Welcome and thank you for standing by. The presenters will be able to answer some of your questions during the presentation. Those will be held at the last 15 minutes of the seminar. The recording and presentations will be posted within the next week. The availability of the presentation, the recording and the closed captioning of the seminar. We encourage you to direct others to access the recording on line. The presentation used today is available for download in the download box on the left-hand side of your screen, click on the file that you want to download and then click save to my computer. I would like to introduce Mr. Buck, moderator of today's webcast. He is overseeing the activities of the national transportation operations coalition. Prior to this, 2008, he worked in roles and a program creating jobs for people with disabilities. He received an MBA from the University of Maryland, and he is continuing the contribution measures within the program. I will turn it over to Darren who will start things off. Thank you. We will be presenting some lesson's learned to a folk that went on an international scan trip. They are studying perspective road trips and pricing for the countries. Before I get to that, I want to recognize two people who are participating in this trip, and that is Patrick [ indiscernible ] and also Mr. Nick Thompson from DOT. Speakers today, we have Bob Arnold, and he is the director of transportation management, and he is focused on the reduction of roadway production. Also from here in headquarters, Mr. Jamie Blakely is an adviser for the federal transit here at the office, and Mr. John Done who served as a reporting facilitator who is based in Indianapolis with expertise in -- [ Speaker/Audio [ Speaker/Audio Not Clear ] is responsible for the six areas of -- [ Speaker/Audio Not Clear ] -- leadership roles in industry and the organizations. And last, but not least, Patty Stagello, what was part of if engineering development and the toll division. She was the traffic the project manager for the hot link and is the director for the Seattle project. Without further ado, I will turn it over to Bob aren't. I am glad you can participate today. I was looking at the role today, and I felt like the Wal-Mart greeter. I am going to introduce the topics and I will turn it over to the others in the group. If you are not familiar with the international scan program, it is serve ising as a means for technologies and best practices that can significantly improve transportation in the United States. This will improve the access in transportation within the U.S. For those of you that may be invited may be one of those experts at sometime in the future, and I will put in a plug that is very awarding, and I suggest that you go in and tackle it. Don't expect it to be any part of the vacation, but I think you will find it rewarding in the end. What are you looking at? The purpose of it is road pricing. We have looked at the jurisdictions and they are priced along the pure revenue generation and it is solely focused on the demand management. The trust is implementation and the impact of variable pricing, traffic volume, time of day, and a number of other factors. The next question is: Why? Why did we do in? In most of the major urban areas in the United States, there is congestion problems. There is also a funding source for the highways and there is allocation and that is mostly in the hot-lane concept . Purpose, well, you know, we are looking at the policies and the implementation strategies that have worked. We looked at the technologies, but in a sense, we are looking at how it will support the policies and the purpose. We will look at how it will be in the technologies in a bit, but it is more of how we have the pricing strategies. The scanned team and participation, it's basically, in what we attempt for all of the scans is in the federal, the state, and other stakeholders in the presentation and that, in this case was the facility owner in the point of New York and n, and in the -- New Jersey, and we have FTA and you can see where the state DOT participants are in that -- participants are in that map. The scanned sites that we looked at are broken up in to management, revenue generation, and in one location where they were doing a little bit of both. It's an interesting and secondary way to look at it, and that is the demand management was in the urban areas, and the road generation were with the road networks, specifically, the trucks were the one thing there, and the other thing about the Netherlands, that are in the process of implementing. They are not currently an active pricing program. They are getting very close. I guess one thing to comment about, all of these sites, if you visit these on a vacation, they are rainy in December. I wouldn't suggest those as a vacation in December. I will turn it over to John right now for the next slides. Thanks Bob. I'm going to focus on the first r three sites that -- first three sites of the demand managements, and that is specifically London and -- [ Speaker/Audio Faint & Unclear ] -- and we will check the Czech-Republic and the Netherlands, and what we have as the grand daddy is Singapore's road pricing program. We have, specifically, management, and they also want to promote transit as part of this. They have opened since 1975, they have been in operation for 30 years, and they have a number of iterations, and they have a paper tag that poem would put -- people would put in their wind shield that would be part of the road pricing for the [ indiscernible ]s, and the DSRC readers. Just to read about Singapore and Stockholm network, when you are passing through the road point, it's a guessing game from the time you pay. The fee is set on a quarterly basis, and it is based on an 80 percentile speed. There is a true and congested pricing and they do that through using a transponder based system, that acts as the funds in the smart cards that is asserted in to the transponder, and that helps to protect the user privacy. You will see in the results section that the 80th percentile speed, they try to keep it up to 45 to 65-kilometers per hour. They are not 100 to 130-kilometers per hour for the speeds and the expressways, but it will be on the settings for the materials at 30 miles per hour. And the revenue, it's an component, and it is derived from the road pricing, and 2008, it was approximately 75 million U.S. dollars. The new road was opened in February 2002, and the pry -- 2003, the first was to reduce congestion, and secondly the promotions. This is in Stockholm and Singapore, you pay a flat daily fee to enter the described area in central London, and because of that and the policy decisions that they have made, there is a 90% discount for the residents within the area charge, and they are also exceptions for the taxes and other vehicles, and that is resulting about 30% of the vehicles that are in the pricing area and are exempt. To keep in mind, dates, '03, after the opening, about three years later, '07, the mayor extended it to the western part, what they call the western extension, and this year, they are in the process of appealing that extension u do to some -- due to some public consultation of what they have at the mayor's level. It's really important to look at the results in London particularly in the reduction of o traffic. Immediately after they reduced the price, they had a 25% reduction in the inner city, and when they reduced it western portion, they reduced it to 17%. Due to several things, they have seen an erosion of the traffic reduction in the city. Now, it's going to be more to the prior charges. And the question is: If they remove the charge, will it be that much worse? That's something they believe would occur. It is still affecting user behavior. This is about 220 million U.S. dollars, and they are dedicated to transit and other forms of transportation and investments. Shifting to Stockholm, this is one of the more recent accordance that has been mentioned. I should also mention, before we get off of this subject, this has become the area life pricing, and it has become more prevalent, and this is as well as other places that are explored such as china. Specifically, Stockholm, -- the distinction about Stockholm is: They took a trial approach, and this is necessitated due to the political agreements and [ inaudible ] where they were to do a trial a and a vote six months after the trial began. They closed down the City of and citizen of Stockholm. Stockholm is a city that is created from a conglomeration of Islands. And downtown, it's fairly defined skew to it being a -- due to it being an island. They are able to coal it that way -- control it that way, using the license technology, and a city off of that, Lalingo [Phonetic] -- they created a rule off of the implementation process, they are traveling from Lalingo to the Island to traverse it within 30 minutes, then they would not be charged the congestion price. This is allowing high level [ inaudible ] resident's vehicles and not paying the congestion charge. They noticed dramatic changes in the reduction after they turned on the congestion charge. A 20% reduction in the traffic. And it resulted in a 210% improvement of the air quality within that region. I will turn it over to Mark with reference to the other sites we have visited. I'm going to address the distance space charging, that was the Czech-Republic, and other cities in London. The Czech system is one that is designed on the primary highway system for the disease, all of the -- Czech-Republic. Beginning in January of this year, they had somehow trucks in a gross weight of 35-kilo grams. This is different than what you would expect from a distance charging system. There is no GPS technology here. They are using transponder based technology, and we have the easy tag as we know them here. And we are using the [ indiscernible ] along the highway system to measure the distance on the main road way and not at the interim changes on the highway system. The C-structure that they have adopted is based on the distance and the vehicle type and the missions class, and we see this mostly in the European examples on the distance based models that the missions class is one of the key determinance for pricing and fee structures. They are at a critical location in the European continent and the keys that are passing through across the European continent, and 40% of their volume is foreign trucks and they had to deal with that in terms of onboard units, and they have something that allows the foreign truckers do manual booking if they don't have a transponder to be tracked. Their system was very rapidly deployed, and as we will talk about later in the lesson's learned, that came with costs. And we will talk about that a little later. The other interesting point is the [ inaudible ] trucks on Sundays and the peak times on Fridays as woman. The system took a little longer, it went in on January of 2005. It's similar. It is a good vehicle system, distance based. And the primary objective is also to achieve revenue generation. And it is moving across November ever north, south, and east and west. Germany is using the GPS technology and that is to bring the information back to the central processing stations. They have license plate reader technology for the enforcement purposes. The Germans have an elaborate system for those who don't have the transport systems on their vehicle, and that is about 10% of their vehicle population, and it's an expensive system, and it cost upward of 40% of their costs to handle the traffic that doesn't have the job-boardout. They have had results in terms of the vehicles. Some of the revenues, the truckers at arms, and the final distance based charging that we visited is the Netherlands as Bob said in the instruction. It's in the planning phase, but it is a constant approach that they are taking. Netherlands will be charging all vehicles on all roadways. They are doing that in a sense to replace the user -- the vehicle ownership taxes. In essence, they are looking for a revenue, neutral approach, but it is a pay-user, if you drive less, you pay less. There is a debate that is going on with the parliament on the peak charging for the congested urinary system ban areas. It's going to be an open procurement, they are looking at the GPS technologies, but with an open-design stance that we will talk about in the lesson's learned. You can see the forecasted results. They are looking at the good reductions, VMT, the environmental is is shifts and mode visits as -- shifts as well. And so with that, I would like to turn it back to Bob Arnold who will take us back to the major findings . The first one here, U.S. is not the reader in road pricing. There is others that have far more experience, the government, and no, ma'am three here, they are the guides in the implementation, the technology, the guides, the costs, and all of the different aspects in the program, you have to be clear on what u you need, not just what you want. You have to focus on what you need here. The champions are the part of being successful. The simplicity matters, and that is what I am talking about here on No. 3. This is important in achieving the public support. It may be a small group, but it is a key sector. The use and the exceptions are a key part here. We are talking about the community and Stockholm and the road being cut off at particular intersections. They were roadblocked just because they were able to get the equity issue out of the way. And in London, there is also some exemptions -- exceptions to the people that live in the border area. Even if you have to travel just over the line, they are not fully -- the fee is reduced somewhat. A public involvement is important. I guess, though in -- although in singer pore, they will be -- Singapore, they will reach out to the public and get some of their input before continuing. And the follow suit, we seen areas where the follow suit wasn't there, and it is starting to erode. So being able to follow through on your policy commitments is very important . It must be sold to the goal that was part of it in the first play. It's not only in the transportation, but it is also for the fee and the tax, whatever you want to call it, and it's transparently, linked to the goal. No. 10, the speed there, there is a rapid depletion of the future costs. If you need to get it out frequently, just remember it's going to be the increase in the cost of the implementation and the future costs about the theme. Technologies, it can allow the private sector date to add the experience and give the customer more than just the transportation benefits of the pricing and so having that open source is important. This goes back to No. 10 about the rapid implementation, and it turned off to be a problem in some of o the areas. This one here, is worrisome to me with respect to some of the systems that the U.S. does nationally. There is going to be a necessity to sharing databases, registration, information, et cetera. So that's a challenge that we have, EDU, and that is a challenge they have in the future as the various countries come on board with this type of pricing scheme . This is clear of the message, the education of the key stakeholders, and then trying to get the public acceptance as to why they are doing this, why they are doing a shift in the price. Lastly, on this page, 15, it talks about the demonstration. Maybe a better word was a full-scale trial. This is what happened in Stockholm. They went forward with a full-blown trial for a period, and they made sure that the public understood that they were going to shut it off and re-evaluate what happened. It is not only going to experience them with what they are going to get out of the pricing, get the support, but they were able to shake down the system is. They were able to see the way they did the pricing once they came back online. And they were able to come up with different policies because they had a chance to do the full-scale trial. So from those major findings, there are break downs of the categories, the lesson's learned, and there is legal and institutional measures, and we have outreach and public acceptance. I will turn it over for someone to go through that. Thanks, Bob. This is John Done again. I'm going to tackle the public and political policies, some of these lead back to the major findings. You may hear some of the repetition, but it is only because of the information we want to reinforce for the major findings. You heard this earlier from Bob, but this is for the countries that have the most redefined policy goals are the most effective. Going back to slide two, we have the generation, demands management, and you need to out where you are, are you in the middle? That bridges both, and that is where we are characterizing the Netherlands and that helps you to understand where you are. You can base that on the technologies, revenues, the rates, et cetera on that fundamental policy decisions. This was well-focused on in Singapore. They have not only the congestion pricing program, but they also have a program that manages the number of vehicles, basically a quota system for the number of vehicles that can be owned on the Island of Singapore. Czech-Republic and the Germans wanted to focus on that particularly to impact the trucks on the highway system, and this is including the foreign and the local trucks. They made the policy implementations based on that policy. The second political and policy lesson learned, and I think this is fairly evident, but it can't be underestimated, and it's important for the new projects as a lot of pricing products are for many regions, but that is you have to have the political champions in order to move forward with the implementation. Ken Livingston put a lot of the capital forward to work on the western area. It has not been proven to be publicly acceptable, and it's in the process of being repealed, as I mentioned earlier. The third item here, with the lesson's learned in this category, and that relates to simplicity. And a good example of this is: In sing pore, they had a -- Singapore, they had a requirement of having all of the vehicles that were in the country of having an onboard unit, and then they had a smart card that was inserted, and that has money on it, and it was a debt card, and that was -- Deb it card, and they -- debit card, and that drove the policy level that they would use. And this is the fourth concern here, the equity issues, and they can be addressed. We talked about the Lingo -- [Phonetic] residents and the central London residents, and then we mentioned the policy earlier with Singapore's smart card, and then, last, but not least, we have the deadlines, and those create the challenges and opportunities for the members because they are driving the process -- forward,. Without setting clear time lines and goals, it is not able to be implemented. It drives it to Stockholm to the full details and implementation of the system. And the others who are not driving, those could tangibly feel the impact of the congestion charge, and this is going to be tested this fall in the Netherlands as they have the upcoming elections while they are in the file of implementing. Now, we are going to turn it over to Jamie Blakely who is going to talk about the legal and institutional issues and lesson's learned. Thank you. The fundamental legal basis for being allowed to do a road pricing system has a big impact on how the system operates, and there is a big impact on the revenue that is collected and the system itself. Stockholm, for example, they use a tax. So when they want to make significant changes to the road pricing implementations, they will have a requirement. And you can imagine what type of hurdle that is to charge a difference or variancy and the other part of that is the tax and the revenues. If it's a tax, it may be a function that is equivalent to the IRS or others. And instead of being able to collect it as the transportation agency, there can be layers as to where the money goes, and whether it can go to the transportation fund, or whether it has to go to a more general fund, or it being remitted back to Treasury to be used for any purpose. The second point is that -- this is the one that Bob was making earlier. Often times, the agreements are necessary depending on how you are going to implement the systems. Agreements may be needed to share the information. Most of these was able to share the vehicle registry information and the industry that is collecting the tolls and the charges. And that was in particular in London to collect the toll and enforce their system. And the choice is also about the type of enforcement and the technology that you need and it may affect the legal authorities that you have and need in place in order to share that information. Another legal issue is linking the revenue to the policy goals. And depending on the policy, you may be able to do that better or worse. It's port that the front end is aligned to the legal goals. If you want to use the revenue to invest in the public transportation in a more livable infrastructure in -- and in London, for example, they have a good portion of the revenue for the bicycle lanes, improvements, public transportation, and a lot of real estate that they no longer needed for the automobile use, because there is fewer automobiles as a result of the charge, so they dedicated those to the other purposes. So if they didn't transport that to London, it wouldn't have been as simple to make any of those improvements. Similarly, in Germane, they are more concerned about -- Germany, it was consistent in what they wanted to use the revenue resources in what they wanted to use it for. In Stockholm, they really made clear distinctions as to who would give what message, and their effectiveness. The Swedish legislation with the federal government who was in charge of providing technical information and the technical advice, and this allowed them to remain neutral with respect to the technology and the contracts. This was part of the contracts becoming challenged and it was to maintain that they were not in an advocacy role, because it was basically in charge of providing that information. At the same time, they were in concert with Stockholm. They made themselves available, and that ability impacted their ability to implement the system and do it quickly. The city on the other hand, really took on the role, and they were the ones to hold the meeting and support the system. And the final point is the one where it is kin to a federal relationship here to the United States, but they were large directives that have little impact on the systems now, but it will impact them in the future. There is a requirement that all of the toll collections in the EU are operable by 2011. You can image the -- imagine the technologies to serve as one roll. Here in U.S., we need to be mindful also of the state to state and federal restrictions that apply with that. With that I will turn the time to the next presenters. Thanks, Jamie. I will be highlighting the planning, the performance measurement, procurement, and technology. Starting with the planning and the performance measurement, and one of the things is that the geography with the plans and the rolls that we have implemented. We have Stockholm, it is surrounded by Islands, and we had access points to understand what the charging zones were. As we highlighted in the introductory comments, both Germany and Czech-Republic, they are critical for movements and they are seeing high volumes on the national highways. So the designs and the business rules are oriented to help generate revenue out of the state traffic to maintain the system. A second finding in this area is about performance measures needed to support the policy goals. The comprehensive network planning and the performance measures are integral for the implementation effort for more of the systems as well as the managements of the systems. Singapore, the ongoing management of their congestion charge is the quarterly verification of the travel speeds on the highway and the materials, and they refine their resources to ensure that they are meeting 80% of the travel speeds to meet the standards of the roadway classes. This is maintained to measure the network affects and the charging zones to ensure that there is no unintended affects outside of the congestion and the charging zones, and they have changed their thinking on the network analysis. They are also taking a comprehensive approach in to their planning and exercising. We are looking at the network affects across the modes. The best planning practices are addressing education, outreach, and stakeholder management comprehensively. The Netherlands are an excellent example of all of these. The current implementation plan in all of these, the Netherlands, they are part of the outreach program, through the design, and through the procurement process, with a wide array of the agencies, the private interest groups, user groups, and industry groups, and the Netherlands are also conducting a very extensive risk assessment and cost estimation process to look at the private sector procurement options very thoroughly. And the Netherlands have done something that is kin to the pricing program and responsive to the federal highway administration and they have dedicated $150 million U.S. dollars to a congestion program, and that is allowing them to do an extensive research on the impacts and the various system design aspects. And most of f the sights are using the advanced analytics and the traffic models to better understand the impacts beyond the highway systems, and that is parking, transit, and the diversion issues as well. The fourth point here is the land use, the integration of the land use and planning, and this is a vital component of their approach. They have an impressive approach considering the land use along with the transportation planning, it's a structured approach, long term, and it is very focused. The best in the pricing programs we see is the integration of the transport organizations and in to their -- transport operations and transits in their road pricing programs. And when there are other options that are not available or feasible, we have the exemptions in terms of the business rules in terms of what has been employed by a lot of these places. Shifting to the area of employment, this has long term advantages. The dutch -- what this is going to do is allow the value added services to be added on to the main toll pricing system, not like an iPod or iPhone am, rather, but what this is going to do is drive down costs and assessments as an important asset to your approach. We have saw legal challenges were faced in the Stockholm Germany and the Czech-Republic, they are large and political contracts and issues in the process. The first point here, the clarity and the specificity of the approach is important to the cost. In Stockholm, they did a bit of changing in their scope as their process was evolving. And as a consequence, they had a compressed delivery schedule, and they are living with a high operating cost now. And they are managing that after the fact with an aggressive cost reduction process. The Germans -- I think the Czech-Republic is a good example of the rapid deployment. They went from procurement to opening the system under a year, and they have experienced high operating costs and high capital costs as a consequence of that compressed schedule . The operating costs were also something that became an issue, they locked themselves in to some contractual terms on the onboard unit, and they were pay high costs for -- paying high costs for a tenure now for the contracts they have endured. And Stockholm had some high costs that they have documented and they are looking to reduce those costs now. And the other is looking a at -- at private and public partnerships. Germany is working hard in that area, there's different options, and there is a mixed result there. And in the end result, Czech started seeing some revenue after that was generated. I will switch over to the technology area now. Critical goals are a solution to the technology area. Particularly, what we found was -- in Stockholm, I would like to focus on that a little bit. But where the charges were taxed, they have to have a license plate technology, and they are optical character recognition at the roadside cabinets and at the main processing center. They found that the processing was so good on the license plate recognition that after the trial, which had transponders and the license plate technology when they went to their permanent system, they went to a full licensed plate video based system, because the technology was that good. So is some of the flexibility has the advantages. In terms of the initial technology and application, you should be flexible as to what it involves. As I mentioned, the Stockholm's migration, it has an exclusive video system. Singapore, as John mentioned, from -- went from a paper based system to a pure electronic system over the course of their experience. Requirements that make the system complex has exponential costs. It's ease SIs to have the -- easy to have the bells and whistles, but you can make the technology and the communication of that to your customers very complicated. As I have mentioned in introducing the German's system, 40% of their operating costs are going to cover a manual system that addressed 10% of their transactions. It's an insufficient system. You need to be careful, think through carefully through some of the technology choices you make. I -- I am going to turn it over to Patty. Thanks, Mark. You have heard a bit about it already, but doing some trials are important to fully understand what your operations are and minimize the costs. The Netherlands, Mark mentioned, 150 million dollars, U.S., dollars is being used to have a range of different projects. This is testing the technology, the accuracy, and how they can improve on that. And also the user of the technology and will they be accepting of that. As well as getting through and to the driver behavior. How is the pricing affecting that? All of the projects are driving the implementation solution to the driving scream and it is -- scheme and it is overall lowering their costs. It only costs 5% of their total revenue. It's wise to spend the upfront dollars to push them in that direction. Stockholm, clearly, a great pilot project to be bold, go out and implement the trial of the accordance system, but from that, not only did they get the public support, but you will notice on the slide to the left, this a picture that they have shared to the public stating what it looked like the day before and after. There was a truly a change in how the people drove their system. Also, they had a lot of lesson's learned on their implementation, it ranged on how to the customers were paying for the tolls and the system itself, and how it was operating, and then they also had over estimated the number of call staff that they needed and the number of -- we move on to the enforcement side, and to ensure the fairness of the system, it's critical, even in these countries that everybody that -- countries that even that needs to pay is actually paying. All of them will be using video enforcement. Some of those will be using video as well as enforcement. You will notice the bill that is on the right side of the slide, and that comes from the London program. What I would like to point out is: You can actually see the car, and that is in the European countries and the privacy issue is not quite the same as it would be here in the U.S. People don't seem to have an issue with having their full body captured in that image for the secure issues. But, clearly, video is something that is out there, tried and true, and it's effective for the enforcement application. When they look at the enforcement, though, they don't look at it in a way to generate the revenue, it's a cost and recovery for the lost tolls. And in particular, Singapore started out with a stick approach. And if you didn't pay or you didn't didn't get your -- didn't get your permit, there was a hefty cost. But over time, it was a minimal cost if you didn't pay. Most of the countries don't have this as a sight of criminal act. They look at it as an administrative fee. And Stockholm because they are in coal of the vehicle registration system, they put holds on the vehicle registration, and they had the ability to control their credit ratings, so if you need to go get a loan for a new car, there is penalties associated there. So in Germany, the diversion was huge factor or concern that people had and that the truckers would avoid the autoBonn. They stayed on the fact, time is money and the truckers need to get to the destination on time. And they are willing to pay the toll to get to where they need to be. All of the countries' violation rates are under 2%. And it really shows for the countries that they have demonstrated that this an important element for the system and people are willing to pay for it. Now, we move on to the concept of the capital and the ongoing operation in the balance. Both Singapore and the Netherlands are doing a lot of upfront and Capital Investment. They will be taking the initial costs and all of the onboard units will be n installed to all of them throughout the country, and then they will be on the car when you buy it. And it will be bought for their citizen by the manufacturers. There was also, as mentioned before, in getting the private sector involved for the onboard units, there are other ways to defer the operational costs. There is a customer and a third party vendor as posed to the -- as opposed to the agency itself and reinforcement, and things of that nature. And just on the traffic management, I want to say that they all have traffic management. It's not only from a transit operation, travel time, but it's also with the law enforcement and incident response. I will turn it over to John now for outreach and acceptance. Thank you. Last but not least, the approach of congestion and management of revenue, it's a huge outreach. Bob mentioned the need for clear and salient messages in what they are getting out of this. Is it new revenues? Better in reducing the congestion and the improving the air quality? Those need to be faced. People may view it as a new tax, a fee, or someone gouging something knew that they didn't is -- new that they didn't have to pay for before.