Good afternoon, I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the forming interagency agreements conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. If you should be a systems during the call, please press star than the number zero on your telephone keypad, and then operator welcome back to those who. Thank you. Stephanie Trainor, you may begin your conference. Hello everyone, and welcome to the webinar on Forming Interagency Agreements for regional transportation operations. This is our second webinar of the national transportation operation coalition, planning for operations of the series sponsored by the federal highway demonstration. I will be giving a brief instruction to the web conferencing environment before turning positioned over to our first speaker. Case that was approximately an hour and a half was approximately 60 minutes allocated to the presenters in the final 30 minutes or audience question and answer. Please be advised that our seminar is being recorded. During the presentation, if you think the question, you can type into the smaller text box in that area in the left side of your screen. Please let -- sure that you send your question to everyone rather than just the presenter. The presenters will be unable to answer your questions during the presentation, but the speakers will address some of the questions put into the During the question-and-answer session in the last 30 minutes of a. A file containing the audio and visual portion of the summer will be posted to the and talk website within the next week. I would take that address into the Really. Attendees will be notified of availability of the presentation, recording, and the close captioning of the seminar. We encourage you to direct others in the office that were not able to attend this webinar to access the quarter online. The presentation he is today are available for download in the file download box in the left side of your screen . To download a file, click with your mouse on the name of the file you would like to download, and click the button at the bottom of the download box that says speak to my computer. Jocelyn will provide the opening remarks. Thank you, Stephanie. This webinar on institutional agreements is being cohosted by both NTSC on the national transportation operation coalition and the transportation research Board regional transportation systems management operations committee. Chaired by filter crack. I also a member of this committee. A key part of the committee's work is on institutional agreements between "agencies to facilitate cooperation on regional operations. We are looking into how they're put together, how they are used, and Russians -- lessons learned so we can to that information with other regions in establishing institutional agreement. We think of having additional operations agreements and a list our database of this agreement is on the committee website, and I will put that into the chat box so you can go to that. And also, if you have an agreement that you think would provide interesting models for other regions, please send them to me. We would be happy to collect them and also make them available to others. So thank you, and I hope you find the presentations from our speakers to be helpful in working for your own personal agreements. Back to you, Stephanie. For our first speaker today would be and to, he is a systems management planning director in the Department of Transportation planning at the Metropolitan Washington capital of government. And two has been with him -- and then since 1993. This team supports the national capital region running board, the and the officially designated merger plan -- for Washington DC and vicinity. And to the for opening the areas including congestion management, management and operations, traffic safety, bicycle and pedestrian talent, and preplanning. Enter also helps to the -- the recently formed a deposit area transportation operations of nature program, also known as AT&T. Dictatorship of a legitimate justification agencies, addressing the coordination of day-to-day management. Prior to working at the urging, he was the transportation manager for the Maryland Department of dissertation. Here and a bachelors and Masters degree in for the university of Michigan, and is a member of the market Institute of certified planners. And two? Thank you, and welcome everyone. Take a pocket institutional agreement that are behind MATOC, the organization we have formed in the metropolitan Washington area. The outline of the presentation today, to get enough background about the TPB and me talk to know what we are, and concentrate a little bit on the process of what we went through to make our institution arrangement, and actually describe the structure of those institutional arrangements ending up with some observations about this topic in general. So the TPB is the officially designated NPO of Washington DC suburban Maryland and Virginia, and it is housed at the Metropolitan Washington Council of government. But is who I work for. About our region, we certainly have the unique aspect of the District 1 to of a state governmental entity, and has a penchant, and in some ways we are not other places. But, we do have a strong history of coronation there. We are high on those national congestion lists, we are also strong in multimodal listen. Here is a map our area, you can see Washington DC and the portions of Maryland and Virginia, up 5 million people, 3 million jobs, and of course our partnership of the state and local transportation agencies and government and our regional transit agency. MATOC on the other hand, is independent of us. Is a joint program that was formed by our pre-state DOT. District of Columbia, Berlin, and Virginia, and the transit agency. It is an independent organization with its own board and so forth, that will be important later, I think. But this MATOC two? Its mission is to provide real-time situational awareness of transportation off her -- operations and if it's in the national capital region. Communicating that among the agencies and also trying to improve the information that is generally available so that the troubling was public and operational agencies can make effective and timely decisions. The also develop tools and processes to make this happen. The main feature is something called RITIS, which will integrate its petition information system, and it is a system that takes information, uses it, and sends it out. I wish we were in a minute. Discomfited with people. Making targeted notifications, uncles, etc. To help coordinate among the various agencies here. Here is a picture, but it is a picture of what MATOC does. At the left, others of various inputs, they could be automated, they could be monitored by the staff, anything from RSS feeds to listening to police scanners. But they you, looking at traffic cameras, and then in the middle, refusing to with automated traffic detection with data that comes from our various devotees into the agencies, and when conditions merit that, over on the right, we generate notifications. E-mail, phone calls, that try to get the right information and -- in a timely manner, out to people who need to act upon that. So my intention here is to get enough of an idea of what MATOC does the of the context for the institutional agreements we have 24. I could talk for hours about me talk to me but they will talk about institutional arrangements. The history of this, is that our physical just reacted to 9/11 me Washington was one of the areas that was hit. We have traffic and transportation problems, coronation couples, this led to a flood of examinations over time , ad hoc committees, permanent committees, the exercises, and probably most critically, our key partners, the District of Columbia DOT funded a study by the US DOT center that documented the needs, trusted and organizational structure, developed a draft concept of operations, and it was kind of the background for how our agency started to put together and proceed into making a verbal agreement. The NPO follow-up that by shipping the process of the institutional arrangements. -- Institutional arrangements. With that said, our history a picture of what MATOC does and why we forget, the basic structure and wanted to point out, I think of it as a three-pronged approach, and I don't know if this is the same or different than our other speakers today or other institution -- institutional arrangements, but it has kind of work for us. Has three prongs are eight memorandum of understanding, annual workplace, and bilateral funding agreements or authorizations. I will be getting into more details on all of those in a second. Can see our participating agencies, we have two -- three agencies, state DOT is which provide our core funding for MATOC. Sometimes there is a special funding and arrangement have to be made for FDA grants, federal transit administration, Homeland security grants, and other participating agencies who participate in process but not necessarily intending. In our case, the University of Maryland Center for advanced transportation technology is actually the partner that is undertaking the program on behalf of our partner agencies. Providing the staff and is actually the institution that is executing the program. The first prong was to create an OU. The OU, at the highest level, is committing the partner agencies to participate in the program and to agree to end support its goals. I would note that it does not promise that they're going to find it. It only says yes, we agree, we are going to perform and participate in this production. The other important thing -- partnership -- it is a long-term document it hopefully does not need to be done very often, but if that's the state of many years of work entered MATOC. Not forever, but many years. The MOU again is general enough to accommodate a Friday of ways to participate, although all partners to send the same identical the MOU. Of course, is kind of the source document for documents that we will get into more detail on, mission statement, committee and subcommittee target come as standard operating procedures, which is important in MATOC because it is an operating agency. Fanatic would take a notification? Underwent situations do or do they not generate something? Key points in the MATOC MOU, this is kind of to give you a flavor, I do not totally have a copy of the MOU in this presentation, but what are the things that are covered? When they are setting up for -- they agree to participate, they agree to appoint representatives, but to -- participants participate on this, they agree to work collaboratively with the NPO and other partners, they agree to work cooperatively in the development of these annual workplace, they agree to explore potential sources of preventing, although it is not a commitment to actually providing the funding. Is only a commitment to work for that. Then, there are steps that they can call if they want to end this or opt out something like that. That became effective when all parties signed. Switching gears, is the annual workplace. Now that we have set up a multiyear MOU, we want to bring it down to, first of all, something that talks in more detail about what we're going to be doing over the next year, as well as tying that to the funding needed for those activities. It specifies that work, and tasks and budgets per task, and that is put into core activities which everybody has agreed that they want to share equally as. But it can also a comedy special activities, he the one partner wants me talk to do something and to provide special funding for it. Is approved by our committee, is an annual document, but also includes a multiyear outlook. The important thing about the plan is to sponsor agreement and clarity as to what will be a corpus. If the focuses of the partners on just, we want to do this, no, we don't want to do this. This is what our priority is. Especially in light of the diversity of funding sources. Out of many sources, one annual work plan. So what are we doing in the second overtime? This is a pretty high-level breakdown. You talk like operations support, there's a staff that they have operating hours, Monday through Friday, 5 AM to 8 PM, something like that. They are monitoring this is the end -- and sending messages out. We have to that have to do with the automated system. What is the basic operations and maintenance support, but anyway I think that is it keeps the lights on. Is that number two is, and number three is the RITIS enhancements which is software is evolving all the time. So, they have to keep up with their partners. It always has to evolve and that is the. For is a catch all for any kind of special studies or activities. That ends the discussion on the annual work plan. The third like the three-pronged approach here are they to an agreement and authorizations. A critical issue for us here was that we have developed a funding agreements or authorizations with each different funding agency. They are all independent. They have agreed to the MOU and they come together and work plan, but the paperwork involving -- evolving -- involving the actual transfer of money is a big and bilateral with each of the agencies. Developer renewed annually -- developed a renewed annually, it can accommodate the laws and rules that each agency has to live under without making everybody tried to get onto the same thing, which is almost impossible when they are coming from two states and the District of Colombia. In our case, we have our partners who have agreed to do it is once. Here they are on-site 16. PC has a bilateral agreement between the city itself and the University of Maryland. In the state of Maryland, they're both state agencies, and they have kind of a state agency agreement on multiple things and they just refer to that. In Virginia, it was difficult for them to create an agreement between the state of Virginia at a Berlin state government -- the wrenching -- they are working through us for that. Special grants are handled on an ad hoc basis. -- Are concerned -- by Attorney. Gen.'s offices and seven, the legal issues, unfortunately these have been a lot. The best thing we could do to prevent that was by the president or earlier contracts involving the same parties. If you could show that some of these additional signatures condensate went on an agreement, then it takes the process a lot better. Partners are often legally restricted as to the actions they can take, even if the staff involved are willing, or they want to make something happen. But you have to conform to the laws. The independent funding sources are just an ongoing challenge. We have put together shared, but it was possibility. If one drops out for some reason, what positions are the others going to made? Is a complex issue, and we have puppies together but it is a concern. As there no clear of categorical funding for regional operations organization, there is ongoing competition for funding with other needs. Our process -- process was long and complex, but it allowed for the building of consensus. That was very important to us. I guess he went as fast as our partners could imagine that they wanted to agree on these issues. We can expect things to take a long time, if you can achieve temporary or professional working agreements, that might be helpful. I would advise not using the end of our strict or more collocated the necessary. The MOU was not that detailed, my observation is that getting more and more detailed in these documents does not really help process the easier. May be the opposite. The other thing that I would urge is that a separate long-term issues and document from short-term issues and documents. To which we have long-term-- on General. conference, and depending issues into your annual type of documents. That concludes my presentation, and I think we will be taking questions at the end. Great, thank you. We will be taking questions at the end of the I encourage everyone that has questions to go ahead and start typing them into the chat box. We will go through and answer some of those, or as many as we can at the end. Picked up, we have Peggy. She is the senior transportation planner for the cargo Council of Government. Peggy has a bachelor science degrees in civil engineering from left to State University and is a professional engineer for North Dakota -- she has been working in the area as a transportation planner/traffic engineer -- engineer. Picky have we -- Have relied picky? She may be on beauty. Star six will take you off mutate. Can you hear me now? Okay. At the end of the debate about with forward to getting political agreement signed for fertilizing operations in the target warhead area. I will start out you an idea, for those of you who do not know what the four -- Fargo Morehead area is, this is the infamous red river that flows north and that you probably hear about on nationwide news on floods every year. For the rest of the river, it is a state of North Dakota and includes major cities of Fargo in West Fargo, and County, and on the east side of the river is the state of Minnesota and it includes the city of Morehead and -- in Clay County. We are a small NGO in our -- and our population is about 180,000 within our planning area. Just to give you a little background on what we are doing is, our core focus is to address the system needs a topic operations. To the developing individual decision-making process. Want to drop operations into our and PO program, and some of the reasons we are doing this is to help monitor and a direct our system better, help share data information, tackled nonrecurring congested, and to create consistency across our borders. Kind of the basis for our regionalization is that we have had ongoing effort in ideas plans and ideas architecture to focus on coordinating our signal system. We also have federal highway into this may put up a topic operations report saying, were a smaller and., We are getting a lot of stuff workings on the ground. That they can operate between agencies, and tumult for the rejoicing concept. Our signal operators are from different agencies would like to do something to make it more cohesive. Again, the utility of it is doing more with less, we are moving away from capacity. A lot of our age or arterial roadways are in getting built out for capacity so we have to do things like ritualized and optimize our signal timing. We need to balance and manage our materials between arterials and interstate operating systems. To kind of give you an idea, currently we have type different signal operators, ATS devices, the city of Fargo has the most. Dakota TRT, the city of Morehead, and was further. We have what we call the upper Great Plains upper -- operational Institute, which has the data to a server which holds the data for our system. However, everybody currently is operating separately. To be an idea, here is our area. We currently have 200 pixels on our system. So when federal highways and visited back into the economy did an assessment of off of our operators. What they really can't is that we had a leader in operations in our area with the city of Fargo. The IPO, our Metro -- was willing to do the coordination. All of the agencies were willing to cooperate, in a centralized operation. What that was about to was our first plan of attack, which led to our topic operations action. -- Action plan. The traffic operations action plan was completed in 2009 by Metro -- it really depends the motivation and need for moving forward with the plan. The service areas of the under the plan and the most important thing was a set of actual tasks to try to trick implementation. Our topic operations plan was to set up so that it had to the implementation items that would move into our funding, and into our IDS plan. We develop ideas redrill architecture and put into our long-term transportation plan, and is setting us up to forward for congestion management program. As our population was forward to the 200,000 threshold. With the hours into this topic operations, whether the act was two different pieces. And sure companies which we called our hybrid operation in which it is not a fully centralized traffic operations Center. It would actually be split between two playmakers. That a long-term base, which would eventually be getting us to the one centralized TOC were everybody would be ritualized. Currently we are working on our working group to implement increments for our phase 1 or hybrid operation center. We have completed an architecture for the hybrid topic operations center, and we are in the process of completing forgetting agreements. In the agreement process, we are not as far along as our other two presenters are. What kind of compared to, they be we are in the top of this is up beginning smaller individual agreements. -- Toddler phase -- but we want to strive for is moving forward with the traffic operations Center to enhance our system -- improve safety and a -- we completed a major incident management program opt -- which also led with moving forward with these agreements. So as you can see, we have our original topic operations center. Default our operators, and also our affiliate like that -- and our -- is our advanced traffic analysis Center, which is a bunch of our data collected for the and also, if you see on the bottom, that triple are easy is our regional dispatch center. What we like to do is get all of those combined together in one traffic operation. This site would have had to be attended our hybrid TOC which we are moving for work now in phase 1. The city and Fargo, our DOT , and can see each other's, and such as that, but they have no agreement to actual sharing of information with each other. The smallest of agencies, the intent of the hybrid is for more -- and other smaller agencies really to connect in with the city of Fargo and the city of Fargo in North Dakota to become connected. I know, we do have interconnected with cargo in North Dakota, but what we have not to get is those arguments for the agreed sharing of the system. We are in the process of creating an agreement to consolidate signal systems underneath the city of Fargo. Are also the process of interconnecting Minnesota, North Dakota systems with hyperactive across what our pitches but have not achieved agreement yet. We are in the process of setting it up to whatever they like to our topic operations working group is that, we would develop a master agreement to set up with between all of the agencies. You can see, that is a master agreement. That was our first shot for both the state and major cities with their signals, that identified a plan for how we would like them altogether. For our hybrid operation, our North Dakota -- were they would be connected, and then the state of Minnesota and other city of Morehead would all kind of come together in their initial agreement. What we found with the major points of our operating agreement, we got to our topic operations working group in 2010, is that it established a committee -- it established the traffic operations for the hybrid option, it affirmed multiple centers being North Dakota and Fargo, and outlined signal business and operations for the two centers with an annual they didn't plan an annual management plan. We put this forward to all of our operators and traffic operations working group, and what the feedback -- the feedback that we got was that we moved too quickly for our small area from our traffic operations plan to an actual agreement. Some of the lessons we've learned was that working with my -- within a bistate NPO is that we have a very different state. Minnesota has experience with the position, where as the state of North Dakota, we are the largest area. This will be kind of the first shot at centralization. They felt that by doing that the agreement, we were short-circuiting some of the smaller details that would need to be worked out. Some of the agencies were really having a hard time arguing about the destination of the agreement was going to be. We also have an issue with, not really a track record among any of our partnering agencies -- regarding shipping automation, we have transit train our two major cities across the river of intergovernmental agreements it, but it took 20+ years to get that established, and there are different players involved with the. Even with the support we were having, political and at the technical level, there was no emergency from our traffic operators. -- They were lacking the urgency. Whether they went to is that we need to develop these a small manageable agreements, to be between two agencies out of time to move forward. This is where we're currently at right now. We are working on a signal maintenance and operations agreement right now between our two major cities of Fargo and Morehead. What this argument includes is that partner will provide system patent and operations to Morehead signal systems. The city of Morehead currently does not have staff that needs in traffic operations. Partner will provide Morehead signal system with regular maintenance programs, both preventative and as needed. And active management operations of a signal is quarters. Some of the things we found in even the smaller and market conditions was that it was hard to agree on the basic addition and 20 going in and getting to initially inventory what the conditions are, differences in models of the traffic signals and such. Another thing is determining the cost. And indirect costs. The city of Fargo would need to be reimbursed for taking out all of the city of Morehead signal systems. Determining a current enrollment in Spain, we got down to the above working up much of the operators that there kills people, to determine companies percent over the. One of the other things is to keep regular meetings and maintaining a moment among the local staff so that it stays forefront, and they keep the urgency of the need for it. Some of the general observations that we went to be from our plan to the agreement was to me to be just the opposite of what we heard in the last. We can do that our agencies really wanted a higher level of detail in the analysis of the plan to help support their agreements to determine things like costs and the actual -- with their jobs would be. They felt that they should have -- are should -- our plan should have provided alternatives for coordination to do an analysis and to rate a clear invitation program. That our plan should have injured our lives and prioritization of invitation and setting up these agreements between the agencies, and determining shared ability for who is responsible for a limited these agreements. It has been important to really have consistent and regular meetings. Like I said, to keep it in the forefront of our agencies , it was important to find a local champion or shepherd with the city of Fargo to forward to take on the city of Morehead, and the next step is, after that was in place, they would actually look at taking on the state of Minnesota signal systems. We have also worked hard to our policy were and are political boards to make sure that -- as in place and we are not waiting to hand in the agreement, but to keep them apprised of what is going on throughout the process. We have learnt to the process, but in our public sector and with our smaller NPO, the change can be difficult. We have had to strike to show what the outcome of this could be, and how it will improve our system. With that, that's the end of the presentation. So I will turn it back over to Stephanie. Thank you, thank you. Again, I remind people to go ahead and put questions into the. Will address them at the end of the next presentation. Our next presenter, will be not only -- not only. She is a senior program manager for the North Central Texas Council. She's as the Dallas-Fort Worth region by developing transportation plans and programs that address the complexity of the rapid growing areas. Family joined this in 1999 and is currently the manager of the construction management and system operations program area. This area includes construction that just management, safety, security, public, website development, and computer services for the North Central Texas. That listed her masters in urban planning from the University of -- I think I mispronounce that. And a bachelors degree in geography from that State University. She currently serves as a section were presented by the forward section of the Texas section of Institute of transportation engineers. She has served on the board of professional organizations including the women's transportation center and the chapter of -- Natalie? Good afternoon. I will start out by talking about the title of my presentation, growing pains. But I wanted to capture here is, as a systems which are, like the one in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, where we are being paid to try to integrate legacy systems with new state-of-the-art systems come a we are having more and more agencies, boards that are interested in sending and receiving IP is related to. We have to partners, the data we want to share, and it is with the death, how do we begin to overcome -- overcome some of those? Into the Madrid system, and was unimpressed entering, you have growing pains that come along with it. So I'm excited to talk to everyone today about the experiences that we are having in our region, and think that we are trying to competition in the future. First I will give you a little bit of highlight of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. And let you know a bit about our region. And the agencies that are involved in our organization. We have a 16 county region, about 1200 -- a little over 1200 mi.&#²;. We have a lot of demo organizations, and over 170 cities. Our region is larger than about six states, which I have listed at the bottom of the side. In addition to the size of our region, we also have a lot of economic development that help drive by real estate -- need a single system within our system. We have a large economic impact, and a large position, and what is most important to us is, how do we make this system of data and video sharing the most to those folks that is our jurisdictional lines? That's really what we have been trying to paste as we enhance amateur our IPS system. You're set up to have a distributed system within our region, so it is important that we share this information and integrate it into a system that we can all make better operational choices of what types of things for -- we are adamant that their to the public and the uses that are traveling on our system. And going to highlight today, some of our public sector regional partners that we were both. We have some traditional partners and some nontraditional partners. I want to highlight. What historical milestones as our region been through to kind of highlight but things have already been discussed to get us where we are today? I will talk about existing agreements and concept of what these agreements accomplish in terms of fiber and data and video sharing for IT is information. Talk about our proposed regional partnership agreement, and long-term operation and maintenance vision of his regional partnership agreement. In terms of public sector partner, this has been mostly our focus to begin with, I know our private sector partners, but I am struggling within a region of this size to get public sector is all on one page. I primarily focus at first is, how do I get my public sector agencies, by partners within the region to share this data between each other? You will see on here, we have a department of transportation, we have districts, and the DOT headquarters. As they try to agreements across the state consistent, we are a critical part of that we are involving in our process because they are looking for consistency and integration across the state, where we are looking for consistency and integration across the region. We also have a lot of public-private partnerships by the Department of transportation have. We have expanded development agreements were part of sector partners are coming in and building roads, they are taking over the operation of our world, so we need to make sure they are integrated into this state of sharing so the user is not just traveling on the facility was there, they are traveling on the whole system. Or across multiple quarters or both a different folks are operating. We have a total authority, and to transit agencies, and commercial airports that are very important. We have city traffic management centers as well as emergency operation centers. In terms of the history of ideas at the start of regional networks, we started deploying IPS in terms of the devices, the networks in 1992, when the regional transportation Council, which is the policy board for our IPO, started to set aside pending for IPS. In 2000, we initiated and completed a big bash to mitigation analysis, and specifically got out the idea of dedicating some of the fiber that is in the ground to original network. That is really when the discussion started to occur about this ever sharing network. In 2006, we completed a high-level design and we begin to engage emergency operation centers. This is when they started to get very interested and getting video into my mama centers, having that data available to them to know what is occurring on the resistance, possibly what type of response they have to have the incident, and things like that. In 2008, Texas DOT and the city began making proper connections to each other, sharing data, and having agreements with one another. Than in 2010, we begin to integrate topic management centers and connections to me because it was critical for us to have both of these folks on board to monitor our transportation system for Super Bowl activity. So that really allowed us to get one step further, and we utilize the that particular event to help us get across -- get a few connections across the goal line. Existing agreements and concept. Readily within our region we have a standard agreement that came from our department of transportation, one is for ever sharing and connection, we have a regional agreement. The other is for sharing data and video. That requires an individual agreement. So currently, a folks are set up to share information is, they are sharing information directly between the city, or that transit agencies, and the Department of Transportation. There is an ability currently to share information the agency eight -- ages eight to agency be. Or the transit agency to the total authority. So what we are trying to get after with the original agreement is not it is not just an agreement who wants to chase up with the DOT, is a they want to share things with it just as it is so they can coordinate traffic signals so when folks ask the jury to -- interest in July, the signals are cremated. So that is why we feel it is important to establish some kind of agreement that just -- that allows them to share with other modes of transportation and other partner agencies within the region. The proposed regional partnership agreement, we are looking for when agreement that would allow for connection , it might be a wireless connection that eventually gets on this regional fiber network, depending on where agencies are located. As well as an exchange of ideas anticipation of the data and video. We are proposing one connection per agency, I know eventually want to get to present it -- but if he cannot pitch one connection per agency, I think we will be in good shape is getting our feet wet a little bit, getting experience under our belt, and determining how many additional connections we might need to -- how do we create redundant linkages? In addition, the curmudgeon, we are looking for vindication from city to city, city to transit agency, 32 -- until we do -- et cetera, and a regional agreement, but our goal behind this is, each agency does not have to develop an individual agreement with each other. Is into, with the number of partners within our two, if we had to develop individual agreements, per city a to Dr. Siddiqui, city a to talk to Texas DOT, our agreements could be with the -- it could get really out of hand. So we went agreement, and we are able to accomplish an advocate with anyone that is able to connect or send original agreement. In addition to that, based on emergency operation centers, they have a request to see a bottom line here, they have a request to have the ability to do you talk of the capabilities of this particular number. Said that is something we do want to consider. We do need to make sure that we designed the connections in a way that that can be accommodated. Is a diagram that kind of describes a little more about the aqua blue arrows in here, and it is really the mitigation between partners and not just the DOT themselves. How are we going to change between different agencies? In terms of the agreement development projects, we have been taking a lot of different approaches, and we are not quite there yet. One thing that was brought up, which we are beginning to are down this process, is the development of deal points. We started to talk with legal folks, and a lot of times when we start talking with agreement and legal language, we can't get down to what is the objective of the technical committee, we are too wrapped up in some of the legal language that has to go into the agreements. For it was suggested to us by fickle folks to focus on the difference. What are you trying to comfort you with this agreement? We have started to drop out these deal points in terms of what is our goal for this argument to sell, and get agreement from the technical group on these deal points, and what the legal folks have put it into the appropriate legal language that it needs to go in. This is just one example of the deal point are starting to put together a draft lists, which are sharing with our regional partners agreement to provide information into. Long-term maintenance and operation, currently, we retired, and even in our new regional agreement, we are trying to develop, we don't want the actual drawings or connection diagrams to be necessarily part of the specific agreement. We think of these need to be approved on an individual basis, because the agencies that are connected to each other, to look at them and we put them and their is adjustments to that diagram, we don't want to have to redo the whole the agreement for that. We are putting in language that requires these folks to approve it prior to at the end of it, and this is the type of thing which we put in our agreements, but the drawings are done outside of the agreement. We are supposing that that be part of the process. In addition to that, you're looking at cost estimate the overall number. Hundred separate -- our goal behind this regional network, which I will get to some diagrams that show that, it's agencies that have existing fiber are dedicating pepper to this regional network. There has to be different types of vitamins at the end of these pepper plants, and to the region was responsible for that, separate from what that individual agency. Ability as. We're also looking at a revenue source producer contradiction. So agency that put into this regional network, obviously we have to find a way to maintain its and possibly extended into the future. How are we going to do that? User contribution these are something that we are looking into. As well as looking at picture equipment and design upgrades to the network -- but the number 20 to technology advances, and additional agencies are added to this network. This diagram shows additional network maintenance, and who is responsible for what's. Again it is a shared network, so we will look at your visibility to operate and maintain the network. So you'll see in the middle, with the white line is original artwork. These are agencies that have fiber in the ground, but have agreed upon sharing that Tiber with other regional partners. So it is a separate regional power. You're proposing that those agencies, since they have to maintain their own ever think, within the same country, if something happens to it, prepare the regional fiber connection as they repair their own fiber connection. The connection point between the regional network and local responsibility connection, the area that is highlighted in red. Local agencies will be responsible for making sure their passion for digital connection point, it gets back to the topic operation center or their armored the operations into or transit operations into. The next diagram goes into a little more detail as the connection point, where there are regional centers, vocals which is, again, the owner of the paper is responsible, we're hoping to have been responsible for the fiber repairs. The region would be responsible for the regional such, the local entities to be responsible for the local switch, and the connection back to their teams to that you see or transit facility. Is promote resource sharing, our dollars go further and it's making better use of public funds. It is seamless to the public because we are sharing information, and most important of all, we are building partnerships. Building trust in each other. Eventually, he might be able to, not only share information but should the operations of some of these systems. So we can make even better use of resources. As our whole goal behind a shared resource and be sure to stop ability with this particular number. Want to operational and maintenance costs, we're looking at connecting approximately 16 additional agencies pick up your ties and connections based on critical projects that we have put forward as was agencies that are ready to connect. We have a lot of agencies in our region, 170 cities, but all of them to talk topic operation centers, but all of them to get the traffic signals. You're focusing on those agencies that are critical to a particular project that is being streamlet that we need to make sure that their connection is made as well as agencies that have a topic operation center or some type of traffic operations Center and bigoted -- and they're ready to get connected to this regional never. Invitation and maintenance costs, a cover the cost of approximately $300,000 to deploy additional regional such as across the existing private network. Our policy Board is also programmed $800,000 to help make additional connections within the regional network. But does require 20% match, so we will be working with local entities quick dash to connect -- collect and help support these types of local connections in this regional network. In addition to that, are looking to identify future funding sources . Interpreting the emergency operation centers. I think I heard Washington mentioned that they were able to receive some homeland security funding. That may be a possibility for this particular matter. We looking for user contributions as well. So that is how we would sustain the operation and maintenance of this particular topic. These are items that we are putting in to deal points as part of our agreement, and we are looking for with our regional partners Tuesday but all we need to put in place, and what all we need to consider in six month or a year to help maintain and operate this network Those are the points I want to highlight. Our goal is, how do we return the system, and how do we get to the point that we are able to share information and have a system that is seamless and is operational to the best that it can throughout our region, and that is the typical of the cock and all of our partner agencies that have been participating in this discussion. Go to back over to Stephanie. Binky Natalie. At this point, we will open it up to the question-and-answer. Folks have been type in questions for a, I will start with some of those. As you're listening, any of the participants, if you think of something that you would like to ask, but entered in the chat box that here. Then direct them to everyone, please. To start, I would jump back to Andrew. There's a question about clarification. What kind of activities are listed in the work plan that you developed? Worked up, operational improvements Yes, well I had a slight that talked about those very briefly. It was my site 14. The annual work plan is split into four categories. The first is the MATOC by operations support. There is not quite a traffic management center, but they're certainly an operations center that has multiple TV screens, computers and scanners, their staff and their that are monitoring those during operating hours. Generated messages, making phone calls, participating on conference calls. There is an annual budget for that. It does not go into extreme detail about their activities. There are standard operating procedures documents that they have, but they are not included in the annual work plan. Annual for kind of interest is the pending. And I talked about two categories of the system support. One is basically described -- describes the basic operations in -- and vitamins. You have to have computers, you have to have backup, you have to have a electricity. Troubleshooting, there is money for that. That is in a second category. The third task that is a basic enhancement to our JS to keep it compatible with other systems. Been potential for special activities which could include major upgrade to our JS, it could be a special study, so forth. I thought Peggy's note on the detail of agreements was kind of interesting. We definitely have our share of very detailed documents. We have as a piece, we have a pending agreements, contracts, so if you look in various documents, you'll find a lot of detail. But I feel glad that maybe our partners have decided that that does not have to be included in the most basic of the agreements, which is that they will participate. Those are just to address in other documents, as needed. So I hope that gives a flavor of what is in the annual work plan. Have a question for taking into Natalie. Entry mentioned that the -- for the regional operations agreement, started with September 11. In a cargo and in the North Central Texas area, was the agreements in your area? This is petty. The the the of visiting from a couple things. Originally, it was one of the main outcomes were recognitions from our last updated I guess the. We had a federal highway office visitor -- a visit in 2008, and have started installing a lot of TMS signs, cameras, detection, that. What the final report that pointed to was that we had a lot of the biblical IT of stuff that we were starting to install, but it was not really doing anything across our regional various. So that made outcome from their operations report was to move towards a regional concept for our topic operation. This is Natalie. The main catalyst started with the 2000 communications analysis that was completed within our reach and thank you for the idea that we need to integrate and communicate between these traffic management centers since we have a distributed system. And I would say on top of that, what is really kind of began to move into the implementation stage, was when we started to engage emergency operations centers, they were very interested in this information, and how it is useful to them for homeland security type things. For response to accidents. They helped us push it along, I guess. They put a little fire under us to get us moving in the were quickly. Calling upon the, is homeland security a staple during a process? If so, are there any lessons learned specific to it? Within the council government here, we have an emergency preparedness Department, so we rely on them a lot to do the outreach to the emergency response agencies as it relates to: security. Thanks to that story. So we kind of partner with them within our own organization, and we utilize their connections and partnerships that they have built for other types of projects. So homeland security is engaged in this discussion. But we utilize our emergency preparedness Department to help to the outreach to them. Similarly, is there an agreement with local law enforcement? What we are proposing is, as part of the connections agency, but they make that -- they engaged not only topic operation centers, but their emergency operation centers within this jurisdiction. So we are doing outreach both to emergency operation centers and traffic operations centers to engage in the process. That there would be one agreement, like for example the city of Arlington would have one agreement with the topic operation center and the emergency operations center to connect to the regional network. A question for everyone is that, one of the participants has heard that there is availability of Democrat funding for operation centers. Have any to use or access that? No we have not a cargo. In fact, we just completed a traffic operations incident management plan and the things that was at the top of the list the flooding. We have had major floods for years in a row and are projected to have another major plot next year as well. We often lose several of our interstates or arterial roadways due to flooding over the bank of the river. That was kind of the high of it. Because every year it is different, into for your different birds are under how much topic operation centers to assist with that. So that is something that, we are not at the level of actually applying for funds the original center, we are going to with our hybrid option. It is something that I would hope when we get there, that maybe for the purposes of that PDB for RTC, that we could use that. We have not at this point. This is Natalie. To have that utilize the Democrat plans for that, but I will definitely be looking into it. This is entry. I have not heard anything about his of the Brunswick that in the Washington area. I might want to, thinking about the last couple questions, here is not so much a matter of homeland security participating in our and fuel prices, it is us participating in the process. Washington is very big on homeland security as you can imagine, and in fact, the kind of communications things that North Central Texas into cargo are doing, really are not under the offices of the MPO here. They are in security, emergency management, chief information officer, kind of things. So, we are not the venue. The we have the state of -- and transportation, but the communication tools and the interconnections are generally given in other sectors. Enter, someone asked if you could please expand on the description of the communications network, especially given the vast number of agencies involved in communication technology used. I do know that, under the offices of a couple of non-transportation committees here, they have been forging a regional network among many agencies, and as well, the state DOT is have connections and so forth. I am no expert in the way that they are laid out or anything. Again, I would echo that neither the MPO process nor MATOC itself have been to hold or the venue where those things have been designed or implement. So unfortunately, it is not an area that I am very familiar with. Family going back to a specific detail in your presentation, someone asked for the -- in your slide list, the funding. Ahead and implement and maintain network. Was programming for $800,000, what funding did you use? Currently, that funding is the NAT dollars in 2010. We have also used FTP and answer those transportation but once. Does require a 20% match, so we do have to work with our partner agencies to provide a 20% match for those types of printing. -- Categories. That has been our source of funding support for the regional network. Okay. Enter, I have a couple more questions for you that books and to earlier. How important have systems -- system performance measures supporting pending consensus? They are definitely -- with importance to that, we have parties and who really called for a benefit cost that he to be accomplished in order to ensure their continuing funding. In fact, the MATOC committee did use some of the funding that they had to commission a benefit costs are based on some of the things that have been going on national research to come up with a benefit cost ratio and that has further been applied so that when the staff does their reports, they give an estimate of benefit costs impact is on the formulas that were established within the original study. I would say that the study itself was the very conservative. In its benefit cost ratio. So it certainly did not try to take credit for everything that it could. In the meantime, there was continuing work on trying to develop more performance metrics and report them, and see how they improve the understanding of MATOC, and its programs. Some things are not necessarily measured by number. When we have had a couple of big storms are big events and stakeholders have seen me talk in action, they have just appreciated it being there. And it was not a number, it was just their reaction to experiencing it. Great. And also, do you speak -- for projects? What is the criteria and this great mechanism for selecting projects? The MPO does undertake a copper projects. We do not have a quantitative scoring system I think. I would have to say, that we don't have a very detailed track record here of considering operational kind of strategies within the copper projects. 80 as part of capital projects, and that is not to say that there is -- that it is not important, or that our agencies have not invested in these things, if anything I think they have invested or the average if you look across the country. Is just a matter of what our partners think they want out of a copper projects. It is more about -- I think it is more about the capital projects. It is more about projects and how they interact with land use, and so forth. And operation things, important that kind of just that was separately. I don't know if that is good or bad, but that is kind of the way to. And people still online? I encourage you to enter all of your questions. I think we have addressed most of what was are asked, so I would like to have four questions for our visitors. I have one last one for you. Does MATOC have the presence of enforcement personnel? Ltd. I guess the difference here is between, if you actually looked at the committees who are looking at procedures and looking at it price, versus people who are consuming the data and information that MATOC is producing. There is some limited involvement of law enforcement personnel in the input were planning same, but there is definitely a lot of consumers into law enforcement, military, homeland security, emergency management. In fact, it was reported that the subscribers who have to the agency people, subscribers and who -- data, they were moribund transportation folks than they were transportation folks is that there was an inventory taken. So definitely popular among those folks to have a one-stop shopping for a regional situation awareness picture of transportation conditions. Okay. Finally, this may have been addressed turn your presentation but just make sure that the participant who asked is able to get their answer, when you say that the which provides one connection per agency, who pays for that? Currently, it is similar to the money that the regional transportation Council has programmed. We go through and do a copper projects, we have selected some agencies that are getting funding for the connection as part of the copper projects. It is -- RTC is currently paying the 80% of and in dollars. That is how that is currently funded. Any of the folks that are listening, if you have any more questions please go ahead and enter them into the chat box. We have a little more time. As a reminder, according of his father, the auto individual portions will be available in about -- sometime in the next week on the website, and I will enter that address again into the box. To folks have any more questions? Well if we have gone through the questions at this point, I will turn it over to Wayne Berman who is on the line now, he's with federal highways and their office operations, and I think you would like to say a few words. IQ Stephanie. Did you -- were organizing this today. I just want to take ante, thank you, and not only for participating, and all of you for joining in on this call. This again, as Josh mentioned in the beginning, a part of the regional transportation system management and operations committee, and one of the initiatives is to really begin to frame the issues of collaboration and coordination, and the formal -- of that around the institutional agreements and arrangements that we have. We want him to demonstrate a lot of that here today, and I think we have done that. There's a whole database, as she mentioned on the website you can go to, because we have kind of touched it all up. But in terms of the federal highways, we feel that a lot of these collaboration and coordination and particularly uninvested to these events, I really some of the underpinnings of our planning for operations program. Indeed, setting objectives, measurable objectives, performance measures are run those objectives. So, again I want to emphasize the importance of these agreements and the efforts. A lot of the reports that we did of the collaborative advantage report as well as another collaborative -- and several other collaborative reports are found on the plan for operations was a. I encourage you to go there as well. These are really the important underpinnings of our program, and again, I wanted to thank everybody for participating, and if you want to learn more, or need to delve into this a little bit more, we are available, myself certainly, committee members as well as our federal highway field offices, and resource centers. So, with that, I would just close by saying that we are available to help, and this is no small matter to undertake these agreements as you saw. It took some time and effort to formalize and develop. We have -- we can support you on that as well. So they give you the opportunity to speak, and I will give it back to you. Tell you about this podcast, I would be some information on the national transportation operations coalition. Here you see the member organizations of idiocy. We encourage you to go to the -- NTOC -- to find a more about the organization. The NTOC website contains information about upcoming podcast, and also contains the webcast archive tape with id. according to the previous talking operations with us. Will have a recording aside from today's weather up in one week. NTOC also has two discussion forums, one focusing on the high-level or strategic issues, one focusing on IT of deployment and lessons learned. You can also set up on the website for the NTOC newsletter by e-mailing twice monthly, and we encourage you to watch for upcoming idiocy planning for operations whether it's. The next one will be in late September or early October analysis tools planning for operation. The link on the website will take you to the registration, and there will actually be a whole series of is what is going on to the end of the year. I would like to pass it to Jocelyn to share a bit of information about some other upcoming events. Into Stephanie. At this point to give a quick dash for a series of workshops that are going to be hosted by federal highways and FTA on the wall of the broader pricing and supporting funding regional goals. Integrating pricing into the Metropolitan transportation plan. There is going to be four of them held important cities during the month September, and I encourage you to e-mail -- and was able address is on this -- the site, or give him a call to register for one of those workshops by August 22. Is Monday. There is, for public-sector agency representatives, there is limited funding of federal highway has to help defray those costs. So, they look like they are going to be some interesting workshops there. So I encouraging -- encourage you to look into that and contact --. Okay. I think that is it. Into Justin, and in answer to one last question, does of you who participated in today's weather will be notified of the upcoming webinars so you can keep an eye on the website as well is we will make sure to send you announcements about them. With that, this concludes today's NTOC paying for operations with our, I would like to say thank you to our presenters and to all the participating. We hope you found this informative and interesting today. We are ready to and love in a. This concludes today's conference call, participants, you may now disconnect. Presented, please standby for the post conference. (end)