Major Initiatives > ICM

Integrated Corridor Management Webinar: Dallas, San Antonio, and Seattle Pioneer Sites

Transcript

July 24, 2008

Introduction

Jennifer Symoun:

Welcome to the integrated corridor management (ICM) webinar, focusing on Dallas, San Antonio, and Seattle. The webinar is being recorded and the recording will be posted on line in about a week or so. Today's webinar will last approximately 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.

All participants are in listen-only mode. The operator will give instructions on how to ask questions on the phone, but you can also type in questions in the chat area. Please send your questions to everyone. 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. I will turn it over to Steve Mortensen to provide an overview of the ICM initiative.

Steve Mortensen:

I am Steve Mortensen, Senior ITS Engineer with the Federal Transit Administration, office of Research and Demonstration. 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 Dale Thompson of the FHWA Office of Operations. I would like to thank our pioneer sites who will present today, and I would like to thank SAIC and Noblis for today's webinar.

First I will give an overview of the ICM program. When I am done we will take questions from our audience today via the chat window and then open the lines for questions. After any questions on the overall ICM program we will hand it over to three of our eight pioneer sites: Dallas, San Antonio and Seattle. After each of these presentations presenters will take questions. We have held two webinars on July 17 and July 22 with the remaining five pioneer sites. We have recorded these presentations and will be posting them on the ICM website for you in about a week. At the end of the Webinar we will open up questions again via the chat window, and the phone lines and you can ask questions collectively of me and our pioneer sites.

These are the topics I am going to go over:

• The goals of the ICM initiative;
• A description of ICM;
• Eight pioneer sites and corridor assets;
• The phases of the ICM initiative;
• The next steps in the initiative;
• This year's milestones; and
• Information on our knowledge and technology transfer activity.

This Webinar has three main goals:

• To recognize the sites; they have worked hard on their concepts.
• To maintain outreach to the transportation professionals and industry; to provide them with lessons learned to date in the development stage.
• To get feedback from you, the transportation community as we move forward in the initiative.

We would like to know where you are in ICM, if you are just starting out, also the type of information you would like to get to help you. We hope for the webinar to be very interactive, so we encourage you to submit questions to us.

The ICM initiative is a joint effort between the Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit Administration and the Research and Information Technology Administration ITS Joint Program Office to better manage traffic congestion. We see it as the next step in congestion management.

The greatest concentration of congestion is along critical transportation corridors that link activity centers, residential, business, sports arenas and shopping areas. To date, efforts to reduce congestion have mainly focused on networks within corridors. When I say networks, I mean freeways, arterials, bus routes, and rail lines. To manage those networks independently, corridors often have significant transportation capacity that goes unused, such as adjacent routes and single occupant vehicles.

So, what is ICM and how is it different than today's state of the practice of transportation management? ICM is the management of freeway and arterial corridors using real-time network and corridor performance data rather than the more traditional approach of managing the individual networks within the corridor. It includes technical, operational and institutional integration. The key areas are load balancing, demand management, incident management, recurring congestion, planned events such as construction, specialty events such as sporting and entertainment, and weather.

The USDOT selected eight pioneer sites. We recognized these as leaders in the area of congestion management and consider them critical partners in the development of ICM concepts. These include I-270 in Montgomery County, Maryland, I-10 in San Antonio, I-10 in Houston, Texas, I-15 in San Diego, I-880 in Oakland and I-5 in Seattle Washington. They represent characteristics the USDOT believes represent many other corridors across the nation.

We have three stages we are going through with the eight pioneer sites. Stage one we began in the Fall of 2006 and will have completed at the end of this year. Each of the sites developed a concept of operation for their corridor and an ICM specification requirement. Stage two, we are moving into, USDOT will select three of the pioneer sites to analyze and model corridors using a methodology we already developed. This will be about a 15 to 18-month effort and is scheduled to be completed in the Fall of 2009. Stage three, we anticipate beginning a year from now in the Summer of 2009, and lasting until 2012, up to three of the pioneer sites will demonstrate their ICM strategies and we will provide a demonstration of each of them.

This illustrates the various networks, assets of each of the sites. All have real-time control capabilities on their arterial networks. All have fixed route bus systems and express bus service. A number have bus/rapid transit, a few have rail, a few light rail, and a few heavy rail systems.

Throughout the whole course of the initiative we have and hope to continue to solicit input from various stakeholder working groups. From 2004 to 2006 we assessed the current state of [?] and technical memoranda and developed a generic concept of operations and ICM implementation plan. Phase two is corridor tool strategies and integration activities, which began in fiscal 2006 and is running concurrently with phases 3 and 4. Phase 2 consists of two parts, a modeling and simulation methodology was developed to -- see which ICM strategies provide the biggest impact locally. We tested it in a test corridor, a 35-mile segment of interstate 880 in the San Francisco Bay Area. We analyzed and modeled about five or so ICM strategies individually and in combination. We are addressing a number of outstanding ICM issues and needs such as arterial and -- data gaps. Developing core requirements for decision support systems. A number of our pioneer sites identified they are planning on developing decision support to help implement their ICM strategies. We are also planning to identify various ITS standards, most applicable to ICM, and to identify various corridor performance measures.

Phase three, I already talked about that, our activities with our eight pioneer sites, which has the three different stages. In phase four, our outreach and knowledge and technology transfer activities, also began in fiscal owe six and will continue for the duration of the initiative. So far we focused on conducting outreach to the transportation community and to raise awareness about ICM. We are now moving to develop a range of ICM KTT resources that equip transportation practitioners to implement ICM for their corridors.

So far we have gone through the concept development phase with the pioneer sites, each developed concept of requirements and system of operations. We will move to development or design phase, then into implementation. This diagram here we call the virtuous cycle diagram. I want to emphasize here all three of these components are necessary for successful ICM implementation. To characterize one needs archived data, a validated and trusted model, and system-wide performance measures, relying on travel time reliability. If you are missing any of these three components, you are not going to be able to successfully model ICM, and to effective performance of your corridor.

In phase two we developed a methodology for modeling ICM. It consists basically of three types of simulation models that pass data back and forth among them. The first, in the top oval is macroscopic travel demand, these are effective in regional travel patterns and mode shift, provide transit analysis capability enhanced by a mode shift module. The second is mesoscopic, which is effective in analyzing congestion and for modeling region diverse patterns. Finally, microscopic which is effecting in analyzing things like ramp metering and traffic signal coordination. With this methodology we developed one is able to analyze the individual and combination effect of ICM strategies under different operational conditions such as low, medium and high-travel demand

So what are the next steps in the initiative? We plan to apply the AMF tools; methods we developed in it phase two, up to three AMF pioneer sites to validate the methods and results. We plan to analyze arterial data, decision support, and mode shift issues. That's a part of our phase two activities. And then to upload deliverables that we have developed to date to our knowledge and technology knowledge base, such as concept of operations, lessons learned. I believe some (not all eight) of them have already been uploaded. Also, we plan on posting our technical -- resource and test corridor findings.

These are our major milestones for 2008:

• In January we completed our methodology, and applying that to ICM test corridor.
• At the end of March all of the pioneer sites completed concept of operations and the system process.
• We are trying to finalize the selection of up to three sites to become AMS pioneer sites
• We anticipate in the fall, towards end of September we will have completed the AMS plan for up to three AMF sites.

Now I would like to talk about our knowledge transfer activities. You can see, you can access the ICM website, there's the URL (http://www.its.dot.gov/icms/index.htm). We have developed an ICM knowledge base, part of the website, is searchable, you can search for information using key words or you can browse the different topics. It contains all of our ICM initiative product and deliverables to date, including our foundational research documents, the pioneer sites, Con-Ops and requirements document s. The data gap, AMS resource findings, developed a number of fact sheets, two newsletters so far. We encourage you to sign up to receive any future newsletters. We have several articles on the initiative and have published them in a number of trade journals, such as Public Roads, Mass Transit Magazine and are planning to publish additional articles in Traffic Technology International (TTI), APTA Passenger Transport, and ANDINA Traffic, a Latin American publication. Resources coming soon that I want to bring to your attention, will be posted on our knowledge base, include additional webinars with the pioneer sites, webinars on modeling results as we move forward, additional fact sheets, presentations from conferences and peer-to-peer exchanges, additional lessons learned as we move forward, and updated resource guidance documents.

With that, that concludes my portion of the webinar. As I stated earlier, these are the initiative project managers. Here are their phone numbers, feel free to give us a call. I encourage you to bookmark the website and sign up for our ICM email list, that's the newsletter, so you can stay informed about future developments in the initiative. With that, we would like to open up the webinar to questions. First, if we can submit questions via the chat window.

J Symoun:

We have one open-ended question, which is what corridors in your area might be feasible for implementing ICM. Feel free to type questions you have for Steve and we will open the phone lines momentarily if you prefer to ask a question over the phone. I should mention the presentations today are available for download on the bottom left hand corner of your screen. There are instructions on how to download the presentations.

We encourage you to fill out the poll questions, give us valuable feedback about ICM.

We will give you a minute or so to respond to the polls to get a better idea of where everybody is. Why you are implementing or why you are not? You can type in your corridors that you think might be feasible to implement ICM in it your area. We will give you a few more minutes to answer these questions, but it looks like, as far as the different stages of ICM, the majority are currently developing a concept of operations and requirements; some are not planning, and some are in the planning stage.

I think that's it for the poll questions. Thank you very much for giving us that feedback, we appreciate it.

All right, moving on, then, to our three features Pioneer Sites. Today to talk about the Dallas ICM Pioneer Site we have Koorosh Olyai of Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) and Chris Poe from the Texas Transportation Institute.

Dallas - Koorosh Olyai:

Thank you, good afternoon, I am Koorosh Olyai I would like to present an overview of the ICM pioneer site and the lessons learned from stage one. I-75, covers five cities, two counties, in additional to the regional authority, state DOT and the MPO. Each of the agencies is highlighted in our cover slide.

Based on TTI's 2002 mobility report the Dallas-Ft. Worth area is the congestion, the ninth largest city in the U.S., the population is currently 6 million, and we keep on adding 1 million people every eight years.

U.S. 75 is a major North/South /South corridor -- future ability to handle growth is depend on ability to handle transit and move people to other modes. In addition the freeway corridors that interconnect will all go under reconstruction in the next five years. I-13, I-635, and state 121. Our ICM feels the corridor will be a showcase for the V FW region, over a dozen corridors could benefit from ICM concepts in our region alone.

The I-75 corridor is shown in yellow. Five cities within our corridor are Dallas, Highland Park, University Park, Richardson, and Plano. The full travel route is shown by the thicker blue line. The CVD is at the southern end of the travel shed, the corridor is over 25-miles in length. The corridor includes an 8-lane freeway, 14-mile HOV concurrent flow lane in each direction, light rail transit, the toll road, another light rail line bounding the eastern side, and regional arterials crossing the corridor for significant lengths, with local and express bus service.

The U.S. 75 corridor has a diverse range of infrastructure components. Our roads in the corridor are freeway and frontage road system; recently completed 5-level interchange. I-635, HOV toll, and SOV lanes, arterial, two light rail transit lines, bus transit, express and local. Three city-owned transportation management centers. One transit owned TMC and toll authority owned TMC. The 10-mile section of U.S. 75 recon instructed in the 90s has won several awards, such as urban design award and the Marvin Black award. When we first put our proposal together for the integrated corridor management, these were the assets we had in our system. Since then we have opened up additional HOV facilities as we indicated we would over the last six months. The rest of the assets in the corridor remain accurate today.

The ICM team is divided into two groups, the operating agencies in the corridor and the technical support team. The Texas Transportation Institute provides ITS, systems integration for freeway management, performance measurement and ITS standards. University of Texas in Arlington managed lane modeling evaluation. Southern Methodist University offered dynamic traffic assignment, transit modeling, and a model that incorporates travel mode shift.

There's strong regional support for ICS in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. There's a transit authority, MPO, and airport authority, execute a memorandum of understanding under the region's cooperative approach to ICS and operations in the region. The Executive Committee is supported by a steering committee made up of technical staffs of all the agencies in the region. The ICM project will use the existing committee structure and the steering committee for the five-year duration of the project, with the objective of making the I-75 corridor the model. The regional is financially supportive of the regional communication system and development is currently funded. A Dallas-wide ITS plan was developed in 1976, going through an update this year. Individual agencies have developed their own ITS plans, for example, the rapid transit, in 2003. The regional architecture and concept of operations have also been developed.

Currently operates a regional traveler website with real-time conditions, incidents, lane closures. Pictures, shows a snapshot from the website. The regional telecommunication system, ITS is being built out, establishing a regional center for video and data sharing system. The MPO is developing regional data archive to support evaluation and modeling. The state of Texas has interoperability standards, ensures compatibility of strategies in every corridor.

The U.S. 75 corridor is fully instrumented with equipment such as detectors, cameras, South of I-635 which cuts across our corridor approximately in the middle. They are expanding the deployment of ITS. Currently posting real-time travel time on their -- the new -- transportation management center opened last December, including personal from -- and Dallas Countiy sheriff's department. As Dallas operates the HOV lane and enforces, and also provides motorist assistance services.

Dallas , Richardson and Plano have systems with 100% of the systems connected to the signal. Projects to implement the interface for each of these. The cities, as well as the state, have integration with 911 systems and all have camera surveillance on the city streets. The city of Richardson provides surveillance to the wrecker service. On the arterials that intersect, currently funded, the placement of freeway VMS messages during incidents and special events. The cities have priority for transit. Rapid transit, regional transportation authority, 13 member cities provide light air transit, park and ride lots, manage lanes, local and bus systems, automated vehicle locations, centralized transit control, passenger alert systems, transit signal priority and consists of up to 300-strong team.

Our vision. Key point is that we are focusing on the customer, not on any specific mode or agency. The corridor team will operate the corridor in the best interest of the transportation customer. This diagram shows the ICM physical architecture, run from the regional station management center; operator can see the real ICM data coming in from the corridor, evaluating conditions, running -- the conditions under different ICM strategies. Diagram also shows how each agency, with the IKM system using the regional center to share information broadcast using the system regional ATI S. Data will be stored in the existing regional data archive.

The U.S. 75 concept includes four primary strategies:

• Enhance the ability of the agencies and responders to share data, which is the foundation for the other strategies.
• Develop a performance-measures approach that focuses on the customers.
• The evaluation of real-time operation.
• Improved traveler information in the corridor.

The planned decision support tool is driven by a model called DIRECT, developed by our partner southern Methodist university, running faster than network to predict conditions, 30 minutes in the future under various ICM strategies. The support tool will estimate the benefits, preventing specific ICM strategies. The U.S. 75 team has developed community goals. Transportation goals include increasing throughput, travel time, and incident response and clearing response. The key to these is enabling travelers to shift modes. Even en-route, optimize the trip, corridor performance. The figure shown here shows the performance measure.

The next three slides highlight the lessons learned from the ICM stage one. From an operational perspective, the only extra capacity available in the corridor can be on the light rail transit. Thus, some of the U.S. 75, ICM strategies include when and how to reduce congestion. We learned earlier, all agencies believe they are operating their system well, and to full capacity. The operational challenge occurs when something goes wrong, the typical plan doesn't work. For example, a major incident. The stakeholders to take a different action, they need more decision support tools. From an institutional perspective, we learned it's important to have institutional structures in place. Trust exists from the traffic management, incident management and HOV lane, taking place in the university.

From the technical perspective, here are the lessons we learned. More data sharing is needed. The DFW has a need for comparative data, the agencies in the corridor, and corridor strategies, need data across all mode and jurisdictions. This requires having congestion and throughput data. One of those measures that can be used across all modes. There's also a need for better arterial data, good data at the intersection, but not on travel time and congestion for arterials radio.

The region is planning for an ICM needs, systems analysis. Significant amounts of time were spent working through the engineering process. The consultants have been through the process and can assist local stakeholders with the value.

In conclusion, individual agencies are operating the systems well. The opportunities were congestion reduction, aligned traffic management, reduced congestion for travelers. The U.S. 75 corridor will be successful as a scenario under the right modeling scenarios of significant length, alternate time to travel, also providing travelers with options.

Agencies need a common reliable data platform for decision. Lastly, building on existing arrangement was the key to going forward; we feel we will need to build trust with the population. Thank you very much.

J Symoun:

Thank you. Do we have any questions for Koorosh or Chris? We will open the telephone line, and you can use the chat window.

Question: Has transit use changed any as gas prices changed this year?

Koorosh/Chris:

Absolutely they have. All modes that we operate are seeing significant ridership increases. True for local bus, express bus, commuter rail, light rail, HOV programs. A recent article in Mass Transit, actually gave percentages of increases. I think it's a national trend we are experiencing. We did have a response from via Metro; a 15% increase in ridership.

J Symoun:

All right, why don't we move on to our next presentation, which is on the San Antonio, I-10 corridor. We have Brian Fariello from the Texas Department of Transportation.

San Antonio – Brian Fariello:

The ICM project covered the I-10 corridor, connecting the central business districts with residential districts on the side of the city. Main campus on the northern edge has a satellite campus in the downtown area, students attend both campus and there's an express bus between the two. The employers include the South Texas Medical Center and the tourism industry is very big, both ends of the corridor, Six Flags, the river walk, and the downtown area.

Increased congestion, decreased reliability, the arterials become congested. We are working on a project to update the traffic signal control, doesn't exist now, we have decreased bus transit reliability on the express ways. Looking at future construction in the area of bus rapid transit system, and on the express way.

This is the I-10 corridor, as you see here. It's approximately 15-miles of I-10 from the northwest side of the city into the downtown area. There's a split level express way near the downtown area. We have parallel frontage roads the length of the corridor, many adjacent arterials, will talk more about. As well as the road on the western edge and military on the eastern edge. There's significant ridership in the corridor, highest of any area in the city. Express bus from the UT San Antonio, main cam us being in the northwest side of the city, downtown being at the southern edge of it. As well as multiple marking locations. Other things going on, recently two major reconstruction projects were completed on the corridor.

One of them on I-10, from 410 to close to the downtown area, as well as the new interchange being constructed in the I-10, loop 410 area. Earlier we mentioned bus/rapid transit. That's projected to go online in 2012. It should begin construction next year, so from 2009 to 2010, the construction project will cause a lot of disruption to the traffic, which will really impact the need for ICM.

The ITF system was installed on I-10 in the late 90s, as part of the reconstruction project we have been able to update the ITS system on the corridor. The city traffic monitoring using older equipment so many controllers will be upgraded in the near future.

How ICM helped San Antonio. From the operational approach and strategy we will improve information sharing, improve the efficiency of junctions and intersections, promoting alternate rates using the dynamic method science, improving throughput, supporting diverted traffic and improving our travel information services. We will use the ICM during the bus rapid transit to mitigate the impact on the corridor. We use ICM in conjunction with management to promote -- will help with special event management on the corridor.

This is a graphic showing our operational tactics. Again, we are going to be relying on a decision support system, real-time archiving. Will provide information for our DMS subsystem that will allow us to use our entrance ramp, frontage road -- arterial information. We don't have metering, we have small dynamic message signs. Those have traditionally been used only on conditions to expect -- in addition to that, we are going to use the ICM project to allow us to put information on those same method signs on conditions to expect the arterials, upgrade the steady signal systems, expand congestion management program, dynamic message signs, Internet, and via the transit system with on-street signing.

Who are the ICM stakeholders? The Texas D.O.T., the city of San Antonio, the San Antonio police department, emergency operations center, the fire department, southwest research institute and the Texas transportation institute. Created the vision statement based on common themes from the public stakeholder, vision statements and goals. This will offer executive level support from the public stakeholder agencies. Utilizing existing facilities, working relationships to facilitate institutional cooperation. San Antonio's existing ICM policy, procedures, ICM oversight and management of the structure planning for the region. The community reviewed current and planned projects, use the ICM on to put essentially an umbrella over projects. We were moving towards implementation. The decision support system is a strategy really brand-new.

Technical. The San Antonio ICM system architecture. There are a number of data providers via the AVL, the traffic signal subsystem, traffic centers, and San Antonio police 911 CAD system. We will use data interchanges using center to center. The decision support system will provide historical data analysis, alarm management, alarm trigger thresholds, AVL travel time engine, will be updating San Antonio's travel time.

There's going to be an ICM-specific web server. That information will be shared with through an agency's net in the application. There's a plan to update the transguide website in the works, and that will be done, including the ICM strategies. There's going to be a corridor specific website, trip planning, corridor as well as PDA content.

At this point please note that the light color, our existing systems; the darker blue are new systems as a result of the ICM project. Data transportation related data from regional systems. Data -- for distribution to agencies and systems, and it is standards based. Our data archive, the center to center data, historical data is available. The newly proposed subsystems, center to center interface between the agencies, the operation user, decision support system, again historical data, event management, I CMS, arterial travel times, web nag providing personal and emergency trip planning, mobile device, accessible website.

Lessons learned, operational, the collocation was essential, has been throughout the history of transnet. Working group meetings were key. They ensure stakeholder involvement, provide a forum to provide input and reach consensus. The time frame in which we implemented our ICM documentation, involved stakeholders with decision-making power, more than one stakeholder per agency.

Institutional lessons learned, leveraging existing relationships, utilization of existing forums, ITS key to the development of our ICM proposal. Understanding public agency objectives and current issues, communicate ICM in terms of other's needs.

Technical lessons learned, focus requirements on when the system functionalities, avoid designing system details during the requirements development. Maximize building on existing systems and capabilities. Arterial travel time conditions and data are a challenge, the structure for gathering, nationwide. I believe that concludes our presentation.

J Symoun:

Why don't we take a couple minutes to receive some questions from our audience for Brian and his partners. Look like we have at least one. Thank you again.

The question here is, will you divert across classes of facility, including main line down to local streets?

B Fariello:

The correct answer is probably all of the above. We have historically used the main line AVS, to say in the event of a full close cur, simply the road is closed completely. Find an alternative route, without specifying. Something on the main lane, again, we can use the frontage road, remain on that. I don't know if I mentioned, the construction of the interstate at 410, didn't complete frontage roads all the way through. They were continuous to 410, and then they weren't. Now they are. The frontage, continuous alternate routes to the main lane. The biggest thing, real answer to the question is that we do intend to use the frontage road DMS to get information on upcoming arterials, something we have not done before.

Question:

How do you monitor?

B Fariello:

How do we monitor the information? Not sure if that means --

Question:

Monitor conditions on the arterials?

B Fariello/San Antonio Team Member:

That is where our work with the city of San Antonio comes in it. Part of their traffic upgrade includes the installation of CCTV cameras, control cameras, as well as bringing back snapshots will be the biggest step, as well as the sharing of information with the police department, receiving information from the city's CAD system, wells the traffic dispatcher for traffic incidents.

Question:

Is bus AVL the only means to measure arterial travel times?

B Fariello/San Antonio Team Member:

At this time we believe the answer is yes. We haven't identified a strategy, even with city’s new focus. I would like to add a part of the ICM initiative, phase two; we are conducting a activity to filling the gap on the arterial data such as travel times and speeds.

Question:

Can you describe the personal trip planning from the perspective of the consumer?

B Fariello/San Antonio Team Member:

I don't know that we can give a detailed description. We know we have plan to do it, haven't done the detailed design of that. You have probably seen that in other applications in the past. One of our intentions would be to do an stray industry review, find out what's been done, both with individuals and corporate partners we have been working with.

Question:

The next question, with high ridership on existing transit routes, how much capacity is there on these services? Capacity and reliability often need to be seen to exist before people will switch modes. Is the ICM project considering transit capacity (and transit's public image) alongside the importance of ITS?

B Fariello:

We might be able to get -- don't have budget in the room with us, but I noticed someone was online, maybe they could provide a comment. As many others we referred, significant respect in transit, focus on that E we are attempting to ensure capacity issues are being met. Our understanding is that the express bus service specifically from the UTA campus of down down is at or near capacity during the school years. That's really critical. I know as part of ICM, ensuring students can get from the main campus to the park and ride, get on the bus to the other campus in time to not be late for classes. We feel that ridership on the transit routes and the corridor is critical. San Antonio is planning to implement a VRT, added capacity, and transit signal priority along with that, to help maintain the travel time reliability, so there's different transit strategies to help transit be more attractive. You have to have that additional capacity in any mode shift to transit.

Question:

What are the challenges using the IDAS software results?

B Fariello/San Antonio Team Member:

Based on feedback from stakeholders we used a generic approach for estimating ICM potential use based on the analysis system software. The difficulty applying early in the process, the benefits, expected result from ICM deployment. The other thing to consider was one of the difficulties was the lack of appropriate data to feed into the pool, limitations with the data, but not with the tool.

Joe Roach:

Yes, small DMS signs, is that in lieu of possible ramp metering?

B Fariello/San Antonio Team Member:

We do not have ramp metering in San Antonio. It was in place here many clears ago, but all those gun laws, ramp meters didn't fit well together. The plan is that we don't have plans at this point for deploying ramp meters in San Antonio. We do have many of the dynamic method signs deployed, we will continue to deploy those.

We have a written response from Via Metro, concerns the one response about available capacity, congestion on transit routes. They said our system has plenty of capacity as a whole. We are planning a public image campaign, branding to help address the image issue. We hope TSP will help to attract riders.

J Symoun:

Okay, moving to our next, final presentation, the Seattle ICM site, Vinh Dang from Washington State DOT, who is being joined by John Toone.

Seattle - Vinh Dang:

Good morning and afternoon everybody. This is Vinh Dang for Washington State Department of transportation. I am here to share with you our experience in developing Con-Ops in the requirements of our I-5 corridor. Our corridor is compact, linear, about 10, 12-miles, going from the South end bounded by the on the East side is I-5. On the West side is highway 99, and multiple arterial operated by the city of Seattle. All within one mile. These interchanges are adequately spaced to provide network crossing between arterial. Operationally the I-5 traffic is fairly congested. We have about 210,000 on the I-5. Then the characteristics of the peak traffic flow is that I-5 is frequently congested, the peak on I-5 is fairly flat. As soon as about 6:00 in the morning it is operating at capacity, hovering at capacity until 6 pm, very unstable. Whereas, the parallel routes, like the fourth avenue, on the city side, has shopping, and as a result is at capacity in between the peak this is why we feel the ICM would help us balancing the load across multiple routes.

In this corridor, this agency is operating their facility very well, and they have a very mature ITS system, very well, very mature freeway management system operating VMS camera, and solid communication system throughout the region. In the city of Seattle has a central arterial control system, within the corridor city of Seattle has a little than 100 traffic signal connected in the system downtown.

In King County there is also a very robust transit management system, equipped with ABC, ABL, and we also have transit signal priority at multiple location within this corridor here. Again, each of these agencies has been operating very well, independently, and that's why we need the ICM to integrate the activities together to maintain traffic in the entire corridor.

So how ICM will help our site, with the ICM effort, it helps the corridor to collaborate on developing corridor-wide incident response plan. We realize that when the system is disrupted, we are not in balance anymore, traffic will divert, find a way, go to different route, different mode. ICM is a forum for partners in the corridor to get together, stay ahead of the curve by developing those plans so that when the need arise we are prepared for it.

Also, by preparing these response plans for the whole corridor it presents the opportunity to coordinate the traffic control, for example, if the agency in the corridor agrees to the incident response plan, one agency is not available 24 hours a day, another agency can activate those plans.

So, who are our ICM stakeholders? We have the state DOT, city of Seattle, and King County transit. Because of the similarity of many of the corridors within the region, there's a wide stakeholder that have interest outside the corridor and into the corridor. We have the metropolitan planning organization, PSRC, has a keen interest in this project. Likewise, the federal level, we have FHWA and FTA as well.

In achieving buy-in, in this corridor the is the lead agency, and mainly serves as facilitator among the other partners. Because each agency has been very well advanced individually in terms of ITS deployment, the way we set up is each agency will maintain their own primary control of network and asset. Then each agency will also retain their own ownership, operation, device, within the area of responsibility. But within the corridor we will have personnel to operate specific ITS pertaining to the corridor. I guess that is one of the reasons buy-in is people buy-in, because we don't have to relinquish control. We still have control of our facility. Then the other thing we can see, I see, helping people to buy in as the working together, developing the corridor goal and needs, and trying to answer the question, what is in this for us, rather than what is in this for me.

Here's the pictorial diagram of what our ICM system looks like. I don't know if you can go into detail to see the fine print there, but mainly the system is composed of several major subsystems, as well as processes, and the system basically -- let me get the pointer and show. The yellow is the ITS system, and the data acquisition is the first process, basically collecting data, and some process information from the current agency server or system. As it collects information from individual systems, it will sort so that only information pertaining to the corridor would be used. After that is publishing information out to the public, the user or agency.

So, I won't go into detail on each of the four processes in the ICM, but I will take one example, in this case the season support module process. This process will continuously monitor the performance of individual network. For example, IT will continuously monitor arterial from the city side, the freeway from the state side, as well as the transit schedule and operation, and it will -- historical value, baseline performance, then the real-time performance is being compared to that. There will be triggering, check, where the current performance will be checked gains against the baseline. At that point IT will either prompt the operator for system imbalance, and suggest remedy action, or suggest response plan. The primary means of collecting current condition on this incident is through the internal agency. One other thing about this incident reporting process will also generate a tool based on another set of rules.

Lesson learned. Right in the middle of developing the Con-Ops for the corridor the state has a major I-5 project, to replace the one and a half mile stretch of freeway, which is on the viaduct, on the bridge structure. The Northbound freeway was reduced from five lanes to two lanes, three lanes, through various stages of construction that was last year. The displaced commuters were shifted on adjacent arterial and -- prior to construction, King County, metro, city of Seattle, got together, collaborated on the general plan, the response plan, recovery, as well as timing on the corridor. As a result, the impact with the mobility of the corridor was minimal. As you can see in this example here, based on the data we collect, this is Fourth avenue South, which is about a quarter mile West of I-5, and the signal around this corridor was increased to the shift.

Anyway, another lesson learned, we have, is that developing the Con-Ops, it is an iterative process. The biggest issue with our crew is agency come to the table with a wish list of actual improvement they want to see if their own system, but somehow we have to work together to get through that improvement, look into the actual what is the need of a corridor that would reflect all agency. Once again, to get through that mode, identify the corridor, the need, is it easier to get into the developing the Con-Ops that would help the corridor. Then, as we worked through, into the system requirements, the constraints during requirements, also to go back to the Con-Ops, make revisions to it. A legacy system is also something we have to deal with or be concerned with. At this point you probably have to go back, do some intermediate interface to get information out of legacy system so it can be somehow read or transferable into the ICM.

The institutional lesson learned we have, I guess the main thing we always find out, partnering with your neighbor is very important to us. The MPOs in this area have a great operational committee, bring people together, different local agencies together, and that forced the partnership for ICM. The other thing, discussing the ICM strategy during the non-crunch time, relaxed environment, instead of waiting until the last minute and talking about emergency response.

This concludes my presentation. So I am hoping up for questions.

J Symoun:

Thank you, Vinh. Now we will like to take questions from our audience for Vinh and John. Looks like we have one.

Are variable speed limits on I-5 an option for modeling? Although it can be an expensive solution, it can be a very effective option for regulating traffic flows and controlling how quickly downstream traffic reaches accident locations or congested hotspots. I drove I-5 recently and thought it could be an ideal candidate!

V Dang:

Yes, variable speed is something that recently came in under the urban partnership agreement we have. This is something we will go back, make revision to the Con-Ops, to consider variable speed limit as a control strategy on I-5.

S Mortensen :

While we are waiting to touch on what Vinh said about going to the Con-Ops development process. We found for all the pioneer sites it was the engineering process, very rigorous and challenging, but in the long run it will be very beneficial, will pay off in developing ICM systems. They will get what they were planning to implement.

Question:

When you give signal priority for N-S how do you inform E-W that they may have longer wait as priority given to N-S?

V Dang/John Toone:

I assume your question is on when we increase the signal split.

Question:

No, as a result of the shift traffic, or signal priority due to transit?

V Dang/J Toone:

Let's assume you are going about giving more green time to shift traffic. The construction.

We had lots of media, public outreach before the construction, and we identified those parallel, North/South routes and access to the major arterial, predominant movement is still North South in this corridor.

J Roach: Have you considered hot lanes in your congestion management?

V Dang:

Not on I-5 yet, but -- this is the reason why I mentioned we have lots of interest from other agencies in this region. This corridor we have another corridor 10, 15-miles long with hot lane. What I call the valet corridor, highway 167, we have a pilot project with hot lanes, and we have very good North/South network. Whatever success we have in this corridor, we can replicate for the southeast of us within this region here. Yes, we do consider hot lane as part of the strategy for ICM.

Conclusion

J Symoun:

We have a few more poll questions we are going to put out there, we will give everybody time to ask questions if there's anything else. Give me one second and I will bring up the remaining poll questions. If you think of any, ask over the phone or feel free to type them in. If you have questions, please feel free to ask them. We can take the time to do that now. Two of these polls are asking if it you would like to support the program as an ICM stakeholder or be on the newsletter e-mail list. For those questions, if you answer yes, I need your contact information. If you registered in advance, I will have that, but if you don't, please send it to me and in the chat box and I will type it in.

S Mortensen :

We want to access the performance of arterials in real-time, one activity. There's a summer activity for filling the transit data gap, which is to determine demand at transit stops and on buses in real-time to accommodate mode shift to transit, for example if there's a freeway incident. Also, in our decision support systems, we plan on developing some needs for that, and core requirements, and identifying corridor level performance measures. That's some examples.

Please feel free to be completely honest. We have thick skin, and would like to improve the initiative and our knowledge and technology, transfer of activities to you all in the transportation community.

If you haven't visited the website I encourage you to do so. There's a lot of good resources, as well as we will post information about upcoming Webinars as well.

Same thing with being added to ICM newsletter e-mail list, it comes out periodically, and keeps you up with data, and what's going on with the initiatives.

Looks like the audience would like to see downloadable templates or Con-Ops requirements. We will; our goal is to have all the Con-Ops requirements posted soon, as well as the generic Con-ops and the ICM implementation guidance, and the transit data gaps, arterial, support systems.

Question:

Will we be made aware of the approach used for arterials?

S Mortensen :

We haven't really determined how we are going to make that available if we will have another Webinar on that. If you submit your contact information we will make sure you get put on the e-mail correspondence, if you would like to review materials developed so far. I believe there has been at least one workshop where there's a question on what are the issues, some potential solutions. There's currently a white paper being developed. I don't think it's been made available yet to the public. There's going to be a plan put together to address the transit data gaps and arterial data gaps. Hopefully that answers your question.

Question:

How will ICM protect intellectual property/capital of companies?

S Mortensen :

Let's see, any of the pioneer sites want to answer that? Property rights, perhaps? That basically would be on a site to site so the answer to that would be different from site to site. I don't think the USDOT has a policy for that.

Question:

How long is a typical ICM project? How long would something last?

S Mortensen :

Concerning the length, for the pioneer sites, we are seeing anything from 10-miles to 35-miles. As far as how long it takes to implement, develop concept, create design, implement, we are going through that process now. It's been two years so far, taking the time out to do modeling, and will take three years to design, deploy, and evaluate.

We have a comment from April Armstrong helping with the technology initiative. If you have thoughts on how to improve future Webinars to make them more useful, helpful, we welcome your comments on that.

Question:

How are you measuring your success?

K Olyai:

We anticipate having the performance measures tell us if you are successful or not. That is the key indicator to us, have they improved mobility, safety, air quality. At this point we haven't implemented the strategies on the I-75 corridor. So time will tell.

V Dang:

Mainly, in this area here, the success of ICM would be measured by how well the adjacent network, the -- address the shift, highway quick, for example, if there's the need to shift traffic to a different mode, route, how quick the -- being age able to absorb that. Then, how many other similar corridors in the region, following suit with this one would demonstrate -- whether or not they see it as a successful model they can adopt and practice. Like I mentioned earlier, we have multiple corridors in this region. But if we see that the other corridor is at least adopting some of the strategy from this corridor, these early pioneering efforts, then we see that it is a success.

B Fariello:

Like the others we would be looking at the performance measures to put in place as part of the project specifically looking at vehicle throughputs, user surveys to find out the available tools and how they impacted the users transit ridership, I guess that about summarizes it.

J Toone:

This is John from the Seattle group. This kind of summarizes the different comments. The overall goal is transportation in general, provide as many trips as possible and have them be as fast and reliable as possible. There are a lot of success indicators for the different modes. And our region there is fair amount of specification from the transit side. We have a lot of data and a kid and customer feedback system. Rider, non rider survey. I wanted to highlight what Vinh said. Aside from our regular success indicators for each of the most part of our success will be and how easy we make it to do balancing. So we will be looking at overtaxed systems that have improvements in performance and in reduction of use and underused modes or networks and have an increase in use without really used losing any performance.

S Mortensen :

From the USDOT perspective I guess we would measure success as have we met our goals of a producing the methods to help locations around the U.S. to implement ICM? Have we developed the tools and the knowledge to address the institutional issues, operational issues, and the technical issues? That is how we plan on measuring whether this has been a success.

Comment:

I want to give some clarification about the intellectual question. Planning could be difficult for small companies who don't want ideas stolen by large companies. This should be a topic of discussion.

S Mortensen :

Thank for that clarification. We will take that under advisement.

J Symoun:

Another question. I would just explain this. The NTOC is the National Transportation Operations Coalition. The ICM initiative does work closely with it. That is another way to get some good transportation information. I'll type that web address in as well.

There are various venues that we used to advertise these. Another one was ITS America.

In response to the poll question of whether you would like to be included as a stakeholder, many people answered yes. So if you can make sure that you have provided your contact information so that we can contact you and your area of interest we would appreciate that.

I should mention also if you registered with a different name than what you used to log in today, if you could send an e-mail with clarification on that as well because I will be using the registration list as the primary means to obtain contact information.

S Mortensen :

I guess that concludes today's webinar and our webinar series on lessons learned. I would like to thank today's speakers. I would also like to thank Jennifer Symoun for helping with the web logistics' today. I would like to thank the audience. Thank you very much for sending us good questions and providing us feedback. I want to encourage you to go to our ICM website. We will be getting the recording of presentations online shortly. Thank you very much.

Updated August 15, 2008 11:01 AM