Major Initiatives > ICM

Integrated Corridor Management Webinar: Houston, Minneapolis, and San Diego Pioneer Sites

Transcript

July 17, 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 Dale Thompson of the Federal Highway administration.

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. 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 Dale Thompson of the Federal Highway Administration who will be providing an overview of the USDOT’s ICM initiative.

Dale Thompson:

Thank you. I am one of the three project managers for the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) ICM initiative; the others are Brian Cronin of the RITA ITS Joint Program Office and Steve Mortensen of the Federal Transit Administration. I would like to thank all our pioneer sites for participating in this webinar series, in particular Houston, Minneapolis, and San Diego.

Before we get into the details, I will go over the agenda. Also, if you have trouble hearing the presenter, please type in the chat box so that we can make sure that everyone is hearing what we're saying. In addition to that, we have all the participants muted, not because we don't want you participating, we encourage you to ask questions in the chat box and we also encourage questions verbally at the end of each presentation.

I know we can't do introductions around the phone, but I want to acknowledge the participants that signed up for today's conference. We have to others next week, July 22 and July 24 with the other pioneers sites. On today's call, we have more than 80 participants signed up. Of those, mostly the target audience (transportation public agencies), about 20 private sector participants signed up today, about 10 or so from FHWA, FTA, RITA, we have a university or two, and I would like to welcome Ontario, Canada. I also want to acknowledge, before I forget, some pretty important people in setting this up. SAIC particularly Jennifer Symoun, Bill Anderson of ITS America, and I already mentioned the ICM core team.

As far as our agenda today, I will give about a 20 minute overview of the DOT program and the pioneer sites. I will talk about where we are currently and where we will be going as well as some of the goals before turning it over to the sites. Each site will take about 30 minutes or so with questions to discuss where they are with the journey. They will share with you any lessons learned and recommendations. We will open it up to questions and give participants an opportunity to share some of their experiences as well. We're not sure we will go the whole three hours, but we have allocated three hours just in case we need it.

Okay. What I am going to talk about today is it, and some of these we will just touch on and others who will spend more time -- the goal of the program, destruction of how we describe ICM, talk about the eight pioneers fights and some of their assets and attributes, the overall program, outlining the different things we have going on in this activity, beyond just concepts and requirements and development. But some modeling activities and research activities that will feed into an overall demonstration in about a year ago. Some of our milestones and also about our knowledge technology transfer program.

Okay, the purpose of the webinar, there are three purposes:

• We thought it was really important for each of the eight ICM pioneers sites to give them an opportunity for us to acknowledge the journey they have been on and off the work they have done. As far as DOT is concerned, each side has done a tremendous amount of work, collaborating in each metropolitan area.
• Transfer what happened to other metropolitan areas outside of the site their interest in ICM. And it is far as U.S. DOT system goes, the more quarter management systems we have got their, the better off we will be. If we can't really do that, because this program will be effective unless we're able to pass on the things we have learned. So that is to give you an opportunity to benefit from what we have done so far.
• Feedback, which is kind of getting to the questions we ask from you in the polling, for us, DOT, to learn from you, the participants. Developing this program and learning, because there are things going on in DOT and want to give you all an opportunity to give us guidance as well. Really, it is a threefold objective for the webinar.

The purpose of the program is to demonstrate ICM, integrated corridor management. We are doing that through a number of things. First, we are developing a methodology and tools to enable the locations to do that. And then providing steps that the demonstration sites will follow, and then documenting that and passing that on in the form of knowledge and technology transfer products and services. So many of the things easy we are doing focus on transferring that across the country.

So initially, kind of in the way of defining cornered management, right now, most metropolitan areas, and you'll see yourself having a free place system, arterial single systems, may be multiple jurisdictions, rail systems and bus systems. All of these easily operate under a different agency in their own level of sophistication and operating conditions, a different performance measures. And they all may be along a certain corridor, but not optimizing and leveraging on the systems they have and they're operating potential.

Under ICM, the idea is to integrate the systems, the Traffic Operations centers, talk to each other, real-time data can be transferred back and forth as a corporate so we can optimize operations -- on a freeway corridor choric any transportation corridor, and the performance of the corridor, the what is going on in the neighboring network, transit and freeway materials, have a picture of what is going on with their partner agencies and something happens, they can respond to that really in real time. And they are looking together to maximize operations. That is the main concept of ICM.

So in the order of demonstrating ICM, the U.S. DOT decided to select and solicited for and got approximately 23 responses support locations that are interested in partnering with DOT to become pioneers sites in the demonstration of ICMS. So these sites were selected to be pioneers sites. And what the INS is, it is a multiple step process. The first site, we asked to develop ICMS, and that is what these sites have done and that is what they're on to explain to you today. The sites will then, some of them will be asked to and simulate but the ICM in those cities. The final step would be to demonstrate. So those are kind of the phases that we are in as far as to the overall goal of demonstrating ICM.

Of the eight sites, these are the various attributes of each. Not all of them had these components. It sunsets have certain components defined, some have system level materials, some have bus rapid transit, some light rail or metro. Most of them have tolling and congestion pricing. So you will see a core set and how they can be implemented in these corridors and locations. You'll see various applications across the country, so we designed the program phases and modeling methodologies around multiple uses. It is not tied around one technology or one a model, not tied around certain applications, but it can be used and a tailored to meet the needs of each metropolitan area and each corridor.

We have various components. First, we think it is very important to have stakeholder involvement. And since 2004 we have had that. It has been marked general guidance and recently in the last year or so it has been more technical guidance with technical experts helping us out in surveillance and monitoring and data collection and in areas of integration and support systems for ICM. So we have engaged in various stakeholders and will continue to do that. At the end of this webinar, we will be inviting each of you to possibly join in ICM stakeholder forum if you are interested.

Next is a research initiative. Things we have learned and things we can develop and help with integrated corridor management. A lot of the national modeling and development was done in 2002. And then the modeling piece, made up of three sites and now we are moving to stage two of this phase, which is the modeling of the sites themselves, that we will be going into a demonstration in approximately 15 to 18 months. Phase 4 is the knowledge technology transfer we talked about, so we have a knowledge base and we have posted all our products on that and continue to update. And it is really important for those of you interested in doing ICM and interested in learning from the DOT experience, that is where most are transfer will be done. And finally, standards, USDOT is developing standards throughout many different facets of DOT and transportation applications, Traffic Management Centers and transit freeways. Some standards that are ready, standards we feel like we can implement in corridor management, we will integrate those what we feel like we can't.

Okay, I am not going to go into a whole lot of detail on this, but this is really the crux of what the sites are going to be talking about. They were asked to follow a fairly rigid engineering process to identify their area and what the needs are within that corridor. And starting from those needs, they fine-tuned the concept operations petitions for ICM and then begin the journey of developing requirements. Once those are finalized, those documents help and are very clear in having a vision in which you can go into more detail design on. It defines how your one to operate the rules of the jurisdictions, what you want to accomplish, but two do that, each of these sites of this rigid process, and it will explain to you how this process went, and how they each did it and things they learned from that.

Okay, as far as the overall Integrated Corridor Management program is concerned, this is meant to show our philosophy on modeling and simulating the ICM context particularly when looking at the performance measurement. It is really difficult to do modeling or even real-time operations unless you have data. So if you don't have a fairly accurate and good coverage of data, it is difficult to even model what you want to accomplish. In the modeling component, that is important because it allows you to understand the conditions, on out there. Maybe even to isolate, for example. There are many strategies in Integrated Corridor Management. The modeling simulation helps you. If you want to know more about that process, to our knowledge base because there is methodology documents we have developed there, and some summary documents there as well so that will be valuable to you.

Once you define your corridor level majors, all the stakeholders can align to that as an objective, and all of these pieces can did in the process. And if you are really are lacking in one of these three areas, you will probably not be the most optimally and most efficiently operating in ICMS. And this can apply in any ICMS condition, and arterials or freeway and transit when you combine two or more.

Briefly on our modeling methodology, we developed a methodology based on some experiences across the country. And in some of the traffic management agencies have done some of these, so it is an idea of combining the three different levels of models. They'll each offered separately, but then the output of each model its integrated and structured so that the other models can feed and work together at these different levels, so regional patterns, at the macroscopic model, generally planning models, using that tool, that was mode shifting additional transit announces. When you get into the dynamic or mesocopic models, you can look at that changes that are applied to traffic patterns, using congestion pricing. It's done at the microscopic level. And then methodology used at the microscopic level to use different material strategies and other things like that. So all these combined help with a unique methodology that can be duplicated. It doesn't really matter what models you have used. So that is kind of a high level summary of how we come up with the methodology. We have applied that methodology to a test corridor, a railroad corridor and rotated in the knowledge of that is posted on our database. And the methodology of that approach, we will use the pioneer sites that we selected to model.

For this year, 2008, these are the major milestones that have to hit. Again, the knowledge technology transfer is continuous at the top. We have completed our test corridor simulation. Pete said have completed their operations. We will talk about that today, and we're moving into the face of modeling to real-world Pioneer Sites. That should be completed in about 18 months, a very aggressive schedule. And then, each of the sites developing experimental plans and that will be developed and about two months of the time frame from now. That is what we're looking at for this year. Finally, I will just bring your attention to the actual ICM knowledge at the transfer of knowledgebase at the website. These are the kind of resources you will find at this location. Some of them were higher level and some more technical, but I'd think they could get some good overviews and a status in the newsletter. Fact sheets are good for overviews and talking points. If you are familiar with the 511 in your region, this is a good location to go to. For the Federal Highway Division offices, we have presentation to you can use. But again, this is a good resource here for background information on ICM and as well as other information and report and we continually update this as we proceed in the program. As far as a near-term things that we will be posting at the webinar information route we will be posting, and new fact sheets, and lessons learned from the sites. So we will be updating our ICM guidance document, so those will be coming on line for next year as well.

Okay. These are the core team members Brian Cronin, Steve Mortensen, and myself, and again, the website is here (http://www.its.dot.gov/icms/index.htm). I believe that concludes the DOT presentation, and I would be happy to take questions.

J Symoun

The polls are to give us some good opportunities for discussion, as well as the DOT some good information on what is going on across the country out side the pioneer sites. And again, please, if you are planning on implementing ICM, if you could type in the chat box what corridors if you might be implementing it in.

It looks like a lot of people are in the concept stage right now.

We do have a question that came in, is there anything at Florida regarding Integrated Corridor Management?

I don't know, Dale, if, you know, anything, or if anyone wants to jump on the phone and say anything about Florida, that is fine.

D Thompson

I don't really recall. I know a number of corridors that have the sophistication to do that, but I am not aware of ICMS discussions where development has taken place yet, but it doesn't mean it is not going on.

J Symoun

Okay, for the poll questions, I am going to go over the first one. For the corridor you are most familiar with it with, what ICM phase are you currently in? It looks like the majority of folks are in the development stage. I am not sure if you are in the beginning or middle was just finishing, but I think to make gains of knowledge while the sites are discussing their journey. But also, if you could share with us how, if there are any differences or court challenges and lessons learned that was brought up, after that on the chat box for discussion or verbally respond. I think that would be really fitting as far as the discussion topic.

Another question just came in also about Florida, and it says, who would be the individual or organization to contact in Florida to start the conversation about ICM?

D Thompson

I would recommend possibly going to the Federal Highway Division office for guidance there. Buy and not 100 percent sure who that contact is right now, or their number, but it is and that e-mail to me, I will get back to you as far as who that is. Unless there is someone else on the call that can actually specify who that might be in the division office.

J Symoun

As far as the second point, what types of performance majors are you looking at -- as far as DOT goes, the mobility and reliability majors are pretty consistent with the process we're following. That makes up most of the responses. ~ I think is included in our majors as well. Looking at the technical factors, and then there is the emissions measures. The DOT, actually because of the whole going green concept, we're looking at it vented some of our emissions and fuel consumption measures, particularly in areas of pricing and that kind of thing. You are not planning on propeller in planting ICM, it looks like lack of funding and focused support at this point. So hopefully some of the things we are learning it justifications and results we are developing a halt in telling the story and understanding how ICMS can help those locations that haven't started yet or are burning across barriers.

Okay, we will move on to the site presentations now. We will start out with the Minneapolis-Minnesota presentation. Brian and Tina, I am not sure which one of the U.S. is starting off but whenever you are ready, you can begin.

I should mention that before this presentation, there will be a chance to ask questions about Minneapolis before we move on to the next site presentation.

Minnesota - Brian Kary

This is Brian Kary and I work for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. I have taken the lead role in this project. My normal job is a traffic (?) engineer and I am pretty much in charge of everything here at the center. We have primarily focused over the last 20 or 30 years or so that department looks more at the freeways and we are really kind of starting to move towards arterial traffic management and adding more systems out there, transit agencies have done so as well, and integrating those different components together as well as look working with their local partners with the city and county.

Before I get too far into it, I will say that I have Steve in the room with me. And Steve may jump in at certain points in terms of the arterial components. Steve is in charge of the MNDOT signal operations. They're the consultants on the project along with Bob Green from Alliant. We basically hired them to develop the ConOps. So the I-394 corridor, that is our ICM corridor. It is about a 9-mile stretch of freeways that was developed in the late 80's and early 90's. Was basically have a 12 converted to an interstate freeway. It serves the Western suburbs of the Twin Cities going into downtown Minneapolis. We also have two parallel corridors, back to the north and I-7 to the south. Both of those corridors are operated by the MNDOT signal operations folks. Until you cross the city limits of Minneapolis coming in close to downtown, and at that point, then, the control of those signals in those corridors is transferred to the city of Minneapolis. To end up with a bit of a disconnect there. It is still a MNDOT Road, potential control and operation transfers from the state to the city. I-7 is even more interesting tight situation. As you approach I-100, I-7 actually ends. The road doesn't end but the designation changes. It changes into County Road 25 which changes into Lake Street; Lake Street being a city street. So within probably about a 2-mile stretch of the day, we switch from a state operated wrote to a county operated Road to a city operated road. In a very short distance. And of course, we from the agency side may see it that way, but from the motorist’s perspective, they'll see anything different because it is still the same roadway.

I also have a series of connectors. We have essentially three freeway corridors, or 94, 169 and 100. The essentially connect these three corridors as well as some city and county operated roadways such as County Road 73 and Louisiana Avenue. These are basically connected so that if there is an incident on the three primary corridors they provide a way to get from one to the other.

So why does our site need ICM? There are locations of reoccurring congestion on the corridor. It is represented with the orange circles. A number of bottle necks as well as a number of interchanges that are performing poorly on 55 and seven at the simplest intersections. And then on Highway seven, as we come in to Minneapolis, we have seven turning into 25 turning into Lake Street, and they have to turn into an at an avenue. That corridor there is a very congested 1 cent a very complicated and hard to more traffic through there's a winner may be looking for some opportunities to get to downtown Minneapolis.

These two graphs represent the travel time on I-394; suggest focusing in on that corridor and it's equipping the primary corridor for ICM. These represent the maximum, minimum and average at travel time for each corridor both eastbound and West on. So starting off with east-bound direction, we seek the time of day on the x axis which dozens show up too well on this slide in the actual travel time of the Y axis. The court's ruling in the Middle the subtly reflects what that needed travel time is during the month of October of 2005I believe, when we pull this data. Then that has had of that buffer time with that trip reliability. You can see that the blue line is the maximum travel time with kind of the lighter gray colored line on the bottom reflecting the minimum travel time. So you can see quite a bit of fluctuation between the max and the minimum. There is a bit of fluctuation in the morning peak, but the afternoon is by far worse. Inbound, but we do see a lot of people and traffic. In to Minneapolis, we have the Target Center which is where our basketball team plays, but also next to that we have in the Twins' stadium which is currently under construction, so that will raise some intelligence in the near future when that stadium is open. Bills have a large theater district and restaurants, and theaters for plays and musicals, and that really adds to that. ~ of travel time in the afternoon. So there are a lot of time to my not see any congestion but he might also seek severe congestion and see a doubling or tripling of the travel time. Westbound is it a bit more directional, but as much of an issue there. If you have kind of that p.m. peak commute time as people are heading out of Minneapolis and heading toward the western suburbs. You only see that troubled times increase in the afternoon. There is kind of that late evening, and that is really kind of win some of those events let out, so again, some impact from that event congestion.

We also have on the I-394 a hot lane, which has congestion pricing on it, a variable price that changes every three minutes based on traffic conditions. We also have the I-100 interchange to essentially downtown Minneapolis, we have a reversal section, a Tulane reversible section which is our hot lead which operates two lanes in dawned in the morning and two lanes outbound in the afternoon.

Getting back on track here with the presentation, some other reasons why we need ICM is a lot of gaps in coordination between the traffic side as well as the transit management centers, but not only during normal conditions, also during the incident conditions. One of the things we did in fact right away is look into Old highway 57 and the corridors into downtown in Minneapolis that we're not sitting there with little capacity. They're very full roads and there might that be a lot of capacity in terms of the normal peak and reoccurring congestion, a piece of spot improvement here and there to add some transit segments, maybe better signal timing, and looking at those incident conditions. What can we do when there is a crash or special events is to decrease that fluctuation in the trips and travel time, and improve that trip reliability.

This chart shows essentially what is operated by the different agencies. You can see on the map there, everything in yellow is MNDOT controlled, but as to get closer to the city, you see those 33 roadways that turn into County which is represented in blue and city which is represented in green. We also have a couple of roadways, and at the Louisiana Avenue represented in red, that is controlled by St. Louis Park. Also have an effort corridor that is County Road five which sits between Highway seven and 394. That is a County Road and with the debt that originally as a possible alternative to Highway seven and 394, but the type of road which is probably doesn't make it very usable as a corridor or alternate route. Because it is a two-lane area and it goes through a lot of residential streets. So we wanted to focus more on the I-55 and I-7 corridors and avoid the extra traffic.

Wheels white gaps in the arterial data on the network. For the most part, are State Patrol response to all freeway incidents. But when we get to arterial highways, even state run arterial highways, is usually the local police department that usually responds to them. We are in good relations with their state patrol, we share the same center with them and the same system. They are fully insured minted with cameras and protection had stuff, but the gap comes on the local network. They're really not getting enough to make any information with the local police departments are responding to crashes on the system even though they might be our highway. So we're looking for ways to integrate with their system and share information with them, and also improving center to center communications with them. As well as, once we can start getting that information, the king to put the signals and signs on those corridors and providing information in public on that information.

On the transit side of things, we really lack traveler Information portals arterial and transit. We have done a great job with the freeways, so we're looking at these other networks and boats. We are looking at ways we can provide travel times. We provide traveled tens of our freeways; we're looking at ways to fight travel times of materials, as will as travel times for our transit folks. And then providing a variable travel times via sign it, 511, telephone or website. Also, provide parking and write availability. We have a number of those along the corridor, and providing information on the occupancy of those, when they kill up and getting that information again via a sign for a web site.

And as I mentioned already planning for those special events; there are ways where we can approve them I can prove the system reliability it's a little end up with these big peaks between events, and with that featured Minnesota Twins Stadium in mind.

How is ICM going to help our site? Really, by providing the traveler information. By convention, try to get or incident information across the arterial roads, getting on and by the output is falling on with the system rather than getting it directly from those police departments in more of a real time capability. And again, that park and ride availability, really giving the motorists information on different options that are out there so they can make an informed twice and informed decision on whether or not they want to take the freeway, arterial or transit that day.

Improving our coordination during the incident management, again, with those arterial type incidents, but we also have to recognize some gaps. They tend to find out that the road is closed when they see the squad cars closing the road down. Giving them more information more quickly so they can start rerouting their bosses at that time. And really, overall, Oracle would be to reduce congestion, which is a number of improvements in improving travel time and delay and emissions at ending curving safety by getting rid of congestion related crashes, so there are a lot of benefits there. And also in proving that trip reliability.

So who is all involved in this ICM? Who are our stakeholders? Well, MNDOT, broken up into many different areas, our freeway section, arterial section as well as our mid passbooks which is the name of a hot lane. A lot of our local police departments, are suburban departments, rather than having individual dispatches are dispatched out of the Huntington canning office. That we will only have one sector to tap into to as opposed to every single city agency. There are also looking to -- and this should be on line already here soon, there are implementing 8C8 the system that will include all of those local agencies. The MNDOT to is going to a separate system. The city would be the only major system of this that is not integrated with in that Hennepin County dispatch. They have their own in a dispatch center. As well as the traffic votes. The city of Minneapolis, whether a city, county or State Road, the city is operating with signals. So we have been working with them a lot because we want to get this trafficking to downtown Minneapolis, not just to the city limits, so we need to coordinate well with them so we can kind of improve that gap there in the communications at those county intersections.

For a transit agencies, we have three primary agencies. Metro transit is operated by Air Metropolitan Council, probably the largest agency there. In terms of running bus service throughout the metro area, southwest transit as well as Plymouth transit from the city of Plymouth. A true transit is more of a local service 384 and so they stop at all the parking and bright lots. The Outback are picking up folks outside of the corridor and then using the corridor as a way to get from those suburban areas to downtown. To their using it more as an express service. And then have the Minnesota patrol as a major stakeholder as well.

Defining some of the rules and achieved by the ICM stakeholders. As imagined, MNDOT plays the lead roles, we hired a couple consults with some substance to write the kind opt and the SRF. The premier consult was Athey Creek with Alliant being the sub, so they did most of the technical work and writing the document. We had essentially two different groups. A steering committee and a working group that included members of the different stakeholders. The steering group being more of guess you could take the management level and for the supervisory level, and that working grouping more of the technical level. It ends up though as time went on, those groups ended up fusing together. It had it made sense because some of the messengers started delegating the steering committee group two that technical person anyway, as we have the same person at both meetings and refused to the and I think that reflects some of the resource issues amongst all the different departments, it is very hard to dedicate a lot of staff time to one particular project, but we did get a lot of sticklers participating still in one way shape or form. We have a stakeholder workshop as we developed the concept of operations. We had a workshop to be added as a muffled the Fed had been done already, and presented a draft and try to work through some of the gaps that we had to fill in.

Probably the biggest thing we ended up doing, and it may be sounds it a little bit counter to the omission of ICM, with contends be very difficult in these workshops as well as these working groups when you have all the different partners there. They want to tend to talk a little bit in their own areas, so it was tough to get in a little bit of the detailed information out of the different agencies. We really kind of ended up having individual stockholder meetings, where we went out and talked with just the transit providers and and just the arterial signal folks. We really got to know what their user needs work, with their gaps were. From this individual agency levels. But then we bring them all back together again at a workshop and kind of summarize what all of those concerns were, and that kind of point out things, like things of the law enforcement side that transit is not getting information fast enough and it impacts their transit system. So it kind of at different levels of effort and different levels of meetings as time went on.

And we had kind of a core group of Project Management Team group. So it wasn't just myself working with the consultants, but we kind of had someone representing the arterial side and one person from the transit side, Gary Snyder from Metro transit, who just stepped into the room actually, and he kind of presented to transit and, and had our Project Management Team from the console inside, so as we developed that, that women could set up a agendas for meetings and by doubt and to talk two in a be who we were missing. So that wasn't me just being the project manager.

The graph on the right kind of represents what our objectives were including the stakeholders. We have a lot of his system systems out there, and a lot of the existing legal devices, and then have something and field tests. But that's in time at some software and killed device integration that would be looking to add with ICMS, but all of those kind of worked independently of each other, unless you have kind of this overall torture umbrella that covers all of them with these partnerships and agreement in actions to support ICM. That is why it was really poured ticket these takeovers had been tied into their bye into the system. We didn't want to get the system out there and it had it not maintained and obsolete after a few years.

So what does our system look like? This diagram here at the right is essentially a logistical Tech and Duke had a show some of the information exchanged throughout the system. Everything you see in yellow is essentially what we are proposing as a ICMS system. We have easily 81 Data hub in the middle, which, the data had been what it is this, it is where all the information is passed through. Whether that is travel time information, incident Information, video, anything shared through the different centers. The difference centers that are represented in blue as the existing, so we have Metro transit, we have our IT MNDOT freeway operation side; we have over here what is known as our ABC crutches on the right-hand side. But those are some large parking structures at the end of the 393 corridor. They're owned by the city and run by the DOT. Iraq's the constructed as part of the 393 corridor and they have direct access two and from the freeway right into those crutches. On the top, we have are three different emergency management partners. The city of Minneapolis, said at the bottom, we have are traffic folks. And I should also note that the Metro Traffic Control also kited includes our partners at Southwest and Plymouth Metro Link.

So they yellow portions that you see added onto those blue are essentially the enhancements that would have to be done to existing systems to allow them to communicate through the Data hub with other systems. So really, ICMS incorporates everything within that larger light yellow box. It is not just a Data hub or a server that sits in the middle, but rather pieces out of all these systems connected together.

Okay. If you want to go to the next slide here, itches the logistical Tech and Metro control center. What this diagram does is, we took a bath or view diagram that I just showed you and to teach one of those blue boxes and essentially broken up into each center to show what type of information it is content, communicating through the center. We have our Data hub kind of reflected as that bill circle at the top, and he can see how that is communicating with the addition that is being added to the Metro transit control center system.

But to use this as an example, instead of walking to every one of these lines of communication, but used at the top time as an example of how we want to compare that to the freeway system. That system were able to collect travel time. That troubled him information miscalculated and stored in the Metro transit existing system. So information essentially coming from the bus is then transferred over to the NTT C system. With the enhancement of that system, that is then communicated to the information side of MNDOT with their regional transportation center. On our end, we are already attacking in travel time for the vehicle.

So through the connection point, and now we can deploy a sign or onto the web site with that data. Now, what we're doing a little bit different, is that data hub does not necessarily mean that we haven't independent server that is sitting somewhere, to be determined, that collect this data, compiles it and it's it's it back out. Instead we are looking at kind of a virtual data hub. One of the things we are ready two at MNDOT with their freeway data is weak close all of our food detectors data. Speed, occupancy, density, volume, on a web site that is updated every 30 seconds. Anybody who has read access can access back. As of a lot of our media partners are getting that information, creating their own speed maps with it. And because a lot of that on the web site as well.

So instead of having the hardware connection were an independent service out there that raises the question up, okay, who owns that's ever, who operates a that server? Instead, we had these virtual connections through the internet and sharing that data. It is all public information, so if we are already posting the troubled times, the true transit can grab those troubled times accustomed to their website to compare them to the transit travel times, and we could do the same period a the way, I guess depending on how we want that information to be shared. But it's our media partners want to get that information too, that just increases are flexibility on getting that information out to the public. Because a lot of times they could distribute it easier than we could as a public agency. So really kind of leaning on those media partners to help distribute that information.

Okay, if we can go to the next slide -- the next slide kind of shows the direction on our end. This is functional diagram. What we did when we were creating our SRS, retreated a logistical Tech and that kind of showed how information was taken from a field device center. Such a higher level picture. Then broke it down into a functional diagram. So take that blacks in the middle and explain, okay, what systems, what calculations, what databases are within that two dots? I will get into a whole lot of detail here other than just Tuesday, we really wanted to know what was going on in the flocks of Women developing a system requirements, we understood what kind of links were needed, what kind of data bases were needed, purses with calculations needed to be performed in order to get our ICM system to work. So it Billy helped in identifying those gaps, identifying those needs, as we developed that the two. But I figured we were to go back and do that again, I'd think it would be kind of a lesson learned.

We started developing some of our systems requirements without fully developing are diagrams. And it kind of needed a little bit complicated, because we were developing simultaneously, and we found that are diagrams, maybe we didn't identify all of those gaps. Maybe we didn't identify all of those connection points. So we ended up three rating and a lot of our system requirements, and we the system requirements in terms of how we broken down into different sections, different chapters, if you will. And if if I was to do it again, I would mention that my diagrams work as well developed and as well walk out as they could be first, before really getting into some of those nuts and bolts and getting those System requirements defined and created so that we weren't having to keep going back into redeveloping things.

Here is from the MNDOT operations side just to show how that it comes back in. We have many different systems, we have our 511 system with our CAR system that feeds the data into 511. The have and iris system that is basically a our system that we developed in-house to control all of our field equipment. So all of those systems would require an addition to communicate with the data Hopper that would communicate with these other centers. We also have our video switch, but do have some hard wired connections to Minneapolis traffic as well as Metro transit with direct fiber connections. But the direct barter connections become very costly to try to do that with the other centers we are not currently connected into. ^ looking at other ways to connect into those centers with light streaming video for example. We actually were selected as the site for the public and national convention, and we're doing a lot of video connection with the RNC to allow some of these agencies to communicate already. So we will have that in place by this fall already. So ICMS kind of helps lead into that development because some of the discussions we are already having an different connections that we were meeting, those user needs we're already bought out indicative helped us in developing a plan for handling operations during the republic and national convention.

Of this slide here, we have talking about the technical side of the arterial end of the ICMS. We had some planned instrumentation for 55 and Highway seven.

One of the gaps we recognize right away, and I'm sure everyone has recognized this, how do you provided material information? It is kind of like comparing those troubled times but we don't know how to achieve that quite yet. An affable but steep jump in here for a bit because of the above test projects which are looking at and let him talk about that.

You know one of our main goals here is trying to get the ability to compare travel times between the different modes. Presently, MNDOT is sponsoring to research projects to develop troubled times on the arterial spreadable are planning on using data that exists from the traffic signals and maybe in the historic data, but very little.

We have also evaluated cell phone based travel time. We are also evaluating historical GPS based system to develop troubled times, so we should have some research data fairly soon. We are also involved in a joint research project, or a pier project or something looking at arterial troubled times as well.

One thing that we have kind of stumbled across, it was kind of known, but it is being hammered into us is it that, the technology you end up using were looking at, it kind of depends on what you actually need the information for. Whether you are one to use it for planning for along those lines or does it for operational to develop travel times. The kind of makes it your choice on what kind of technology you are actually going to use for travel times on arterial.

Getting back here to the third bullet, and I should probably take up this be here because I am talking too long. Our plan is jointly developed arterial plants and I think I will skip ahead here in the interest of time and explain that better in the future slide.

On the transit side, we have existing ADL Systems on the existing transit, but one of the challenges we have is that our Plymouth patrolling as well as ourselves with transit is not currently have that system. Fortunately there is a project running parallel to this that is looking at AVL system and hopefully that will be placed in the next couple of years. Do have our challenge in providing current information. That geometrics of the lots were not exactly made for that kind of things of it is hard to get accurate count for that. And providing a comparative transit time on a second freely. We have to be sure we are comparing apples to apples. Do have a historical data purses realtime Data? Text that could be kind of costly to either end of the side, where you could be getting that information to the public because they're not really comparing the same thing at the same time. And we do have a kind of a plan that is part of our UPA project in doing those comparative travel times.

The next two slides really kind of show some of our performance measures. Of what goes to all of these things, but we're looking at everything from improved trip reliability, improved troubled times, maximizing throughputs across the different networks and boats, improving safety, it would be a lot of different performed speeches with a cat turned to major to see what kind of effectiveness 31 hats.

These are some of are lessons learned in terms of operational. When you're looking at stakeholders, one of the things that we're kind of told with Systems Engineering processes, books on technology first. It was difficult to do to get the stake holders involved and get them interested. Remember going out to one of the sticklers and saying, what are your gaps? What are your needs? What are the things to do to improve your operations? What kind of communications gaps do you have? And the questions they asked was, well, are you talking about putting cameras? We're not trying to recognize technologies first, we're trying to recognize gaps. And what are your need for cameras? So it throws the question back to them. It was hard to its decoders' involved in that.

An effort good way to probably engage the stakeholders is, one of the pieces of the ConOps it operational scenario, which is the last section of the ConOps. And that describes what your system is going to do as the back from this user level as long as the agency level. And if I was to go back and do those first. It really kind of helped recognize some of those gaps and helped engaging that stakeholders because they really started to visualize what it was that they had planned and what they are looking to develop. And they really kind of identified some areas that we kind of justice and some connectivity or corporation between the different sectors but it didn't actually exist or as low as it could be. And we recognized some new partners during the discussion of those operational scenarios.

We actually identified some near-term strategy is. We identified some things that we could and the mad at a low cost, even some no cost options, but just through sitting at the table together, we recognized some gaps we could fill very easily. We have a separate agency or private consultant that actually runs our men pass operation, so if anything happens on that quarter, we send a message or text to them to let them know what is happening. All the people that ran on in this book are just as well as art had to coax heard about that and they said, if you could get us on that email lists, we could find out about that incident about a minute after it happens as opposed to five or 10 minutes once it was too late to start diverting people. Ultimately we would try to improve that by CAD to CAD, but that was a costly solution. This was a very low-cost way to do things and it was just kind of a gap that we didn't realize that was out there that we could fill very easily.

As it probably everyone has heard, we had the I-35W bridge collapse back in August, the discussions and partnerships we are building with ICM, that really helped us during the bridge collapse. We really did not have a lot of coordination, especially with the city of Minneapolis traffic office from the pre wayside. It will that of the arterial side are signal folks were talking to their signal folks, but freeway, we were working in our own silo. And ICM was closing the gaps just to the partnerships and discussions we have had, so that helps with the to the kitchen had during the collapse. And we have weekly operations meetings and we will likely come tenure that partnership in years to come. It will likely be a biannual meeting where we meet every six months or so.

As far as institutional lessons learned, we have a lot of concerns as far as ICM. A lot of similar projects were done in the past and it is hard to overcome the legacy and fears that occurred. And in one of that came to the fact that we identified that technology, the other place to put it, but really didn't identify those using beads and who was going to operate and maintain those needs, so it fell into disrepair and became a low priority. As a mention before, there is a lack of spare capacity and alternative routes, so that was a concern of the stakeholders. You're putting traffic on arterial that are already at capacity. That was a concern to work through. So we focused more on incident management and improving that suppertime index.

With ownership, maintenance and operations on the next slide, we had a lot of legal issues of having a joint control of equipment. Like the city of Minneapolis with a little bit concerned with the DOT coming in and be the overriding signals. So that was some issues that had to be brought to the table and work through with the different agreements that partnership at the ICMS is developed. Assigning agency responsibility, we had to decide if we are adding new equipment, who is going to maintain it and be responsible for it?

And maintain that stakeholder interest is kind of a challenge. Making ICMS a priority, we all have other jobs and task going on, in answering that question of what is in it for me, especially their law enforcement's partners for them in getting this information out and sharing this information and try to address some of those questions, and we really kind of used some of these major incident debriefing said kind of a carrot to get people to attend the meetings. Fifty go to the next slide, and had a tanker roll over on the corridor as we were developing our Common Ops and development documents, it actually happened as the documents were coming into their final drafts, but it helped identify gaps. We invited all of our Minister of partners but also some of the traffic partners and transit partners that are normally involved in a debriefing like this, and that helps kind of racket as that, when we close down the freeway and a decree this incident in a very timely manner, but what was the impact it did have on the arterial system and transit system? And how could ICMS help to prevent in the future? And finally, on my last slide, as a kind of mentioned already, in developing test system requirement, developed as functional requirements and logistical diagrams purse. It helps create a picture of what the system is before you start getting into the nuts and bolts and what the requirements are going to be.

J Symoun

Thank you, Brian that was very helpful. Any questions for Brian?

The first question was, did the MPO have any role in the ICM?

B Kary

Not directly. Our counsel does operate the Metro transit and the word achy agency and working alongside with us as well as the Project Management Team and steering committee and Working Group meetings. And we had briefings to upper management and Metro transit as well. So since this was more of an ITS project, they don't get as involved in the operations side. But Metro was involved in that respect.

D Thompson

And that actually varies from Pioneer Site to Pioneers Site. In the Oakland area, the MPO is a bigger player in the program. In Dallas, the transit agency is a leader in the ICM project. It's one thing from site to site, using it for the institutional structures and the leadership roles. I know for some sites, the MPO has more of a leadership role.

Question:

The next question is, if ITS Regional Architectures existed can you please discuss how they were either used or will be modified in defining the various Con Ops and project requirements?

B Kary:

I will give a whole lot of detail but kind of just in brief, our latest architecture was designed and developed in 2001, so it is actually getting into a mold. This does it some of the pieces fit in with architecture in terms of the goal and planning and connecting the existing centers and some of the things we're doing with its it operations in integrations there. We're currently in the process of modifying our architecture. That is in draft form right now, so many areas that ICMS has kind of expanded on that architecture we will make sure to incorporate that in this next draft of the architecture of that will probably be finalized in the coming months.

Question:

Hello, my name is Dan, having worked for a company that manufactures sensors, what type of sensors are used to collect more data?

B Kary:

On our freeway system, we used primarily loops. We have probably 4500 loops out there on the system covering 300 miles of systems. We have actually been very happy with the loops. I know a lot of people like them because of the minutes headaches, but we find that to have a much lower capital costs and get pretty good data from them, and as far as ongoing maintenance, we have all internal maintenance folks. I can't quote of the top of my head what some of our maintenance costs are, but has said, at any given time, our failure percentage of the loops is in the single digits. I think it is like under 5%. So 97 or 98% of their system at any given time is up and running and calculating data. Would get the data back every 30 seconds. We have got probably 15 years worth of archived data on this corridor. As well as most of our system, depending on when the system was put in place. And what we are looking at on the local system -- on the arterial system, sorry -- we have a lot of loops out there today. The have not used any deal, we tried it but we have too many issues with the deal, casting shadows and all of the other issues that people have kind of seen before. And so we haven't used a whole lot of sites camp and stuff like that. We have used some wave front that is temporary in works zones but that is about it.

J Symoun:

Okay. I guess at this point, we will move on to the Houston presentation. Our next presentation will be given by the Houston Pioneer Site about the I-10 corridor.

Houston - John Gaynor and Tony Voigt:

I am John Gaynor and I am the project lead on the I-10 corridor in Houston. Before I get started, of like to introduce my co-presenter Tony Voigt from the Texas Transportation Institute.

That corridor is home to more than 90,000 residents and about 300 entity thousand households. Corridor is projected two that a million more residents than the next two decades. This corridor has about 20,000 police and three major implements centers. Total vehicle miles of travel on the corridor is 20 million miles per day, and an estimated 300,000 [speaker/audio faint and unclear] in the a.m. and peak periods we have 330 buses, it did thousand vehicles, 43,000 passenger trips, almost 10,000 passenger stomach parking spaces high as 10 and you 90, about 7500 are utilized daily, about 80 percent capacity.

This blue line here is the border of the ICM corridor. It is a pretty large area and encompasses several freeways. In addition, we have the I-10 corridor which is under construction shown in red. It is also a hurricane evacuation route. We also have a hurricane evacuation routes on Highway six, Beltway eight, and U.S. to 90. And that's pretty much covers this. The other areas of employment are the energy corridor, the West Chase district, and uptown Houston. We are not going Candace corridor of a way to the CPD.

Here is another view of the same corridor and the other thing that is important are the park and ride lots. There are quite a number of them and there are also several transit centers. Those will be tied to the rail that comes into the South downtown. This is the operational corridor. This is what the traffic looks like on a daily basis. If you look at this passed line, this is what indicates triggers for alarms on the Houston TranStar. So when it drops to those levels, it begins an automatic scenario at TranStar. Here is another view of the corridor, and what a want to point out here is transit is a major component. But the area that the local bus service is shown in green. So that is why the parking lot utilization is very important in our ICM corridor.

Currently, there is coordination between the agencies. There are four main partners at Houston TranStar. The city of Houston, Metro transit authority, City of Texas, and Harris County. TransStar has a platform for the data in the system at this time. That means lots of data comes in and there is limited capability for control but a very robust incident management capability. ICM will integrate more of the ITT as data. ICMS will take the system data and Court need it for more operational use among the Parker agencies and disseminate a consolidated transportation system information package that crosses agencies, travel modes can't travel facilities.

In the corridor, the main goal is to provide personalized real-time information for all modes. Enhancements of incident management within the corridor will help to address indents in crashes, planned events, construction, and emergencies such as hurricanes. There are numerous agencies involved, including the Toll road authority, Harris County Office of Management, City of Houston police and fire department. Altogether we have state, county, and local law enforcement, 8 smaller cities and villages, private towing companies, information service providers, fleet operators, and traffic services. Houston is very lucky as there were many pre-existing agreements in place and an existing organizational structure. Shown on the slide on the right side of the slide, the map there is off our webpage, and it's real-time traffic map that shows over 600 cameras and fiber on tick networks. The last bullet here is basically it's our project. The team must decide what the common good is versus what 100% might be chose for your own agency.

Without going into the details of the systems feeding our ICM, we do have a communication network, CCTV and automatic vehicle identification, traffic volume identification, flow signals, regional computer traffic signal system, road weather information, truck roll over ramp system, queue congestion warning system, and arterial transit data. This is a simplified overview of how the ICM process looks like but what we have are four subsystems:

• The freeway system.
• The regional incident management system.
• The arterial system.
• The transit system.

Those four feed the ICM system process subsystem data and prepare the multi-agency system use. Process the ICM data and packages near real-time operations and decision support as well as public consumption. There at the far right, you see that we have information both going out to the public and to the traffic operations. Currently, this is what we display on the dynamic message sign. This is the same dynamic message sign with alternating messages. The HOV travel time is 13 minutes on I-10 at the time of 239. The free way travel time is 18 minutes at 239 on I-10. This is an example of what the next generation of PDA display will show. We'll have freeway, HOV, toll, and bus side-by-side.

ITS elements are not integrated. We'll be able to achieve ICM across networks, freeway to tollway now. The travel system could be combined with metro's transit to produce traveler system information to compare travel times and potential costs. $4-5 a gallon gas makes the public interested in those potential costs. The limiting factor to complete ICMS would be the lack of arterial travel information. The county and city are outfitting the arterial system this year and Tony Voigt has done a demo of arterial travel times which he has the research report he can provide more information on.

The ICM will allow for more multi-view of the corridor, easier cooperation between agencies, access to multi-agency data, single user interface common platform that agencies can repackage this if they wish, visible source of information such as travel time and cost savings, it will encourage management of junctions and interchanges, and promote discussions on policies and procedures that discuss resource sharing of other transit systems.

Some of the lessons learned:

Agencies are hesitant to turn over complete authority over to another agency or corridor commander that was described on the initial documentation on ICM. Operate using a cooperative committee on the TranStar agency managers who are physically housed at TranStar who have been working together for a decade. Make decisions as a group. Capacity and availability estimated spatial and temporal incident impacts suggested operational changes based on estimated impacts. Give all agencies a bigger picture of the impacts on the corridor.

Why do we need ICM in the first place? We stove pipe deployments our agency specific but there are data elements common to others to manage the total system. Why are you doing with my data the agency might ask? That result from a fear of loss of internal control and reliability becomes more of an issue as people look at the user data especially the public. In our example we have four equal partners in TranStar. The less than majority champion is finding the push to keep ICM to the forefront of the challenge. The division and priority comes from the top of course. Instead of one boss you have multiple CEOs to deal with. Getting them on the same page will move things along and keep you have having ulcers. Good direction from leadership develops momentum. Have a clear message why working together is important. Encourage agencies think about being in their cohort’s position. Walk a mile in someone else's solution - it helps architecture. Forefront of regional architecture back when it really was a national architecture.

We had some specific problems in Houston, such as hurricane evacuations and other things that weren't addressed in the national architecture that are very important in our area. Now on this diagram, what I'm showing here is that even in a large Legacy system like Houston that's been around for a decade, there's a planned and there's the planned and the future -- trying to get the arrow again -- planned we have quite a bit. And existing, we also have a lot. But the point is, you never finish with the ICM. It's a living document and if you look to the right this is our roadway system and as you can see it involves transit. It involves the freeway, involves toll roads and the arterial system. As you have heard from other pioneer sites nobody has done all of them yet.

Other lessons learned. Think about it from the other public perspective. What does the public need to make a decision? Ask them. Having a good website where we can do web surveys or like the federal government is doing in this presentation, is get people's input. Learn a lot from that. Work through the “what ifs”, from the most minor incidents planned or otherwise to the most major evacuation or incidents events. Houston had an evacuation of almost 4 million. Having four agencies under one roof doesn't solve all the issues. Solve data acquisition for proprietary systems. Systems engineering isn't easy on simple projects much less easy on complex. Concept organization procedures for agencies other than your own. Be willing to listen to others. There will be gaps but that's okay. Try to think big. Identify the technical requirements by agency affected and there will be more than one agency impacted by each requirement.

In summary, the requirements document is where we are now. I'm available for questions and here's my contact information, but also don't forget, Tony Voigt is also available for questions.

Question:

What is the current ADT on IH-10? 210,000 vehicles per day.

J Gaynor:

Jennifer while you are waiting for that. I want to add to Tony’s comment. Transfer locations. In our corridor, there's two interchanges, one at U.S. 59 and 610 and the one at I-10 and 610 which is also the west loop with the KD freeway. Those the busiest interchanges in the state of Texas.

In terms of the update, I think we are usually doing that on an annual basis. Our MPO Houston Galveston counsel is involved in updating the architecture.

T Voigt:

We are currently assisting with the architecture. I found it very helpful to lean back on the national architecture and a lot of the content as I was developing and informing some of the stakeholders of the various needs within the corridor it was a very good source of information because it spans all the modes, all the stakeholders could get a better idea of what their partners maybe had concerns about and maybe what their priorities were as well.

D Thompson:

Okay. Thank you Tony. Depending on the regions there's different keepers of the architecture. DOT, MPO. There's different rolls of the MPO, different rolls of the agencies at various levels within these ICM programs because you are following a systems engineering process and the architecture does as well to make sure when the architectures are updated because they are living documents. That are ITS and operations related go back to the architecture and map to that. I know Houston did it. Most of the sites have done it.

J Symoun:

Okay. San Diego. Alex Estrella will be presenting.

San Diego - Alex Estrella:

My name is Alex Estrella and I am the MPO project lead. I guess the first question to answer is why did you think our site would be a candidate and why do we need an ICM project? As the MPO, one of our key responsibilities is to help multimodal or jurisdictional on the planning or coordinating side of projects. These philosophies translated into one of our key documents which include the development of the regional transportation plan. Really the RTP and this philosophy set the stage for setting the appropriate regional investments throughout the region which fall within three components: Land use, development systems, and management and demand management. Really, these key components serve as the foundation for improving mobility, the quality of life, reducing congestion and how do we connect all these components with the system networks we're talking about the freeway, the transit and local networks. Another key component of RTP is these investments are highlighted in RTP in a corridor-level approach. Really, the idea's that we address these components and try to improve efficiency at a core level approach. RTP, trying to optimize the whole system as opposed to individual systems or programs, kind of really sets the stage and kind of drives and is also reflected in the ICM concept.

Now kind of leading, why did we think that the ICM corridor was a candidate for the ICM? Well the I-15 north south arteries that provides north south movement in the region. It serves local regional and interregional travel. It provides movement for computers goods and services and it's also one of the key arteries for computer routes that connects the northern inland with major regional employment centers in the downtown area of San Diego. It is a key corridor that provides a number of trips composed of employees that work within the San Diego area or live in San Diego outside of the neighboring county north of the San Diego region. Range from throughout this 20-mile length corridor per day. It really consists of 8 to 10 Lane throughout the boundary of the corridor.

But why did we select this corridor? It's been on going efforts and work initiatives along this corridor that really touch on rich history of partnership and collaboration and these really involved as part of the development or manage lane systems so there's been both institutional and also technical carnation and we want to leverage that for the ICM project. But in terms of current operations for the ICM right now, the current manage lab system is currently works you can see sort of the middle section right now. It's working as a two lane reversible hot lane facility. It's a 7-mile barrier system which operates in the southbound direction and the AM peak period and switched to the northbound during the p.m. peek period.

Our vision for this corridor like I said through extensive cooperation with our local and regional state partners, the plan is to develop a multimodal plan. Segments the first stage is the middle section highlighted in red. Sort of between state route 52, does not highlight here but the point there just north of approximately 8-miles of express lanes and we anticipate opening this facility by this year's end. The second stage is kind of the north segment will extend the express lane facilities just North. The completion for that is 2011. Retrofitting and existing of the four lanes is estimated to be complete by 2012. So really these efforts that are on going in the past really kind of set the stage and we wanted leverage it for the ICM effort.

I'm just going to go over three quick schematic slides that provide a little more detail on the corridor and those key paralleling the corridor the plan system of assets. For example, these include vehicle detection loops along the freeway system. CCTV equipment. Median ramps, traffic signals, some tangible health odd signs and some description on the movable barrier and dynamic science as well. But also on the arterials includes the location of signal traffic controls along the arterials and ramp meeting locations. One of the key aspects here is we're fortunate that other than two agencies in the county, use actually the same traffic signal platform. The idea is that this platform, which is part of our regional arterial management system, will serve as a platform for the regional arterial piece for the ICM and really the ramps project provides multi-agency coordination and timing synchronization efforts. It also highlights up to 15 traffic signals that will be part of the ICM corridor. I'll go ahead. This is sort of the top that you are seeing here. This is the northern section from route 78. All the way down to the kind of northern portion the natural point where lake hogs is at.

The sheet number two, it's more of the middle section of the corridor, moving south ward from lake hogs to another state route 56 and this is, I believe we start getting into some city of San Diego and then also some locations within the city of [palway] our partners in this project. Finally, the last section is city of [palway] and city of San Diego and takes us to our end point state route 163.

Now in terms of kind of give you a highlight of how the corridors performing. This is a snapshot of some data that was collected in 2005 for the southbound, now northbound direction. Kind of key bottleneck locations. As you can see here, like any major compute corridor it's subject to your recurring congestions. Recurring point or bottleneck just south of [eke cancy to]. During the southbound a.m. commute period; as you move southbound you are starting to see a little bit less traffic as you get closer to the urban region, looking between 30 and 40 minutes recurring delay.

This is sort of the same information on the northbound direction. You start seeing some again, going back to the north term of the corridor. We start seeing some northbound delay and the PMP greater than the 80 minutes. Now that I pretty much reviewed the ICM corridor and how the really question is how can the ICM concept help us manage the corridor. Who I talked about in the RTP the planning level effort and it kind of goes again with our vision where for the region, so we see that as kind of the platform or the beginning of moving forward with an ICM concept. The way we see it is that it's really the ICM is the natural extense from a planning to a design integration and implementation. So really, this ICM project gives us the opportunity to mover forward with an integrated management and implementation approach and really allows us to specifically examine what happens next. How all these systems come together to operate with the existing networks as a single unified network. Performance measured for improving mobility, efficiency operations accessibility and management.

So really, the idea is through this ICM concept is to give travelers the ability to make seamless and convenient shifts along the corridor network to complete their trips including shifts between arterials and the freeway or vice versa or the trips between the managed lanes to the general purpose lanes or to the arterials. Also allows users the ideas to use our travel information system to access information also placing that type of information via the CMS that are found along the corridor and makes informed decisions. The way we see it, we see the ICM that will provide the operational and institutional platform for moves forward for actually implementing what we envision in our planning documents. And actually achieve integrated corridor management via a unified and transportation network vision.

In terms of who are our stakeholders, well the stakeholders consist, like I said we have a rich history since we are the MPO we leverage that ability to bring everybody on board. They mainly include California Department of Transportation, regional transit agencies the Metropolitan Transit System, the North County Transit District (NCTD), the California Highway Patrol (CHP), and the Cities of San Diego, Poway, and Escondido. They helped with the development of the ConOPS system requirements. We also brought in local sheriffs, local police departments, fire departments, to work together and like I said, being the fact that we are the MPO and involved on a lot of regional projects we were able to leverage relationships with existing staff and moves forward with the ICM project.

In terms of how did we specifically identify the rolls and responsibilities for the ICM project? We leverage a lot of ongoing existing committees organizational models that we have in place. I kind of highlighted some key. The staff level, where we the lead for a regional traffic engineering counsel, the staff level we have that relationship with the local traffic engineers so we were able to bring those team players in. At more at the project level, we, for example, the ramps project we did bring specific knowledge and institutional knowledge to this process and the core responding folks working on that. More at the high level, we also have an ITSCO model where the folks involved in these are really the chief executive officers from all these major cities San Diego, call trance and our executive officer. That's the level of folks or models that we brought in and through that process we were able to walk through the anticipated roles and responsibilities to move forward with the ICM project. Most importantly the fact that this is a new concept more or less. It also allowed us to address or balance any possible issues that we would have now that we're looking beyond the freeway; we're also looking at local arterials, what issues will local agencies have. That allows us to address some of those issues as well.

Technical in terms of how our ICM system will look? Our ICMS system contests of major subsystems and this includes the system services which includes a system wide function which would include the data management, support system and this really, for example system management system really touches the functionality of providing a system security, the back up and archive system for the CMS system. The data storage system, deals more with the creation of a management or a reporting or configuration storage system for the ICMS and the life cycle support system touches more on the on going training or the document take or any system maintenance functions of the ICMS system. Another key -- the second key pieces are intermodal transportation management system. This system really is our existing regional communications network that includes leased or agency owned communications resources so it's the backbone of the data exchange for the regional ITS systems and the region. Really serves as the glue so it's composed of several subsystems that will be part of the ICMS system and these for example, includes our STMS system, which is our freeway transportation management system, our managed lanes congestion system, our ramp metering system and our ramp system which I already talked about.

Finally, the decision support system. This will be a new subsystem in the ICM that will serve as the management system that will provide the functionality or manually generate plans for model options along the corridor and response for example, today operates or times events or incidents. Again, a key component is part of our ITMS don't have the functionality. This would be a new system involved in the ICMS. As to give you a perspective of what we're talking about. You can see here, a part of the architecture. It shows the three key systems manage life cycle and data storage systems. You have the DSS system which is really the new pieces for the CMS and the ITMS system. It's composed of a wide variety of existing subsystems. In terms of how the ICMS will facilitate, what I did here is grabbed an example of the lay out of how it would work based on the current ITMS platform, which like I said earlier, it provides the opportunity to give you the information at this point, but as we move forward, the idea through the decision support system, it provides the ability to make modal actions and as you can see here, you will have different information coming in to the ITMS based on existing subsystems, the arterial, the cat system for the 911, the free way TMS system, the regional transit management system, ultimately that will be going to the ITMS server and will be going to decision support system of the ICMS system. Moving forward kind of more specific, this is a schematic diagram of how it will actually facilitate an operational condition. This is a schematic diagram of how the system will function under your traditional day-to-day operations to address recurring congestion. There are other scenarios. The idea here is that you have information coming in from the freeway management system, from roadways, from -- then coming into the decision support system. Regional support system. Regional management piece coming into position and distributing that information to 511 or the transit management system as well.

In terms of lessons learned that I would like to share, one of the key things here, as we were developing this and going through the ICM process, I think one of the things here is from a management perspective, you have to come to the reality that you are dealing with three different elements and all have an equal weight and these different elements include a technical, operational and institutional piece. Understanding that there are three different elements that need to come together as part of the ICM really allows us to address any issues that were developed in the process and categorize them accordingly. A technical issue, we would generally have our ITS folks address that issue but we would have a focused discussion. Operational issue, that would be more on the traffic engineers or some ITS. How is it that we have to sort of change the operating philosophy to address an operational issue. The institutional gets to that but addresses a higher level where we bring the ITS folks involved in it, then those types of issue also be addressed by the institutional piece and provide weight so we would move forward with any operational, technical guidance that we would need to. One final thing is the underlining common denominator is really about people. It's just to keep in a perspective on that. The people that legislate what is it that we need to do. It is people that actually forecast what's going to happen in the corridor and also deal with people that build the associated systems and is aware of what's going on because along the corridor and also there's also people that are involved in operating the corridor and finally, there's also people that manage the technical piece for the ITS pieces that go in there. All these are for people the way I see it, it's for people who are just trying to do this so they can get to work on time.

This is a picture of the on-going construction. Along the managed lane piece there's also some bus rapid transit system going along here. This is, I believe the northern section where we were planning a BRT along with a park-and-ride facility. It gives you an indication of the managed lanes down the middle and the direct access rounds to the managed lanes facilities. On the left hand side, this is looking southbound I believe. That's where we have the park and ride facilities and the access points. Just to give you a more conceptual, these are the ideas of how it's going to look in the future. This is looking at the same location but looking at northbound, we have the park and ride facilities direct access ramps to the local arterials and the drop off ramps from the direct access and then, the access points from the managed lanes facilities. As part of this presentation there is a movie clip that kind of ties in but I believe I can't run it but you are more than welcome to download it. It gives you -- putting together the access ramps and how that's going to be integrated with the managed facilities.

That's pretty much it. That's my presentation. As far as the architecture, our ITS plan project manager is not here but our ITS plan was approved by the FHWA guidance. I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Conclusion

D Thompson:

Okay. Well I know it's getting long and I want to first apologize to Alex. When the question about MPOs came up, one of those situations where you look out in the room and you miss the person next to you. I want to recognize Alex as a leader he's an MPO and doing a great job out there. We have MPOs leading Oakland and San Diego. I think it's a really good mix. We can't overlook, you have to have the collaboration among all the agencies whether the planning, transit or operating agencies for traffic on arterials and highways. If you miss that one key element of institutional collaboration and development requirements in the operation of your ICM, then you're not going to be doing it as effectively from the start. Thank you very much for your presentation. John and Tony as well. I think we have some additional questions if there are no chat questions that popped up. We have polling questions before you go. It won't take but just a few minutes.

I mentioned knowledge and tech knowledge transfer are one of the key indicators for success three or four years out. We wanted to ask a few questions particularly about the resources we have available to you. First if you could look at two or three of these, rank the level of usefulness of the ICM website in the knowledge that you have of it. If you have gone to the website, if you haven't, that's an indicator. Awareness tools or fact sheets or newsletters. Indicate that for us. If you have not had an opportunity to go to the knowledge base, recommend you do that. There's a good opportunity for you to do that particularly in the newsletter and the fact sheets is a good source but also for technical resources. Would you like to be added to the newsletter email list? Yes or no. What type of ICM knowledge material also be useful to you? Personalize some of this stuff. We have more technical material coming and awareness tiers we're producing. I think finally, are you interested in supporting the DOT ICM program as participating stakeholder. We're putting together a work group. We had an original one and would like to continue that. If you would like to participate in the program on a work group we're addressing a number of issues program high level issues and technical issues. Data availability. Some interest there. Please highlight that and we'll be happy to include you in some of our stakeholder work over the next year and on. The final one. It was kind of long. I didn't hear from the audience as much as I would like. If you would prefer to speak more, let us know that. The Webinar structure and the material, give us feedback. I would encourage honest feedback. If you weren't 100% pleased with the format we can’t make it better if you don't tell what you would rather see or liked.

J Symoun:

One thing I'd add too if you would like to be added to the ICM newsletter list, if you didn't register in advance for this Webinar, please send me an email with your name, email address and contact information so that I have that information to add to the list. Or if you logged in today using a different name than what you registered with, if you could let me know as well. I'll be going off the registration list and comparing that to the people that dogged in to get that contact information. Please just send me an email with it and I'll type my email address into the chat pod again.

I want to again, before we close, thank you for your participation for the chat and helped us go smoothly and end a little early.

As I mentioned previously this is being recorded and we will be posting the recording and the presentation to the ICM website shortly. The only other thing I'll mention too is there are two more Webinars scheduled. The Webinar July 22 will focus on Oakland and Montgomery County and the Webinar on July 24 Seattle, San Antonio, and Dallas Pioneer Sites. You can register for these on the ICM website. You have to register for each one individually.

D Thompson:

All right. Well again, thank you very much. I think it was pretty successful and look forward from hearing from many of you in the stakeholder opportunities in the future. I hope you got what you hoped for. Thanks again and you all have a good day.

Updated August 15, 2008 11:01 AM