also at schools, special event venues, during incidents and emergencies, recreation, airports, corridors, subareas, so one of the findings was the markets and the application settings evolved and broadened a significantly. How do we bring it altogether? One thing that the Dutch have as a way to express the notion of traffic versus travel demand management we adapted that for our report and also for this webinar is the notion that demand on the left-hand side, the transportation demand can affect destination choice and once you make that choice there is traffic demand where you can Mike route and time decisions and actual network demand, what could go down as lane choice, and so for all of these different types of demand you can have strategies that impact that. Some of these strategies would fall under what's considered traffic management, some fall under demand management, and some of them could be a combination. As an example of a purely traffic management strategy could be let's say lane and speed control systems, and an example of purely demand management strategy could be pricing or pre trip information systems. Traffic incident management is a mix of both. This is the framework that our different aspects of demand that we can manage and different strategies we can use to manage for different aspects of traffic demand, so with that some high level lessons learned from Europe, we will be ( indiscernible ) them the lessons learned as part of each module we go through. I don't want to spend too much time on this, but some of the highlights are transportation management thinking is evolving in Europe, and they distinguish nabbed management from traffic management. One of the other key findings as I said is integrated into planning products and operations, demand management as a con September, and one last note, there is a lot of experience in the U.S. even from ( indiscernible ) in managing demand but not as good at integrating and planning and management and operations, and as we go through the modules, you will see some of the ways Europeans addressed that issue. Our first speaker today will be talking about operational strategies for influencing demand. We have Grant Zammit from the federal highway resource center in Atlanta, Georgia. He is the traffic management and systems operation specialist in the operational technical service team lead in access management, performance measures and data quality. He was part of the scan team to Europe, and before joining the resource center in 2000 Grant Zammit was in the federal highway division in California, Florida, Kansas and Kentucky. Grant, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Deepak, and thank you everyone for your time this morning or this afternoon depending on what time zone you're in. As Deepak mentioned we're sharing with you some of the lessons learned and observations from a scan that a number of rural, federal highway, and metropolitan planning organization participants took part in back in 2005. What we're going to be talking about, Eric, and myself this afternoon, is operational and infrastructure strategies and it tends to be a little difficult to deMarch indicate the difference between infrastructure and operations because necessity really go hand-in-hand, but we've broken them down just to organize the presentation itself, and every organization obviously deals with what we're going to talk about perhaps in a different way. We did want to highlight that, and historically we probably think of travel nabbed management or managing travel demand in the realm of the more traditional tell lee working, car pooling, ride sharing activities, working with employers and so on. Question that we would like to pose and if you wouldn't mind putting in the chat area a response if you have one is how do you think operational and infrastructure strategies actually can influence demand or manage demand, if you wouldn't mind taking a moment, we would love to hear from you. Very good. One response about controlling access onto the facility, that's very good. Building infrastructure or not, build it and they will come. Pricing. Excellent. Okay. That's good. That at least gives some ideas that you might have or how you see it coming together, and as I see there is another response coming in now, but one of the things we took away from our scan was that there is a lot of little things that we're doing as transportation service providers, whether we're in the federal government but more so at the state level and at the local level and providing services to the traveler, to the public, and it is really the integration of all of these little things that really make managing of congestion possible. So the Europeans, they really focus on that integration, and we'll be talking about that on July 10th in more detail, but we'll start with the operational infrastructure component from our scan now. A lot of good feedback. I appreciate that. What we're going to talk about are two areas in the operations component in particular. One is active traffic management, and another is in the realm of travel or information. This photograph on your right is actually from the Netherlands where they implemented active traffic management along several corridors throughout their country to together manage traffic but also helps them manage demand, at least from their perspective of how they deal with their motorists. We'll also talk a little about traveler information and how that has an ability to influence the demand. A year after the scan trip that Eric and I participated on managing demand occurred there was another scan trip that focused on active traffic management, so we're going to introduce a definition that that scan team brought back to the United States, but in essence their definition focuses on the idea of fully optimizing the existing infrastructure that we've provided that provides benefits, not just on a corridor but throughout the network, so that's a definition if you are looking for one. Based upon both our tour as well as the tour in 2006, we were gaining appreciation of some of the benefits, the operational benefits, the tangible benefits that our European hosts are observing by implements one or multiple strategies that we'll be talking about today from a perspective of throughput they realized an increase of throughput ranging in the 3 to 7% range and overall capacity improvement of 3 to 22% by implementing some of the strategies we'll talk about this afternoon. Decreasing incidents which if sift is a concern in your region and I am certain that it is, they actually had some quite interesting results at various European countries as well as secondary incidents as well. The idea of overall Harmon eyeing the speeds during congestion periods is really their mode of operations and that's where the active or proactive aspects come into play. Decreasing the head ways between drivers so there is a more uniform flow, the type of turbulence that's out there on the roadway is seeking to be manage and had reduce preferably and overall increase the time of re liability, the, and if nothing else try to delay the on set of a freeway breakdown or the break down even on arterial, even if it is just a delay for half an hour or even an hour. Those are perceived to be benefits that the Europeans are observing. Here is just a table that gives you an appreciation of the different types of strategies that were observed, and those are represented here on the column on your left, and across the matrix we have the potential benefits of what could be realized based upon our European feedback and input that we gained from the trip, and to really start to get an appreciation of, well, how much really will we gain domestically or how much specifically did the Europeans gain based upon their experiences. Federal highway we're in the process of putting together a toolbox that essentially we're going back to our host to ask for additional information more specifics how they went about quantifying their benefits so that we could further understand what it really takes or what it took them to realize the benefits I just showed you. Getting to a specific example, speed harmonization was a technique we observed, and in this application the operating agency is seeking to slow down traffic before a Q actually begins, before the congestion actually is observed out there on the roadway, and the result is that extends the time of efficient travel along the corridor for the users. Hopefully and several of our hosts did say that they're able to actually delay the breakdown point, so rather than bumper to bumper traffic happening let's say at 7:15 in the morning, they're able to delay it until 7:45 or 8:00, so that's 45 more minutes that have higher throughputs and not that bumper to bumper traffic that you might observe. Also using this type of technique through work zones which helps them increase the safety obviously of the personnel out there doing the work. Another example is a Q warning system where they inform the motorists of slower speeds ahead applying similar technologies that you just showed and you actually trying to advise the motorist says in advance of the Qs that might be out there on the roadway and that's has the potential to reduce crashes due to people coming up in the back at a high rate of speed and all of a sudden is having to decelerate at an undesirable rate, and they integrate that into the overall system of that over head system utilizing sim symbols that have been adopted by their organizations to represent work zones and congestion ahead. Here is a schematic present to us in Germany where they have a series of gantries that have signs that represent the posted speeds, and you can see that the speeds are being reduced from 120-kilometers an hour down to 60-kilometers an hour to the actual location where the event is in question and in this case it is associated with congestion and not necessarily an incident or work zone, but then after they pass that location they begin to increase the speed once again. They also shared with us during our scan how they use the same infrastructure or signing configuration to actually close down lanes in the event of incidents, either to channel traffic around an incident or a work zone but also to utilize a lane to allow incident response personnel, emergency response personnel to get to the scene by providing them an open lane.Another example we observed was a term or technique called dynamic merge control, and this is different than rent metering which is utilized here in the United States, but what they're doing is really trying to provide the optimal combination of lanes at a merge of a system or a service interchange so that there is a higher throughput did he parting the merge area, so in this particular case they may actually have two-lanes entering a freeway as depicted here on the lower right of the photograph, and actually close a lane on the main line of the freeway, and that is based upon their understanding of what type of demands there are and what type of throughput will be Optimized based upon the possible dynamics of that Gore area. Automated speed enforcement was another technique we observed during our scan. Here they're actually using photo enforcement to supplement and take a strong role in managing the speed limits through the corridors. We asked them a little bit about how that has worked from an institutional standpoint. They obviously have a slightly different judicial system and political environment to utilize that technology and those techniques, but a couple of our hosts conveyed to us they were actually realizing they were migrating from an enforcement role to really more of a compliance role where the motorists are understanding that there are benefits to this active traffic management application, the holistic approach, and by having people abide by the speeds that they're actually getting through the corridors quicker and actually able to serve a higher number of people on a per hour basis. The Dutch actually shared with us some information about some of some other benefits beyond just operations in that they were realizing a reduction in emissions and the crashes were actually cut in half on route A-13 in the Netherlands which was quite an interesting connection between operations and other things that are of interest to agencies that provide transportation services. Putting it altogether. When we were meeting with the United Kingdom they really brought all of the strategies, the concepts, the ideas that we domestically talk about and the intelligent transportation system realm in a way that really tries to optimized or actively manage the corridor and to manage the demand that is being placed on that corridor by using hardened shoulders which Eric will talk about here shortly, breakdown areas when I will show in a moment, travel error driver information panels, whether they are fixed signs as depicted here on the right or dynamic signs as depicted here. They utilize speed and control that I just shared with you, photo enforcement as well as closed circumstance it'd television to -- closed circuit television to monitor different aspects of the corridor. Here is a graphic actually from the highways agency in the United Kingdom, and you can see all the different types of technology in this quarter they're utilizing, and in our download page with all of our links, we've actually got a link to the highway agency where you can learn a great deal more about this corridor. They even have a video that talks about this in detail and walks you through the corridor if you're interested in more specifics, and I think around the country and the United States here we're using several of these technologies, and they've integrated it in a manner that they're realizing some great benefits and they're now looking to expand similar systems throughout the United Kingdom. One thing of interest or one aspect of interest are these emergency pullout areas that they utilize. As I mentioned, Eric will talk about the use of hardened shoulders, and this lane right here I am depicting with the green arrow is a hardened shoulder that is not in service 24 hours a day. They actually use that hardened shoulder in a dynamic way based upon the nantz based on the corridor to address some of the safety concerns they have they've actually gone through a risk analysis and identified the design that they need to support their needs in the United Kingdom as well as the spacing and all the aspects of the other infrastructure like the location of the telephone to the for the motorists to use. To combine with all of these activities is traveler information. We talked a lot about active traffic management. We're actually out there utilizing technology and in some cases infrastructure to manage the demand. The idea of using traveler information to manage demand is another technique which the Europeans shared with us, and they utilize it throughout the trip or travel decision process that a consumer might use, whether it is pre-trip, being several days or several weeks prior to their departure, near trip which might be within the hour or within a half-hour of their trip or even five minutes before they leave and on-trip traveler information and how at each phase they're using that information to influence the demand of the traveler, the choices as Deepak shared with us that a traveler has the ability to make. We'll again talk a little about the completion and the coordination, but really it is focused on integration which we'll talk about in greater depth on the 10th of July. Here domestically we're implementing traveler information through 511 which you may be aware of and using quite heavily now, but it is also multi-modal that we observe in Europe. This photographic is actually depicting here with the green arrow is from Germany where they actually are providing information about the various buses coming and going from a transit point, and here is the traffic management center that's managing and coordinating all of the activities that are going on in the transportation system enabling them to make the traveler information more timely and actually representative of what's going on and not just based upon a prescheduled predictions. Traveler information standpoint we're providing you a link for report and the report cover is provided on this slide. That talks about how traveler information can influence change in routes, changes in modes, changes in departure times and changes in destinations as from a consumer's perspective how information influences or has the potential to influence their choices which in turn does influence the demand placed on the system. An example of how traveler information is influencing demand in Europe is here and from KALONE, Germany, and the photograph on the top is of a parking management system where they're guiding the motorists to zone says where it is known that there are parking spaces available, and on the bottom is actually a photograph of a traveler information sign providing information to the motorists on an arterial system. The interesting aspect about this and this photograph was taken on a Sunday, so please understand why there is not a time placed there for the car travel, but what this sign tells the motorist is that the travel time to the marketplace or to the downtown area by a car is so many minutes in duration. Then they provide the information to the motorist on what the travel time to that same location is by a trolley or by train. The third line tells the motorist what time the next train is coming. So in two minutes there is going to be a trolley coming, and it will take them 16 minutes to take the trolley from the park and ride station to the market, so depending on the travel time by car, the motorist is actually able to make an in route decision to change their mode. That's one example of how they're actively managing the traffic and they're also trying to influence the demand and provide choices to the travelers. Another area where we gained some insights from the European practice is providing door-to-door public transit information to the consumer so that they can actually put their origin and their destination and they're providing with the routes and the paths and the connections they need to make in order to actually get from one location to the other, and it is very customized and tailored to the individual and want just based upon the schematics, and in an integrated manner. In the Netherlands we talked with them a little bit how they use traveler information to influence demand, and they actually have implemented a policy where they are more of a data supplier, and they primarily provide data to third parties, the private sector, to the media, and rely on them to provide the information to enhance it to make it better for the use of the consumer, and that might be through cell phones, through kiosks, through websites and so on. They actually have a hierarchy approach by having this policy in place where in the event that there is road work or construction or if there is an incident or if there is an event that really requires the operating agency, the Dutch government to take over control of the facility, they have a hierarchy, and that's reflected in situations 1 through 4, so as the urgency increases, the evidently -- level of control could migrate where through a partnership with the private sector the operating agency is pushing information to the consumer to the public to the traveler with very target the messages about what's going on out there and possibly even diverting people by the messages that they send out. Travel time predictions is another discussion item we talked with in depth with the Dutch where they were actually using archived data to look to see how they could use that information to predict travel times based upon the day of the week and the time of departure so that it might by providing information -- the question was can we provide information to people to know if they need to be at a destination at a certain time and day what time do they actually need to leave the origin? Perhaps then we can help them not have to did he part so early or give them a warning they might want to leave a little earlier because to get to their location during at that specific time the travel time is actually much higher than when they may be traditionally go to that des destination. Again provides them a little more information to from influence their choice. The German government, they demonstrated example where is they use a similar system. They really do is based upon a predictions of what's happened in the next 30 minutes or what could happen based on their statistics and are not relying so much on historic archived date A there is many models out there of how you use the data to push out information, but we did observe a couple while we were over there, and obviously some of you may be directly involved in some explorations here domestically on a similar activity. Just some of the trends that the Dutch shared with us as far as their thinking, it is evolving, and that was one of the key lessons learned that Deepak shared with you, but they really are migrating from a providing information to collective to a group of people to really providing the information to individuals, and in that light rather than just broadcasting information out, they really are trying to make it more interactive, so in that sense it is really not static information any more, it is dynamic where it is really reflective of the existing conditions and trying to provide good realtime information again depending on your definition of realtime, but they're also migrating and working with the private sector to provide in vehicle and mobile information through cell phones, PDAs, and so on, and that's where those public/private partnerships are really focusing in on. They're integrating their information so that they their consumers are not going to go to multiple websites or multiple sources to get information as I shared with you earlier, and they're really focused on mobility management is one of the take-aways that we observed, and they're I think so learning a lot from us domestically and how we are sharing information with an estate and within a region so perhaps they're even learning something for us and actually I am certain they are, so with that I will turn it back to Deepak and then he will introduce Eric, and then we can continue and he see there is a lot of questions going, so I will take a look at those when we open it up to questions I will look forward to getting back with you. Thank you, Grant. As you see there is some really interesting questions out there. We have about 10 questions already, and we'll address as many as we can. The next speaker we have is Eric Schreffler, an independent transportation consultant from San Diego, California. Eric specializes in planning andy value with citing transportation demand measures to reduce traffic and improve air quality. Eric performed work in Europe and the U.S. He ( indiscernible ) the policy section and serves on the association for commuter transit TDM institute board to advisory board of the National Center for transit research and ( indiscernible ) of ITE planning council. Eric was also on the scan tour and one of the report coordinators for this effort. Eric is going to talk with infrastructure strategies to influence demand. Eric, the floor is all yours. Thank you very much and thanks to all of you for spending time with us today. Grant has given you some good information about operational strategies and how the demand perspective if you will can can be integrated with those, how operational strategies can actually influence demand and actually for example and that example from KALONE how a mode shift could occur for a person already in this their car and if there is enough of a backup on that road they have openings to see realtime information to make a mode shift, so operational strategies to influence demand but you may think on the infrastructure side how does infrastructure influence demand, isn't it the supply side of the equation? Yes, it is, but of course what we're really going to be talking about is strategic physical improvements to support travel choices, so today we're going to talk a little bit about access controls, limiting the ability of cars to enter certain zones in the city. We talked about pricing last week as one-way to manage access into city centers. You can also just restrict cars, and we'll talk about an example from Rome about that. There is also special facilities. Of course here in the United States HOV lanes are a primary strategic facility to help for car pool, van pool and transit use. Very little uses of HLV lanes in Europe. Some growing use in the United Kingdom, much more use of special lanes such as bus only or truck only lanes, and we'll talk a little bit more about other kinds of special lanes plus lanes and rush hour lanes, and finally we'll talk about strategic improvement to say transit facilities as well, so these are some of the physical improvements to strategically support travel choices. I mentioned automobile access. We have examples here in the U.S. of like the downtown crossing and Boston where automobile access has been restricted and some access is allowed for buses, so access controls even on a weekend there is places around the U.S. where streets are closed off on the weekend. I just learned that New York is about to have an initiative where they close off up to 100-miles of New York streets to allow for bicycle and walking on the weekends, so access control is not unknown, but to control access for an entire downtown seven days a week or at least during the week is less common, so one of the reasons we went to Rome, we started our scanning trip in Rome is look at the access control in Rome. They put a cordon around the historic core of roam. It is a pretty small area, five square kilometers, but they did it for historical preservation reasons. The ancient buildings were literally deteriorating, falling apart, a lot from smog and from toxic chemicals coming out of cars, so they decided to cordon off the area and now in order for a nonresident to have access to get into central roam you have to pay about $500 a year to get a permit, and you have to prove that you have an off-street dedicated parking space available to you, that you will not be parking on street. They also at the same time that they cordoned off and stopped allowing access into the historic core they made a lot of improvements on new tram lines, they built new tram lines into the center, and they really not up the suburban park and ride commuter rail system to provide for more options. The impact of the combination much restricting cars and of this $500 a year permit meant the traffic volumes are down by 15 to 20% going into this central zone, speeds within the zone are up, public transit use is also increased, but there was one slighted impact that they didn't anticipate because they asked them about air quality, and they said they haven't been able to show an improvement in air quality and part of the reason they think is that people have shifted from automobiles to the use of Moe PED. S and motorcycles and many are engine that is are more highly polluting, so so they're looking at ploying permits for motorcycles, MOPEDs and scooters and looking to close that link as well, so that's the story of Rome. Park and ride is also something very familiar to us in the U.S. There can be park and ride at specific rail stations, bus rapid transit often includes parking. The one being built in my neighborhood in San Diego will include parking, but park and ride also can be focused on car pools and van pools and even short-term park and ride for a specific special event, special park and ride lots for some sort of large sporting event that doesn't happen on an ongoing basis. We found a study that the U.K. had done. U.K. has a lot of park and ride fa facilities, mainly around transit and bus, and they evaluated in about ten years ago they did an evaluation of park and ride around eight city that is historically have had stroke park and ride systems. Clearly the systems reduced VMT and traffic to and in the downtown area, but they did see that it increased traffic around the park and ride stations, no surprise there, and they found that the park and ride systems were most effective when they also had a strategy that limited long-term parking in the downtown area, so when they restricted downtown working and put suburban park and raid, park and rail in, that was the most effective combination of park and ride, another strategic facility to influence demand. Now, parking management is something we can spend easily a whole module or a whole day webinar on, and there is lots of great information about parking management, but using parking to influence demand is something we're learning more and more about. We can influence the amount of the supply of parking. We can actually reduce the amount of parking so that parking becomes tight and people are more likely to use transit, bike or walk. We can provide preferential parking for car pools and van pools and make the walk time for raid shares shorter. There is also a lot of parking information, giving people better information, realtime information about where parking is available, easier off street. Some of you may have started to see parking guidance systems where you go into a parking lot and if actually shows you by parking space with green or red arrows which parking space is open. That can be provided to people even in advance of when they leave the house so if you know that realtime parking is going to be tight when you get to the building or the area you're going to, you could actually decide to make a mode shift as well and clearly parking pricing is becoming a more and more interesting issue where varying the parking price by time of day can influence mode choice as well, but clearly any parking management system needs to really be part of a comprehensive plan that not only looks at reducing the availability of parking but make sure that there is sufficient alternatives in place to folks that won't be able to park. Having gone to places like the Netherlands and in this case also Sweden, the use of a bicycle is clearly has a higher priority probably, the amount of land and space given to the bicycle has a higher priority. I think we're seeing that in the U.S., but we saw some really interesting things in this case in Sweden. In the pictures you will see here, there is a woman riding a bike in an underpass, so this is a dedicated bicycle facility that goes under a key arterial, and there is actually a traffic circle up there, so it is to route bicycles under and around a major traffic circle. Providing secure storage for bicycles at the destination end, in this case the two other pictures you see are at the main train station in Lund, Sweden, and if you join us for the next webinar on July 10th you will hear more about the story of Lund, but in this case you have facilities put in place for example on the right-hand side some of you may have seen the bike rail that is allow people to take bikes up and down. In this case it is the pedestrian overpass over the train tracks themselves, people with bicycles can use the stairs a little bit easier, and in the case of bicycle storage, two-story parking here where people can easily get bikes in and out and of course at most European train stations you can very cheaply rent bicycles for the day so that you've got an option at that end, and really the more we look into bicycle and pedestrian improvements, even facility improvements, they're very cost effective in reducing trips, VMT, emissions and manager. They may not reduce a large number of trips, but they do so at a very cost effective way. Another facility that is growing in popularity here in the union that has routes in Europe is car sharing. It is interesting that I updated this for the NTOC webinar and the information we have from 2004 shows much smaller numbers. Researchers at University of California do an annual survey of city that is have car sharing in the U.S. We're up to 18 cities with over 200,000 members, almost 3,000 vehicles, and doing car sharing. Again, historically the car sharing started in places like Switzerland in Germany. The example you see over here is actually from Belgium, and the way that car sharing works is you become a member, you get a card, and that card allows you access to get into the vehicle. You swipe the card across the top picture or the sticker that's in the window, and the keys are in the glove compartment and allow to you use the car. You pay on an hourly or mileage basis, and you only use the car when you need it. One evaluation of the Swiss ride sharing program showed interesting things. There was a net reduction in use per member, so by not having the car available all the time people clearly traveled less. 22% said they would have had to buy a care if car sharing was not available and they would have driven 26% more. Car share vehicles use less gas because they tend to be used in less congested periods. People are very smart about when they use it, so some Swiss evaluation, there was any value evaluation done so the Swiss government could see if they wanted to continue to put money into car sharing growth, and the evaluations have been quite positive. In terms of existing lanes, this is something Grant talked about a little bit in the English example. We're going to talk about a couple of examples from the Netherlands. I want to give you a little context on this as well because in the Netherlands while the Dutch have done a lot in demand management, many of you in the states have known that the Dutch have been coming and exploring and going to conferences for many years. The Dutch have done a lot with traditional TDM, but traffic was getting so bad and the train system was over capacity that they decided they needed to do something quickly so they introduced two types of new lanes both of which mean adding lanes to existing facilities, and one-way they've done it is what they call the rush hour lane which is the use of the hard shoulder during rush hours, so the hard shoulder running even running through interchange, operating only during the peak hour, only when the capacity is needed and the lanes are open as you can see in this picture there are arrows above each lane, so only when the lane is needed for traffic reasons do they put the green arrow and open the lane. At the same time they lower speeds on all three lanes so that because the lanes are narrower and as you have people merging in and out of the hard shoulder to get off the highway, they lower speeds and one of the things they were most concerned about that we are here in the states about using the hard shoulder is really the safety implications, and they have had no measurable increase in accidents as a result of introducing these rush hour lanes. The second kind of lane is called a plus lane. The plus lane is what they do in this case is they simply add a narrower lane to the facility. They narrow all the lanes so they're able to add another lane. In this case on the in the number one or in the fast lane they add a lane that again is only operational during peak periods, again they lower speeds, down to 70-kilometers an hour, and again they've had no measurable increase in accidents, and in the next slide we're going to show you physically how that looks, so what they've done is they still have a shoulder shoulder, and they still have one lane for them the average width of almost 11 feet so trucks can still use it, but the two-lanes, the number one and number two-lane are considerably narrower, and a little over eight feet and a little over nine feet so there still is the option for larger vehicle to say use the number three lane, but they narrow the lanes, open the narrowest lane during congested periods and lower the speeds from 100-kilometers an hour to 70-kilometers an hour, so those are ways the Dutch are more efficiently using the existing facilities by adding lanes just during peak periods. There actually was an example of this in L.A. that was implemented recently after a fire in one of the tunnels on I-5 they actually put narrow lanes in and reduced speeds. So one of the final things about existing lanes if you go to the next slide, Deepak, was they're actually looking at dynamic striping where rather than having to show the over head gantries and opening and closing lanes with arrows, they actually are looking into way to say do dynamic striping with the kind of things used at airports with airport runway lights. On the left you see the test center that we visited. On the right is the actual operational view, in this case from Germany, of where during uncongested periods there would be two lanes and during congested periods you could actually show three narrower lanes, so the Germans and Dutch are experimenting with this so-called dynamic striping just to get more capacity, more efficient flow through the facility. Finally on new public transportation improvement, suburban park and ride is something being done more and more in Europe, in the case of Sweden you heard last week those of you on the webinar about the Swedes doing congestion pricing in the center of Stockholm, but before they implemented pricing three months ahead of time, they put sixteen new express bus lines from suburban park and ride stations into central Stockholm, one seat service, you didn't have to change trains of trains using clean buss and improved bus priority system, so Stockholm as Rome has put a significant investment into suburban park and ride services as well. Finally, bus rapid transit is something that the Europeans like the rest of the world is becoming more and more interested in. It is not as expensive as rail. It can provide high quality faster service because it uses a dedicated lane. It can proceed molt transit oriented development around the stations, and the example that we really were able to visit and travel upon was again in Lund, Sweden, where there is a BRT system that links the rail station to the University, to the University hospital, to a major high tech facility, and indeed the BRT now goes out to what are called corn fields, and they're stations in the corn fields, and that's because the city of Lund has bought all the land along the right of way and is owner allowing transit friendly development to occur in the undeveloped areas along the BRT system out in the ex urban area, so this is a way that they're using the BRT investment to help improve the use of transit as well. That is a run through of infrastructure. I do want to mention that there are some resources, Deepak will discuss this more, but one resource I wanted to point you to on active traffic management is Washington State DOT has done a considerable amount of work since they attended the scanning trip in 2006. They have a feasibility study of what ATM could do in Washington State, and indeed as part of Washington State the Puget Sound areas project, they're combining pricing, active traffic management, transit improvements, and TDM improvements all in one corridor to look how an integrated package of infrastructure improvements, operational improvements, modal improvements, and traditional TDM could work together, so that's one we'll all be watching, and with that I look forward to the questions and I will turn it back to Deepak. Thank you, Eric. We have about 30 minutes of questions, and I think we have some really interesting questions. I am going to structure these into essentially three categories, the first one clarifications on what's been present, more on impacts and costs and more overall questions being posed. First let's take a look at some of the clarification questions. Grant and Eric, did you see any technologies for ( indiscernible ) realtime travel information dissemination on your trips to Europe and Scan, too? Grant, do you want to start? Did we see the technology itself? Did you see any instances of providing in vehicle travel information? We did. We actually in the Netherlands went to their research center and saw a number of their activities that they're doing with the private sector with the automotive industry, and the Germans also shared that with us. Obviously most of it was in the research and development realm as Poe he opposed to actually being products out there being used by consumers and pushing information to the consumers or providing information to a common database. We didn't really focus on the vehicle as much during our trip. The one thing I would mention is one of the reasons we went to KALONE is because KALONE, the city information project was a big federally funded demonstration to really look at the role of technology, and while the Germans have a lot of in-vehicle information, they also wanted information to be available on people's cell phones, PDAs, so that they could make a decision before they got in the car and use the same information while they're in the vehicle, so there was a lot of information but obviously on the demand side we're more interested in trying to influence people before they get in the vehicle. One thing I wanted to mention we don't do here in the states that is very common in northern Europe is when you're driving in Germany there are services that basically go through radio stations and as you're driving along a highway, if there is an incident ahead, your radio will turn itself on or the volume will come up and it will say you are about to hit traffic, please be aware, please slow down. You're going to hit traffic at this location, and the backup is going to be this far, and you do have an alternative if you consider it by taking this route or that route, so you don't even have to have a special in-vehicle navigation system in Europe. They use the traditional radio stations, and it is not just the sort of traffic every eight minutes. As it is actually needed knowing where your car is, actually the radio will come on and tell you realtime real location of the fact that you're about to hit congestion. A couple more clarification questions. Is lay news Eric hush hour lanes is it restricted for ( indiscernible ) certain occupancy requirements in Netherlands or any occupancy requirements on the lane restrictions? No. The lane restrictions in the Netherlands and the U.K. are for all vehicles. They're not special use lanes for higher occupancy. They currently don't have HLV lanes in Europe, and they're not converting them to like a hot lane. They're just adding capacity by allowing any vehicle to use the hardened shoulder during the peak period. Related to that, how are these hard shoulders policed when not in service? Are they access controls or primary enforcement? How do you prevent people from not using the lane during non-rush hour. Through traditional enforcement. It is only signs and arrows. There is a sign on the side of the road that says you can use the shoulder. There is an arrow above that has a green arrow and during periods of when they're not being used, simply the arrow is crossed out. The signs are closed down, and they use traditional enforcement to handle that. Grant, you answered this, but what does the term MIDAA mean. Mode way incident detection and automatic signaling system, essentially that's their incident did he detection algorithm, and I thought it was a really good question because putting acronyms out there can be misleading, but in Europe they realize that they could not actively -- well, I should say they couldn't from a human perspective monitor the traffic flow, monitor the incidents, and change the speed limits and in a manner that was fast enough to actually deal with the issues, so they created a system that monitors the traffic, monitoring the flow, and they have algorithms they use to detect the incidents as well as to change the signing messages, whether it is speed or lane use. That's a good question. The next question is a very good question. How are foreign tourists educated about all the signage and before traveling to these local networks? I think that's an important question even for regions here in the U.S. considering the new approaches. How do you educate the public about unfamiliar signage especially if they're not driving the roads on a daily basis? That's a great question. My impression, and we didn't really get into the training of tourists aspects, but we did talk to them about the fact that they're using some signs that at one point were not out there on their roadways on their surface streets and so on, and they really strived to implement signing that was consistent with what they have throughout the country or throughout Europe so that there was that consistency, and through the European Union they share information to allow that transition between countries, but the signs that we showed during this presentation while they're not familiar to us as far as how they look, they're actually quite common from a European motorist perspective, so if a tourist coming from outside of Europe is going to be driving, they're probably getting familiar with the signing and the laws of that country. The signs are not in-consistent with what would be in the driver manual, and so from that perspective it is not something unique for the visitor, for the tourist to have to learn about, because the speed limit is sign is similar to other speed limit signs and so on, and an X or the arrows is something that they have in their equivalent MUTCD that we have in the United States. Eric, any comments? Just that this is a huge issue for Washington State, the acceptance of American motorist for speed harmonization or some of these signs or use of the breakdown lane, Washington State is doing a lot with focus groups and really trying to get into the psyche of motorists and really wondering whether American drivers, how they will react to some of these things. That's a great point, Eric, and that actually brings up one of the references or the link that is we have on our links document that you can download. We do have a link provided to you for the feasibility study Eric mentioned that Washington State has done that includes that issue of the signing and what they're considering in Washington, and also I think there were a couple of other questions focused around the costs, and that feasibility study probably is the best information out there that I am aware of that looks about it in the context of American needs, domestic needs, from the perspective of OSHA requirements, exposure of work crews, so do maintenance, which I think are definitely different, the Europeans had different standards as far as that goes, and as far as what they were looking for from a structural standpoint, just to keep on that topic. Okay. I think that leads nicely into the next batch of questions. These relate to impacts and costs and several questions in there. Let me see if I can get them. One of the first questions has there been any research done, did you see findings on the impact of these strategies the fuel consumption? Were the Europeans looking for savings in fuel consumption due to implementing any of these strategies? Were there any findings? Well, the energy issue is just come up in the last couple of years. Over there as it has here. They've had a doubling of gas prices as we have. Of course they're doubling mean that says gas is $10 a gallon over there right now. The one place it is integrated is is the European commissions ministry of transport is transport and energy together, so like we have separate departments for energy and transport in the U.S. Transported and energy are together within the same directory, so one of their major demonstration projects that we talked about last time, SIVTOS is trying to look at demand management and if he can technology and alternative fuels, how those three things can come together in projects, and that process and those projects are really becoming much, much more heightened in importance because of the energy consumption issue and the fact those demonstration projects were trying to look at demand management to reduce congestion, improve the air, but also to reduce energy consumption. Okay. The next question is an interesting one. Frankly it is a question that I have, too. In consideration of all these strategies that we discussed, which one provides the best benefit or should they all be installed together for synergistic benefit? What were the findings from Europe, were they particular venues that were strongly dominating the benefits or all together providing the benefits that have been reported? My take away from what we gained from the Europeans was really the benefit of the integrated aspects of the various subsystems or technologies, and that was really what we took away was the integration aspects, the sum of the parts was greater than the whole. Now, I did mention that one of the things we are doing now is going back to our European hosts and saying you gave us the information about the benefits of this, speed, harmonization system, for example, which has a different algorithm than the cue detection system. Can you give us more insights on how you quantified that benefit so that we can I think get to that very targeted question of if we had to prioritize, is it this one over this one and so on with our limited resources, so I think that's still a work in progress, but another aspect which is of interest is a lot of it depends on what problem you're trying to solve operationally, and then what type of infrastructure and technology do you currently have because if you have to start with nothing, that's a different level of effort and level of costs for one strategy or technology than if you've got the infrastructure that is just a small component to add onto another, so unfortunately speaking -- I am saying it kind of depends which is probably not the answer that the individual is looking for. The other part of this question is are these strategies only installed in certain sections of the roadways or are they on the whole corridor and network? How do they make that determination? Are they trouble spots? Is the notion that you need to have coverage across the entire corridor and have the system as cross the entire corridor to see these benefits? They were all initiated based upon a very strategic targeted approach where they didn't go in and say, okay, it is all or nothing. They took the approach more of where can we put these types of strategies into service where they would have opportunity based upon the problems they were observing? I think through the lessons learned they're gaining an appreciation of what's working for them for their motorists, for their corridors, and they're expanding certain aspects and others are not, and I don't know, Eric, if you wanted to share a little bit more about the level of coverage because I think that it is increasing at least in the Netherlands. Clearly it started out as pottle necks, but both the Dutch government and the U.K. government are sort of particularly the U.K. government is making active traffic management sort of the main go-to strategy, so they really are looking at expanding coverage, but clearly the concepts started in both basis to address bottlenecks. I also did find some information about the costs from the Washington State study. The cost of speed harmonization was estimated about estimated at about 3 or $4 million per mile to have the over head gantries and the system for speed harmonization and the hard shoulder running was also independently estimated to be about $2.7 million a mile. That was the next question, any reports or information available about the cost of these strategies compiled anywhere based on the scanned results? Are there sources where people can find out the cost per mile for these strategy says are? For the infrastructure strategies I would point you to the Washington State study in the links. The link is actually to the Puget Sound counsel, so that link specifically shows in U.S. dollars Washington State's estimate from just late last year of what a lot of these physical improvements would be. In terms of of a lot of the other costs I would point people to the European costs of trying some of these things. I would point people to the scanned documents that are also the links are provided to see what the Europeans specifically spent on some of these. A couple of comments that have come up in the chat window which I wanted to bring up, the link to the study we've been talking about for the feasibility study in the Washington DOT, that's corrected, and the current link was provided by Doug Spencer. It is many your chat window. Excellent. There was also a comment about the UPA grant in Minneapolis which is implementing rush hour lanes here in the U.S. along with speed organization and active traffic management strategies. There is also a question about Minnesota, also allow bus to say use hard shoulders during congestion as was mentioned. Maybe I could clarify that. I say it is interesting, one of the places that uses the current hard shoulder to allow buses during peak hours and they include a lot of enforcement. They have freeway patrols to get to quickly get incidents out of the way, and as part of Minneapolis, St. Paul's urban partnership agreement, they're going to sell excess capacity to drivers so you'll be able to buy your way into that hard shoulder that's currently for use by buses, so this is where the operational strategy of the hard shoulder running along the operational part and the infrastructure pricing are all coming together, so that's a great example of where we're going to be trying some of these things altogether in the U.S. We have three other very interesting questions, and they pertain to overall acceptance of these strategies and involving some behavior change. Based on what we saw in Europe, Grant and Eric, what are some other ways to anchor the public to shift their -- encourage the public to shift the current way of thinking that could ultimately lead to a better transportation network, part of it could be park and ride facilities, bike lanes, but how do you encourage that behavior change? What are some of the methods and professors used? I think that's an interesting and timely question given everything that's going on in the news with regards to gas prices, and I think ultimately it is something that needs to be crafted around the problem that that community is dealing with and looking at the range of strategies and looking to integrate these strategies and in a manner that really looked at a hole holistic approach rather than looking for the one silver bullet that will solve all my problems. That was the take away that I gained from the Europeans and really is how I see the opportunity of us dealing with our congestion problems domestically is really looking at the holistic aspects and not approaching it showing up on scene and saying I have the answer which may or may not be the case in everybody's community there. I think the other thing that they do in Europe that's a little bit different is they spend a lot of money on general public marketing. They call travel awareness, so they have these large scale programs to make the public aware of the choices, the options, and just to make people aware of how they might be able to link trips together in a smarter way, that their options are, and they actually do very, very sophisticated marketing, and they're doing a tremendous amount of research on this area of travel awareness, and it is interesting because they want only dash involved in a project over there to look at the next reconciliation of travel awareness, and they're not only finding out what is the most effective way to make the public aware of their options, but they're also looking at ways to sell travel awareness and the new choices to politicians, what is does it take to make politicians understand that it is just -- it could be just as effective to fund a travel awareness program as some specific infrastructure improvement, that there are specific benefits and it is cost effective to do these things that are often called the very soft side of transportation, so they're not afraid to put big bucks towards what they call travel awareness either. That's a good point, Eric. That you actually that's something I for got about. I will share just a short experience that I had at lunch with one of our Dutch hosts. We were meeting and took a break and went to their cafeteria for lunch, and who was sitting there and chatting, and I noticed on the walls posters, and one poster said are you going to make it home to the football game tonight and football over there is our version of soccer, and it was interesting because there were several signs around the room that kind of focused on that issue of making sure that people are aware that there is a connection to the family, to your overall experience, your social environment, and so on that they seem to really put an emphasis on that component which did have an influence in my perception on the traveler, on the consumers, and on their expectations of having good service, and perhaps and that's my perception, that it influenced their willingness to try different things that had services and techniques and strategies that they might not have had if it weren't for that marketing aspect that the public sector seemed to have been engaged in. And, Grant, that relates directly to the next question we have. There will be instances where a strategy experienced resistance and the community leaders of the public sector has had to weather a storm in terms of public acceptance and not kind of give up on that strategy. Have there been instances that far and that relates to the notion of marketing and sticking with convincing public of the benefits. Have there been any examples of that? I am aware of I say there is not. Experience -- not much experience with HLV lanes and about tenor twelve years ago they opened up an HOV lane on a road coming into Amsterdam, and the public out cry sort of like the diamond lynxes, the pun out cry was so great including local politicians because it was the national highway department that put it in, that the lanes were only open about a month and were closed down, and the Dutch have not seriously considered HOV lanes since. They have a lot of cooer pool park and ride lots but have not considered HOV lanes I couldn't lanes yet they have truck only lanes and bus only lanes, so, yeah, there was a case where a project made considerable resistance and sort of put them back a long ways in ever having to see if they could get HOV lanes back in the Netherlands. One quick question that just came up before I go on with a couple of questions. Photo speed and maybe the Minneapolis person can clarify this, too, are they considering using photo speed enforcement for the hard shoulder project? Do you -- are you aware? I am not certain. I would be remiss to say that I knew for sure. I haven't been keeping direct tabs on that UPA. But the M-42, in the U.K., it does use speed enforcement and a hard shoulder, so they do have experience there doing that. Okay. I am holding on one question to end the session and also lead into the next, but before I do that, do they relate these benefits to strategies other things that ( indiscernible ) impacts the business is economy or the economy, has that been a push are are these strictly traffic impact? Do they think about the bigger picture and trying to sell the strategies? Well, most of the strategies except for the real specific operational, the hard shoulder running and stuff like that are clearly efficiency improvements to try to squeeze more, but the majority of the demand related strategies that Europe is putting in place is for environmental reasons, is to address air quality much more than it is to address congestion congestion. That's an interesting finding in it, the notion of environment pre dominates, that's the dominant objective in a lot of these measures. And I will say Eric talked about the Rome ceres with the historic district. We talked about this a little last week, but they did have a concern about the impacts of the access control strategies on the economy of the businesses and the service providers in that zone, and they did not see that as being an issue, and in fact they had some anecdotal testimony to us that it actually improved because the the atmosphere that was created as a result, so from an economic standpoint while the business owners originally had concern, it didn't prove out once it was implemented and they had some experience, and I know also we talked a little bit about freight movement and shipping last week with the institutional scenarios and that there are ways to look at efficiencies of freight movement in a manner that does impact the operations, so that, yes, in that case they do look at it more holistic aspects from a logistics standpoint, and marketing. Okay. I think let's keep this as the last question for the webinar, and I think it is a great question, it kind of links to our next webinar which is on integration. The question is how do we begin the implementation process for the strategies? Is this through the long range plan or some other mechanism? How do we go about starting to implement these strategies? I think that's a great question, and I think going through the long range plan and through your planning processes is a wonderful approach. If your organization or your state is interested in actually engaging in something like that, I would encourage to you consult with the division office with federal highway, and we can provide some technical assistance and some training on some new guidance that we've actually put together on the an co jetton management process, and that deals with how do you integrated operations into the planning process itself, so that's definitely something that we would be interested in supporting anybody on the call with if they're wanting to engage this that type of activity at a state or local level. Eric, any comments on that? I also think that we'll learn a lot from things like the urban partnership agreement cities. I ultimately easy for me to say. I would ultimately like to see a national demonstration program again where maybe not of the scale of the UPA but that we start funding some of these innovations like the Europeans are with a focus on integration, of integrating two or three of these things and trying to measure the synergistic effects. I would like to see some sort of demonstration program here in the U.S., and I think we can point to some of the successes Europe has had in sim similar demonstration activities. And I think that's one of the reasons for the next webinar is the notion of bringing all these pieces together into the planning operations and performance measurement framework, and that's what we are going to talk about in the next webinar. Please if you haven't registered already, please register for the third webinar in the series on July 10th, the same time. It would be great to see consistent group of people go through all of these webinars and really see how it all fits in. A couple of other notes. These three webinar series are also offered as a day-long workshop, so if your state or public agency is interested in this workshop please contact your local federal highway representative or the division office and we can see if there are any slots available to schedule that, and again July 10th. I hope to see all of you back there. Thank you a lot for your participation. There was some great questions across a wide spectrum of strategies. Hope to see you all again on July 10th. Jennifer, any closing comments? Sure. Thank you, everybody. Thanks for a great webinar. I just wanted to close out with a few comments about the national transportation operations coalition. It lists the member organizations. You can go to the N-talk website which I will bring up the next slide, and that has more information about the men organizations and also contains information about upcoming webcasts and has a webcast archive page which contains the slides and recording of of all previous talking application webcasts including part one of this series and we'll have the slides up from today's presentation and recording up within the next day or so. The website also has two discussion forums, one focusing on high level and strategic operations issues and the other focusing on ITS deployment and lessons learned. The final slide here just a little more information about the N-talk site, there is an extensive set of resources and links. There is two shared calendars. One has ITS and operations related meetings, conferences, events, and the other has ITS and operations training offerings and you can also sign up fore the N-talk newsletter. It is sent twice monthly via e-mail. You can sign up for a free subscription, and it is also available online on the N-talk site. That concludes our webcast for today. Thank you for the presenters and thanks for the audience for the great questions (end)