Major Initiatives > ICM

Integrated Corridor Management Webinar: Montgomery County and Oakland Pioneer Sites

Transcript

July 22, 2008

Introduction

Jennifer Symoun:

Hello and welcome to Integrated Corridor Management webinar, focusing on the Houston, Minneapolis, and San Diego Pioneer Sites. My name is Jennifer Symoun and I will be giving a few details before I turn the meeting over to Brian Cronin of the USDOT RITA ITS Joint Program Office.

Today's webinar is being recorded. The recording will be posted on line in the next week or so and will be used as a resource to help with ICM Web site. Today's seminar will last three hours and is designed to be interactive. There will be an opportunity to ask questions following each presentation and at the end of the webinar. We may not be able to respond to all the questions, but will follow-up after the webinar.

There will also be several times where we it will solicit input from the audience to help understand the state of the practice across the country in this area. All participants are in a listen only mode, the operator will give instructions on how to ask questions over the phone. You may also put a question to the chat area on the left-hand side of the screen. If you have a question during the presentation, go ahead and type it in to the chat box. Throughout the webinar there will be multiple choice polls, participants cannot tell who responded to the question but the host will be able to associated response and are therefore not totally anonymous. If you have questions regarding the format or technical issues, please type them into the chat box.

At this time I will turn the presentation over to Brian Cronin of the RITA ITS Joint Program Office who will be providing an overview of the USDOT’s ICM initiative.

Brian Cronin

This is Brian Cronin with the USDOT RITA ITS Joint Program Office. I want to walk through the overview of the ICM initiative before handing it over to Montgomery County and Oakland in their region. The purpose of the webinar is to take some opportunity to provide input on what we've been doing over the last year on the ICM concept and what a system would do in effect in real corridors across the country. As a reminder the ICM initiative is looking at how we can develop analysis methodology and evaluate different strategies to measure their impact on improving transportation. The knowledge, resources, and materials will be made available to practitioners so that they will be ready to implement the ICM upon completion of this initiative.

The ICM initiative is looking at how today, we networks that are independently optimized in terms of arterials and transit highway system. We think that there can be a significant value added by integrating both all of these networks as one system and operating as one system along the corridor.

To give you an overview of some of the attributes of the corridors we selected a wide range of corridors of size and population with various different transit operations in terms of express bus and rail operations. This should give us a vast amount of information opportunity to look at different networks and apply the results throughout the country.

We have three stages we are going through with the eight Pioneer Sites. We completed phase three of the first part of that in terms of defining the systems. We're also in the process of developing analysis modeling and simulation tools which help agencies to determine which strategies make most sense giving operating conditions and the characteristics of their networks.

Right now we're entering into the modeling phase of the initiative. What we expect through sound performance measurement, data archiving and application and modeling analysis, we can work with sites to make sound decisions on investments in terms of ICM strategies and over all transportation. What we think is by identifying corridor level performance metrics archiving that data and collecting it applying a process understand what strategies make the most sense for their networks and door doors. In order to do this, we found there are three models that are available today. We’re not trying to create new models and tools to implement and assess ICM strategies, however, we think that there are issues within them that we had to modify and address in terms of transit analysis, traveler information, and pricing and specific traffic control strategies. Different ICM concepts to pull together the sources together and make a modeling process that's valid for ICM.

What are the next steps?

Shortly we'll move into the next phase of three. Those documents should be up on our website shortly, but we'll be looking at three real concepts for ICM and looking at how we model and analyze the result. Then move -- make us better informed for what sort of demonstration we need to have in order to prove out the concept of ICM. Over the last year, we completed the Concept of Operations and requirements. USDOT will select three of the Pioneer Sites to analyze and model corridors.

So where can you find out more information about ICM and what we've done?

We have the ICM Knowledgebase and website where you can get information from the first phase which has some foundational research information and we will be adding in the Concept of Operations from each of the eight Pioneer Sites. We have information from the technical analysis we've been doing on the modeling results. There are fact sheets, newsletters and copies of the trade journal article kills we've recently added.

Lastly, myself, Steve Mortensen from FTA and Dale Thompson from FHWA are the three contacts managing the USDOT ICM initiative and we can answer any questions you might have. Thank you.

J Symoun:

At this point we're going to take question from the audience. I'm going to put up polling questions that we want to hear from you from the audience, to see where you are implementing ICM. The first question what corridors in your area might be feasible candidates to ICM? If you can please type your responses into the chat box. While I'm bringing those polls questions, I do see a question there.

If you could briefly explain the differences and differences of ICM and traffic management and travel demand management?

B Cronin

ICM is a broader idea that probably could encompass travel management. Right now the biggest difference that I see is active traffic management focus on highway and arterial operations. To include traffic management and travel demand management. You start to bring that in. Our main focus is looking at the systems that provide operations and what we need to integrate and share information between operations and managers of those systems.

J Symoun

We have another question that just came in. Limited within one metro area or connect two metros?

B Cronin

We've been focusing in on sort of urban corridors and urban area. Dependent upon how close they are. And what they serve the dynamics ultimate size of the network as defined. So for Texas, you are thinking about Dallas and Fort Worth that you are managing. Depending on how long you want to define that corridor. To date most of the sites we've been focusing on have urban corridors, extending out maybe 20 or 30-miles.

J Symoun

. I'm going to bring up our first Pioneer Site presentation: Montgomery County.

Montgomery County - Tom Jacobs

Okay. Again, I’m Tom Jacobs. I appreciate Brian and Jennifer for letting me present and what we've done so for with our ICM site. Thank you for taking time out of your busy days to join us. I should apologize for Steve Rochon, from the State Highway Administration, he is the project manager but is currently out on vacation so asked me to step in for him.

Real quickly as far as the transportation network infrastructure, I'll get to a map in a second, but basically our corridor involves major interstate I-270 and 355. We have the Washington, D.C. metropolitan transit authority, the local transit authority, and the metro rail network. The county department of public works and transportation. They have the ride on network which also serves the metro rail transfer point and then we have MTA. That's the Maryland Transit Administration. They run a commuter rail, the MARK network which is Maryland Commuter Rail which runs from Frederick down to DC. They also run a commuter bus outside the limits of the corridor and through the corridor to DC as well.

There's a map here which shows the corridor boundaries. It isn't a great map. I'll try to bring up a highlighter here if I can, just to see if I can't point some things out. This is 270 that's the network which leads into the capital beltway, Maryland and this direction heading down to DC in the opposite direction. This is the mark rail line here running down through the edge of the corridor boundaries. There's 8-10 stop from the mark computer rail through the corridor. We also have metro rail line which runs up from DC and shops at shady grove. That's the last stop here. The computer bus runs up and down I-270 and actually connects to one of the metro rail station's locations. What we're looking at here, this corridor is really a heavy computing corridor. You have people living up here in the Frederick area, up north and they're connecting major employment centers down in DC or northern Virginia, which is in this direction. You have the suburbs in this direction. Plus you have major employment centers down the I-270 corridor and folks living within the county it's. East/west traffic as well. There's a major route being constructed finally. It's been on the planning books for about 50 years. The intercounty connector which is going to connect I-270 in Montgomery county to I-95 in Prince Georges county part of the Maryland suburbs here. That's a little bit about our site. In terms of -- little bit under the weather. So I'm glad this audio is recording all my hacks. I'll try to keep those to a minimum. As far as our operational conditions, like I said, it's primarily a major commuter corridor. All these systems that I mentioned are either operating near or at capacity. So I-270, the mark rail line, metro, the red line, which is probably the heaviest congested line in the system. Even with ICM as much as we can do to improve operations, there's still considerations, obviously foreign answering capacity. When I say enhancing capacity, I'm not just adding lanes, probably adding car toss the mark line, they cost operational costs are hard to come by. In terms of modeling when we do model this corridor, it will be nice to look at not joust operational improvements but where it makes sense to add capacity. There's some talk of looking at hot lanes within the 270 corridor as well. We're looking forward to analyzing all operational strategies in additional to potential capacity improvements.

In terms of operational needs identified, really because everything is operating near capacity, one little hiccup in the system has ripple effects throughout the system. By in large in terms of multimodal incident management those are terms of needs there. The Maryland state highway commission local law enforcement, they do a good job on the incidents on the freeways. Using course in to show how much vehicle hour of the layer being saved by the state's incident management program known as chart. But they could be doing better and they acknowledge that. The modes are pretty much operating in a manner where they're trying to optimize efficiency within their specific mode as opposed to cross modes. Signal operations will is a computerized traffic signal that's run by the county. They're enhancing that system right now an they'd like to go to a completely demand responsive-type system. Transit and computer management, in terms of operations, there's some pretty automated systems in terms of real operations -- rail operations. The two bus systems run the AVL systems. They do a pretty good job there. We could be doing more to get that real-time status out to the actual travel herb. In terms of overall computer management lacking in parking management and knowing what's happening in our parking facilities and the status of getting parking information to travelers. In terms of getting information to travelers there's some activities going on by the individual operating modes, but we'd like to be doing a better job at getting real-time multimodal information to the travelers in the corridor. Infrastructure, we need better real-time information and status of what's happening on the freeways, on the arterials. The train systems they do pretty well, but I'll talk about what we're trying to enhance that status information.

The key goals and objectives, how we are looking to have ICM help our site. Again, these are from our concepts of operations and I've selected a few here along with some key objectives. The kind of mother hood and apple pie stuff reliability and safety. In terms of objectives, we're looking to improve predictability and reliability in terms of personal trips through the corridor. We want to improve level of decision support in the corridor. That's an important one. We want better information sharing and better tools for helping them make decisions as well as for the operators in helping them make decisions and how they respond to various corridor events. Enhancing real-time traveler investigation. Expand the information we're already providing and look at better improved delivery mechanisms to the travelers. Ultimately, we want to promote multi-modal system operations in use. We want to cross modes and not just look things at the individual mode pipes. How we can enhance the multimodal system.

In terms of the stakeholders. Maryland Department of Transportation, the two key modes within that the Maryland Highway system. Serving as a lead in our ICM effort as well as the Maryland transit administration and the care here we have the Montgomery Department of Transportation and the local transit authority. That's sort of the core. A whole long drill list of the additional stakeholders but these are the folks who have been the core for us and looking to help implement the ICM system.

So just a little bit from the institutional standpoint how we defined our roles among the chief stakeholders. One of the first things we created was an ICM steering committed. We kept it smaller at this point to keep it more manageable. We certainly readily acknowledge the need to keep our broader list of stakeholders involved and that broader list includes the council of governments and some of the DOT’s in the region, law enforcement and public safety agencies. The way we've done that is to use the existing regional infrastructure, institutional infrastructure. We regularly participant in the council of government operations and provide regular updates there. We participate in a group called the regional operations coordination committee representation from public safety. We try to use those mechanisms to keep that broader list of stakeholders in the loop and involved. At the same time we maintain a more manageable core of institutional infrastructure. We're looking to institutionalize ICMS through a group that's recently been created the metro poll sin transportation operations partnership. They formally kicked off this spring. It's a partnership that's formally been created of operating entities and that's the Virginia Department of Transportation, DC Department of Transportation, Maryland Department of Transportation, the transit authority as well as the transportation planning board which is the MPO Washington council of government. They're primarily responsible for coordinating regional transportation operations and they were seen as a good sort of home for ICM because what's learned here in the I-270ICM, depending on what's successful and whether or not we're successful, can certainly be broadened in other corridors within the metropolitan DC region and beyond.

Here I'm going to talk a little bit about the ICM system looking at a very high level component diagram that we've created as part of our initial set of requirements. Try to draw here; on the left side what you have is our ICMS integrated core management system. On the right side that depicts all the external systems the ICM is going to interface to. With any ICMS all the various high level subsystems, data collection subsystems, fusion subsystems, decision support subsystems all the way down the line. On the right side, these are all the existing agency systems. You have state highway administration chart system, the Montgomery ATMT arterial management system. You have the remedial operations system, their CAD system. On the right side you have the existing external systems; one that's probably worth mentioning is CAPWIN. This system allows communications between public safety and transportation responders in the field. We're also looking to broaden that to allow communications between field responders and center based responders through the center ICS. I'll explain that in a little bit. Deliver information to ultimately the key end users, the traveler. What you see in orange develop that aren't there yet. Within the ICMS division support system and the information provider subsystem on the right side the parking management systems and state police is building a cad system. Now I should point out, I mentioned that systems that need to be developed, the reason that some of these other ICMS subsystems for our corridor don't need to be completely developed from scratch is because there's an existing system building off that existing system because for one thing, a lot of the related ICMS subsystems are very similar to take advantage of the data collection subsystems, the fusion subsystem and the data dissemination subsystem. There's no need to recreate those build off what's already there. One other thing I'd like to point out is a lot of these data flows that you see on here, these are very high level and this was meant to be kept simple. If we were to show it would be a very messy diagram showing information between the individual external systems and the ICMS, as well as leaving off communications and data flows between the individual subsystems. That was kind of done on purpose. Let me clear this out here.

Real quickly I wanted to give you an indication on how this I-270 ICMS might help us in the I-270 corridor to address some of the problems and needs we identified. Going through a very high level scenario here. Talk about a multi-vehicle crash on I-270 southbound for example that shuts down southbound I-270. Initially, ICMS roll the incident that initial call would probably come in to the county's 911 system. That information, the relevant information that's entered into the cad transportation related information would ICMS. Would then in turn feed the relevant external systems that you have on the right hand side. That would be the initial -- this is very high level -- communications flow. Terms of verification, let's assume that state highway has a camera there. They have a camera there, they can see the incident. They can verify exactly the initial information provided by the motorist. They can add some information to it in terms of lane closures, number of vehicles involved. That type of thing. So they can do the verification and they provide that updated information back to ICMS which in turn, again feeds that updated information back to all the external systems in real-time. At the same time, provide the verified updated information to systems to CAPWIN that feeds responders in the field like state police. When state police entered updated information in the field, their application, that data will feed back to ICM and back through and updating all the relevant ICM connected transportation operation centers. So there we talk about verification and information updates, the sort of situational awareness.

In terms of decision support, that's obviously critical. That's a key that has to be developed. That's not a trivial thing to do. What we're talking about in terms of decision support. Initial mode of clarification going on. Data fusion and integration system. The data archive. We can use maybe some artificial intelligence or some other 2D developed real-time simulation programs to help the operational agencies make decisions in terms of what kind of response plans we want to implement. Here, so those response plans go back to the operational agencies for them to control their devices. One thing you'll notice is the ICMS is not really providing any direct control sharing of device of the individual agency also be doing their own device control. So based on those response plans, they will be putting messages out on their highway advisory radio. Using their cameras, their dynamic message signs and the like. At the same time, you have the travelers here. I'll talk about that with combined traveler information. Where we'd like to get with our information support system, is not just providing information in terms of here travel times on the freeway versus transit, we'd like to get to a point where we're providing actual decision making capabilities that say take this route to this metro station and take the red line in and that will be the best way to go. So you need that decision support system to help with those decisions. That information is envisioned to go out through the traveler information system. Right now it goes through information service providers and the information service provider also be seasoning that information to travelers and there might be an intermediate component here through the media. These information providers have relationships with various media outlets to get that information to the traveler. Now through ICMS, we actually envision an actual interface providing traveler information directly to the traveler. It will be web-based pre-trip information. Ultimately in terms of actual real-time sort of route guidance information being delivered down to the end user in the field, through some sort of personal navigation device, that will likely be an ISP and some other third parties. In terms of post incident analysis, we can use through ICM, the data analysis and performance management subsystem. A lot of these capabilities already exist. So again, that's sort of high level scenario showing how the information flows would occur through our proposed system here.

We're getting toward the end here. I think I talked about most of this here. Again, this is built on an existing platform that's regional integration transportation system. We do have to build some new systems and subsystems which I totally admit is not trivial. What's critical, again decision support, that's critical. Again, not trivial. parking management. I think for the success of our corridor, again is extremely important and again, not trivial because quite frankly right now, they're going through and piloting some parking management subsystems. There's a lot of work and infrastructure that needs to be put in to know what's happening in all parking garages and the real-time status of getting that information out of those garages.

Real-time freeway and arterial data is critical. We need to do a better job of getting that data. Right now for those who may not be aware, the I-95 corridor coalition agencies up and down the I-95 corridor they entered into a contract to provide mane travel time and speed for freeways and a whole bunch of freeways basically to North Carolina, can't remember how many miles of freeways. A build up of that contract to get real-time data on the I-270 corridor as well as the arterials. One thing that came up recently is getting the traveler information down to the end user via personal navigation devices. We see that as critical to the ultimate success of what we do in the corridor.

In terms of lessons learned in each of these areas institutional. Our advice obviously is to incorporate to the extent possible and as much as possible the existing institutional infrastructure that exists. Try not to create new structures. Embracing multimodal approaches. The desire is absolutely genuine. People want to do it. I think it's easier said then done when it comes push comes to shove when actually looking at your operation and what you are doing and looking at the ramification of multimodal corporation. We're definitely limited to what we can do by ultimate capacity constraints. We have to deal with those constraints. The operational approaches they are going to impact your operational procedures. Sometimes that doesn't go over well with the operation folks on the ground. But you have to work through those.

Technical requirements development. We found as we were developing our requirements and I'm sure any one who ease been through a development process has had this challenge of balancing to what level you start to get into design. You find yourself getting involved in design as you go through the requirements and maintain a balance between defining what the system should do and how it should actually do it. Then one of the other challenges we face is we're looking to is two ways operational agencies are going to get access to the ICM data. One is through a separate application which we readily acknowledge is not the ideal way to do it. We're working toward ultimately making sure their native systems can accept and exchange data with the ICMS. Now getting on their development schedules, they're all under development paths and incorporating into their development schedule. Involve them to ask them to do change orders to include additional work to include the interfaces we're talking about. That's obviously a challenge. That's basically the end of my presentation. Hopefully, I did it on time. I'll turn it back over to you Jennifer.

J Symoun:

Thank you. We do have one question typed in for you. I'm going to encourage people to continue typing in questions

So the first question typed in for you Tom, has the MATOC developed a regional concept for transportation operations (RCTO) (i.e., operations vision, goals, objectives, performance measures)?

T Jacobs:

They have. They have very recently one of the first things they did as they developed their operation vision, goals and objectives. They're also looking at performance measures as well. That's one of the initial things they've accomplishes since they actually started.

J Symoun:

We have another question. How did Montgomery counties get their regional partners involved terms of developing that commitment among the partners all of whom have a lot on their plates?

T Jacobs:

To be perfectly honest, what got people on board initially was the US DOT in terms of the funding to initially create the Concept of Operations and the requirements document and the potential for other funding down the road. At the same time, these agencies they've been talking about we may not call it integrated corridor management, but have been working together ad hoc for some time, this concept even though it may have not been called integrative corridor management they have been talking about ICM concepts through other activities. But this kind of provided the catalyst to formalize in a more sort of direct way to get together and get committed and figure out what we should be doing in terms of corridor management.

Question:

What role do you envision 511/Traveler Information services playing in ICM and active travel management?

T Jacobs:

In this region, Virginia has a state-wide 511 system, Maryland does not and DC does not. There's some discussions and some various starts and stops relate today 511 from a DC regional perspective. State of Maryland is working on right now an RFP for statewide 511. Ultimately, the ICMS will feed the state-wide 511 systems but to be quite honest in terms of an actual plan for sort of a DC region 511, that's somewhat up in the air and ICMS will play aureole in what gets implemented and I will mention that may tock is sort of the umbrella leading organization for helping make that happen. Right now -- previously there hasn't been a place to park a regional 511 system and a responsibility for its operation. Now that we have MATOC hopefully that institutional problem has been resolved.

J Symoun:

With that I'm going to turn it over to the Oakland Pioneer Site with Danielle Stanislaus and Radiah Victor.

Oakland - Danielle Stanislaus:

This is Danielle Stanislaus of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. So first a brief overview of the region and kind of what it looks like here in the bay area. We have nine San Francisco Bay area counties, 4 million jobs, we have 101 municipalities. We were identified as the fourth most congested region in the U.S. For our corridor, we have the I-880 corridor. We have the Oracle Arena located off of the freeway. We have the Oakland International Airport and it takes travelers from San Francisco down to the Silicon Valley area which is a major hub in terms of jobs providers. Also in terms of existing conditions and problems, the ADT is currently between about 120,000 to 275,000. That's about 10,000 vehicle hours of daily delays that are experienced along this corridor. 30% of that delay is non-recurrent. Also we have a lot of construction going on in this corridor. Construction can be mitigated by ICM. We have a bunch of projects going on. The route 230 project, Interchange for route 92 which consists of one of the bridges, the high street interchange and the mission boulevard interchange which is 472 million-dollars in construction that is going be on this corridor. Construction is a big concern to us. Also along this corridor we have extensive TSS freeways arterial BART (the bus rapid transit) the port of Oakland, ramp metering on the I-80 corridor, HOV bypass lanes, and electronic toll collections. We also have TSP capabilities and AVL. Real-time data collection capabilities. On top of that just to give you more detail, the specific numbers are 25CCTV cameras, 147 traffic monitoring stations, and traffic advisory radio. It's very extensive infrastructure we have going on here. Arterial network looks like we do have a smart corridor, which consists of about 40-miles of arterial 250 signalized intersections. Traffic signals are controlled and maintained by the different local agencies. There are different signal control systems and the ADT is about 25,000, 60,000 vehicles per day. Bus network consists of almost 700 buses with about 109 routes includes TransBay lines which has about 15,000 daily local riders and 2000 daily transday riders. The technical capabilities or CA transit is that they also do have transit signal priority next bus auto and automated vehicle location systems. In terms of BART, consists of about 20-miles of track 12 station. There are three lines. Ridership is about 150,000 trips daily. 11,400 parking spaces are available at 10 stations along the corridor, of a total bar parking spaces. That's the kind of the overview of our system.

In terms of how ICM will help the Oakland Pioneer Site, our vision is that the I-880 will help existing arterial rail, and bus transit systems along the corridor are operating by separate agencies to function as integrated transportation system efficiency mobility and for all travelers under all conditions. We are anxious to proceed with that.

In terms of our operational goals and objectives, we want to respond quickly and effectively to disruptions that may be planned or unplanned and enable travelers to make informed choices. We were trying to facilitate information sharing among the different already existing system. We wanted to provide traveler information for influencing traveler decisions and choices. The collaboration among agencies for operations ands in didn't response and we wanted to facilitate collaboration among the agencies for events planning.

So in terms of the institutional, who are our ICM stakeholders? The ICM stakeholders consist of a broad range of agencies, from the USDOT and MTC to Caltrans which is our state DOT to the Amtrak, the ferry service, the ports, the trucking associations, the local police department, the local fire department, and the sheriffs. We have a wide array of stakeholders on the committee.

How are the defined rules among these stakeholders and have we achieved buy-in? The task made of key stakeholders. Recognizing we had a large group of the operations committee that was comprised of about key stakeholders. The rules and responsibilities as each of those stakeholders each to those strategies that we identified were discussed early on and agreed upon. Also the institutional arrangements were developed as necessary relative to the implementation of each strategy.

In terms of technical components, what are proposed ICMS will look like? Let me show you what our existing information sharing among the I-880 operations look like. Our existing system, as you can see clearly has a lot of components and various communications that are already taking place identified by the yellow arrows going between the light blue boxes. There are some of those key agencies that are involved that currently have no method of communicating with any of the other and they kind of stand out on their own. Also, there are a lot of arrows that could be drawn in between the agencies that already have some communications to enhance their ability to communicate with each other. That's our existing. The proposed ICM information sharing is one that has a more holistic approach in terms of everybody being able to disseminate and convey information to a processing center which is really the center hub of receiving all the various data, processing it and disseminating it back out as necessary to all the involved parties, thereby communicating increasing ability to coordinate and cooperate efficiently.

The technical lessons learned. Going to first and fore most facilitate information sharing. It's going to enable that sharing of information both technical data, operational data and institutional data. We currently have a lot of existing data available on the corridor, yet as I mentioned earlier, that data isn't always being accessed and then utilized and disseminated to everybody that would benefit that would receive that. To touch upon our existing data sources on the corridor. We have something called pens data which is put out by call trans, state DOT. That tracks a variety of performance measures from vehicle detector loops that are present along the state highways and freeways in California and collects data such as speed, volume, density, travel time, delays, level of service and ADT. It collects that information at a point location basis as well as more of a geographical summary. We also have arterial networks and we have a very well developed 511 system here in the area that provides real-time information for travelers.

In terms of also explaining how our ICMS is going to disseminate information look at the decomposition example relative to the highway function strategy that we were working on. Looking at the top line, there's an A, B, C, D and E. A is data collection, D, data processing and E the end interface with users or data dissemination. This functional analysis that we embarked upon the function allows us to determine what functions were needed relative to each of the ICM strategies.

This is our approach to identify what was existing versus what was needed of each strategy. Through this process we were able to identify with the guidelines where there were opportunities foreign answered communication and enhanced coordination and opportunities for us to then develop on top of that the assets that we currently have and what new devices of software needs to be developed to fully implement this strategy as designed here. That's pretty much what we did here relative to each strategy.

Next I wanted to spend a couple of moments talking about ICMS in action for us. Gasoline on the southbound connector the tanker carrying about 8700-gallons of gasoline casing a fire -- causing a fire. The band-aiding steel caused the actual freeway to collapse. ICM in action. What you have just seen are a bunch of pictures relative to the various strategies that were deployed as part of the response. So in the short term to managed capacity and demand the following were implemented. The governor declared free transit, 4.5 million allowance of state funds. Coordinated enhanced the transit operations. Coordinated the transit schedules. Increased train capacity, which led to the highest hider ship in -- ridership in years. The available of parking capacity but following the incident Bart was able to coordinate that in a more reliable way. The 511 readers were deployed to capture travel time along detour routes. The picture in the left corner provided information on ride sharing program. We also increased the telecommuting and decreased toll prices.

Lessons learned for us for ICM. Operationally, ICM doesn't happen overnight. The implementation is highly complex due to the partied involves and this requires a significant amount of time and is a significant undertaking. ICM is also a new term but yet many of us are practicing ICM in some form since the concept is not new. In terms of the institutional lessons learned, the first and foremost is institutional and collaboration is essential for successful implementation of ICM. All the stakeholders in which we have many need to be involved and engaged in the process for development from the initial development stage to make sure you have their continued support through the process. Demonstrate the benefits and secure funding to have continued support for this project. Technical lessons learned. Data avail act and reliability may be run of the greatest challenges. ICM strategy implementation is highly complex few to the integration of existing system. We need to continue to evaluate the performance of the ICMS itself in addition to the larger initiative. Prior to the design of the ICMS to make sure it has the capability to collect the data to evaluate the performance of the strategies and the systems.

J Symoun:

Okay. Well thank you. We don't have any questions typed in right now. I'll give everybody a chance if they want to type in any questions. In the meantime we can open the phone lines also to see if anybody has any questions over the phone. We still have opportunities for questions at the end. We still have time. I'm going to bring it back to the DOT overview presentation from Brian and so at this point we'll open it up for any questions from anybody for Brian. There was one typed in I'll jump back to. I'll bring up a few poll questions and ask that you respond to those. Earlier, there was a question -- I think this is mainly for Brian. How extensible is this technique. Can you envision 100-miles of corridor for example.

B Cronin:

I think this is one that Danielle, Radiah or Tom might more effectively answer. It's feasible but if you have the data for that length that enables the decision making. We are looking at this in terms of decision making for operators and decision making for travelers to make choices. If you can accomplish both of those things and do it for 100-miles, it would be feasible. Either Radiah, Danielle or Tom you want to answer that at all? In your experience how feasible is this?

Danielle/Radiah/Tom:

You mean from an operational, tactical, technical standpoint it's certainly expansible. Possibly take what we've learned and expand it to other corridors in the region. Is there the money to expand it and then what does the expanding do to your institutional infrastructure in terms of maintaining sort of the collaboration between all the involved parties and keeping that from getting too unwieldy. Brian brings up a key point, data. Data is absolutely critical. It's definitely expandable.

Question:

What is the feasibility of doing this? How sensible are a set of techniques can it be seen done on 100-miles of corridor, for example?

Danielle/Radiah/Tom:

I think it can but it makes sense to start with a smaller segment of a corridor. What's really key is making sure that all of your ITS infrastructure that would make the data available is actually functioning. One of the big challenges that we have in the bay e yeah is our ability -- area is our ability to maintain all the various loops and CCTV cameras and the various ITS elements in the field that are absolutely critical for making that data available. So of course, as you increase the length of a corridor you increase the number of ITS equipment that is available in that corridor. If you are able to have that information available, I don't see why it's something that couldn't be expanded. But again, that's really critical to make sure you have operating the O & M the Operations & Maintenance of your field devices is really critical.

B Cronin:

Could Radiah or Danielle also respond to some of the same 511 question that Tom Jacobs responded? What role do you envision 511 and travel information services playing in ICM in active travel management?

D Stanislaus:

511 is going to play a critical role in terms of being the primary point for disseminating information out to the traveling public, which is one of the major end users and main benefits from ICM and the ICMS. So they are key stakeholder, critical component and to simplify the dissemination of information and the transmitting of that information to the public, it would be funneled through them.

R Victor:

Exactly. 511 in the Bay area is critical for disseminating information pre-trip before the motorist decides to leave their home and en route when they are on the freeway whether or not they want to take a detour route. One of the strategies what we are explores is 511 is working closely with the transit agencies to provide real-time transit data, which an element of our ICMS, which is hoped that as a motorist, when you receive that en route real-time data on travel conditions on one facility, the highway, you also will be able to receive real-time transit data and hopefully, we plan on trying to do a parking demonstration project where you would be able to determine whether or not parking is available. I must say though, that parking is a real constraint with our transit is but that is one of the strategies that we're looking at. As Daniel mentioned 511 is really critical to being able to disseminate that information both pre-trip and en route to the public to inform their decisions on their routes to get to their destinations.

Conclusion

B Cronin:

Okay. If we don't have any more questions. I encourage you to go to the website to keep track of ICM. Hopefully we'll have something up soon the Con-Ops and requirements for your site that you can start to look at that. As part of our outreach and knowledge we plan to update developing to support the future of deployment and use of ICM systems. So thank you all for participating. Turn it back to you Jennifer.

J Symoun:

There is one more webinar scheduled for this Thursday July 24th Seattle, San Antonio and Dallas. You can register for this webinar. I have one more poll to see if this webinar was worth your time. Aside from the audio, we'll make sure that test improved for the next one. We value your feed back and how we can improve these to help future webinars on the ICM initiative. With that, thank you everybody and we'll close out for today. Thank you.

Updated August 15, 2008 11:01 AM