At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. I'd like to turn the meeting over to Jocelyn Bauer. Hello. Welcome to another talking operations Webinar hosted by the national transportation coalition otherwise known as. [ Indiscernible ] Will serve as the moderator for today's seminar. Today's Webinar will last approximately an hour and a half with an hour allocated for the presenters and the final half hour is for questions and answers. During the presentation if you think of a question you can type it in the small text box. Send you questions to everyone rather than just the presenters. The presenters are be unable to answer your questions --s their presentations but Darren buck will use some of the questions typed in the chat box in the last 30 minutes in the seminar. Will be posted to the NTOC website within the next week. I'll type that address shortly. Presentation and the recording of the seminar. Direct others in your office who are -- file download box on your screen. On the name of the file you'd like to download and click the button on the bottom of the download box to save to my computer. Darren is the marketing specialist for the federal highway office of operations. Overseeing the outreach activities of the national transportation coalition. Darren worked in similar roles within the very commune and at a small federal program creating jobs. [ Indiscernible ] College park in 2005 and is currently studying planning -- now I'll turn things over to Darren who will start things off. Thank you for joining us fore this great presentation on Performance-Based Planning for operations. We have quite a distinguished panel of speakers. I'll get right into introducing them and so we can get on with the content. First of all Mr. . Egan Smith who had two decades of transportation -- master of engineering and traffic engineering and a master of science technology management. Member of the planning oversight and stewardship team. Main areas of concentration here at federal highway -- FTA on the planning operations program. Supporting and advancing DOT initiatives and planning. From FTA is John? [ Indiscernible ] He's a community planner [ Indiscernible ] Emphasis areas working with -- advising on the planning aspects for new transit in SAFETEA-LU. The congestion management process and transit on the table. A report series greater involvement with transit operators [ Indiscernible ] MPO. But to kick things off is my colleague, Mr. Rick Backlund. He worked for federal highway for the past the t 2 years and was program manager for the planning and operations initiative in the office of planning and operations. By the office of planning and federal highway and the federal transit administration. Prior to the current administration worked in the New York office. New York City Metropolitan Planning organization. Project manager of the cross harbor freight tun ill project. FHWA. -- Rick. Take it away. Thanks Darren. I want to echo what Darren had said about being able to have this Webinar. What you're going to hear about is a product that we've been workable collaboratively not only here in ped headquarters but a number of MPOs across the nation. We're really excited about this product. Just to kick things off, next slide. The overview. We're going to be talking about going to be presenting is an introduction on what is the objectives based approach to planning for operations. I'm sure a number of you all who are on the Webinar adidn'ted our workshops that were held in the summer of 2008 -- CMP. Management operations. We've done a lot of work since then. Talk about where we are. One of the key products that we've been developing is the model plans desk reference product. We're also going to be talking about how to use the desk reference and companion resources. The consolidated guide book. [ Indiscernible ] Go with that. Talk about what is an objective based approach, when we talk about how would this actually look in terms of planning? One of the things we've been focusing in on is if you were take a. [ Indiscernible ] Able to collaborate planners and operators in a regional level. What we're seeing in many areas around the country is measurable objectives well thought out goals on performance outcomes. Supporting that are performance measures. There's a lot of tack within the transportation community about performance measures now. So move forward with reauthorization. I think one of the great benefits in planning for OPS is performance measures are an integral part of this advancing. Goals and measurable objectives and performance measures supporting them are real projects an programs that have consensus that can move forward in operations. What is M and O? Going back to the SAFETEA-LU [ Indiscernible ] Of 2008. M and O is a regionally integrated program to optimize performance of existing infrastructure is really the focus area when we talk about management and operations. Real key portion of what we're talking about. When we talk about the objectives driven Performance-Based approach, what we've been advancing and -- how this all fits together. At the very top you see regional goals and motivation for many of the MPOs. Anticipating in this call mobility goals, sufficiency goals are really common goals contained in an MPO document developing these. I think what you're going to see in this for those who are relatively new in planning for operations, the objectives we create are very specific. They are very key tied to collaboration and agreement so that as we move down through this process and we get into defining performance measures on the right and identifying strategies, what we come up with is when you get to the metropolitan plan, you've got that collaboration going so that when you get into your tip, you have better projects. You have more successful projects for operations that are really focused on enhancing the system. But just as important you've got good strong relationships established across operations and the planning committee. What becomes key is the implementation and monitoring your progress. This really is not just a one shot deal. It's taking an interpretive approach on how this advances. For those areas orphan the call that are TM -- areas on the call -- legislative context SAFETEA-LU requires long strange -- operational strategies. This sent new. Focusing in on putting this into practice through the documents we're developing and working and moving forward to provide tools in the presentation today. How is this from traditional planning? The first bullet is key. A project based approach to reacting to problems and fixing them to taking the step back and saying what is it we want to achieve in our system of operations? How do we want our system operations to look in the next to years? Getting the operators involved not just in establishing mobility goal or sufficiency goal but having serious questions about moving beyond technology issues for the next one to three years, to really taking a broader system view. Then what you see out of this is that planning and investment decisions used performance as the goal to achieve these operations objectives. As part and par sell of this effort -- parcel of this effort as I mentioned earlier in 2008 and 2009N the course of the discussions we had with folks in these workshops one thing that seemed pretty absent is how we take the next step with this? How do we have an approach document to a resource? Going to provide tangible examples and performance measures you can use do advance this approach. This is going to be a -- not a cover to cover read. Very directed so folks will be able to readily access the information that they're looking for. Why a model plan? An approach document only gets you so far. Any approach is great so long as you have the tools to back them up. That's what we're creating with this model plan. To provide help in getting starting with this approach. Advance good practice incentives and performance. Tie this model plans document to the objectives Performance-Based approach. Then there will be sections talking about operations objectives menu of of of rations objectives and -- menus of operations objectives and support. We spend a lot of time making this very broad and far reaching. We did a lot of consultation in the operations community. Focused in these areas. Emergency assistance management -- we worked very closely with FTA and the transit -- a key part of this and this goes back to the approach document that we were talking about is the smart objectives. That's what you're going to see in the product that we're rolling out here. Specific measurable agreed upon and realistic objectives that are time bound. Fact sheets become the core component. Talk about this being a ready resource that can be accessible based on the subject areas for operations T reader will be ready available to go to types of operations objectives they can utilize. Typical MPO staff person looking to advance this type of agenda we believe this will become key to promote dialogue. Key components will be operations objective associated performance measure and the data needs. We realize that not going out and buying new products is so easy to do in this day and age. Taking existing data that you have. This is just a quick glance at one of the fact sheets to give you a sense and feel. Travel time. There will be a general description. Smart operations objectives. Here we have two examples improving average travel time during peak periods. As you see here the associated measure -- get into on a broad brush level MPO strategies to consider. We also focus in on what can be associated with safety related benefits. Following along in the fact sheets we also have for the open rations objective, we -- operations objective we have cross correlation to the extent of congestion, duration. Looking at various types of operations. Objectives. This becomes a very handy resource. Then this other page here is also really becomes key. Kind of help to provide cross correlating. So that if one is looking to develop an operations area -- here is some focus for that. At this point I'm going to turn the presentation over to. [ Indiscernible ] Talk about not only how we're creating these fact sheets but creating an illustrative example of how this really looks in practice. Thanks Rick. Let me discuss the illustrative model plan in this document. How did we develop this plan? First off, it's not an entire plan but it's an outline and segments of a plan to consider how operations can be weaved in to the plan. Since each MPO operates in unique circumstances as -- congestion and air quality issues. There may be multiple agency collaborations as well. This makes presenting a single model plan somewhat goals lead to objectives. Objectives lead to some sort of evaluation criteria or performance measures. Performance measures with informed selection of programs and projects. The availability of funding facilitates the feasibility and timing and implementation of these projects. Considered a model plan that follows the similar approach. The panel also illustrates basic events -- type [ Indiscernible ] [Speaker unclear due to accent.] that said, the intent of this section of the document is not to write an entire plan or dictate how MPO should organize or prepare their plan, instead the model plan illustrates how the approach affected those involved in the planning process. All operations can achieve regal outcomes of goals and the value derived from -- decision making and implementation of the planning process. This does not -- that we presented in the document. It presents. [ Indiscernible ] Drawn from two main chapters the goals and objectives and the system management and operations chapters. It indicate how these two sample chapters fit into the entire plan framework. This document attempts to provide some of the how to needed to achieve this and we'll have two MPOs utilizing a similar approach. Over all, it's a resource designed to enable transportation planners and partners that includes operations objectives and performance measures and strategies relevant to their region that reflect the communities values and constraints and move the region in a direction of improved mobility and safety. Menu of options so incorporate operations into their plans to an organized collection of sample operations objectives and performance measures. To show how this looks in practice, it also features excerpts -- results of an objective Performance-Based approach to plan for operations. The desk reference presents operations objectives specific operations areas and modes. It proVehicle Codes the reader with incite in to how these -- allows you to find potential management and operations strategies, improved transportation system efficiency and reliability. This reference is a companion to other Federal Highway Administration and resources. I'll let Rick speak more on this document. Thanks. As I was alluding to the presentation the consolidated guide book is going to become the core approach that we talked about. That is expected March and April of this year. I see a question from online T model plans document we're looking around May timeframe for that release. It will shortly come after the role out of the guide book -- road out of the guide book. We have existing case studies -- from a number of metro areas that were having some very strong collaboration going on and just real quickly here. Technical tools. Taking a look at non-recurring congestion how modelers and an MPO can technically analyze that. We have workshops that are going to be rolling out throughout this year and the information on all this is contained on our planned for operations website. Again, just real quickly wanted to show this is quite a far reaching initiative in DOT, number of officers that have seen the value in this. I didn't know if John would like to say something on behalf of MTA before we -- Sure Rick. Thank you. FTA has been excited about the products that Rick and [ Indiscernible ] Has both mentioned that are rolling out of their office. We have been acutely aware to transit operators that are sensitive to the issues because transit vehicles utilize the roadways. Resulting in unacceptable levels of congestion an delay. This model plans document really gets to how if operational and management solutions an objectives are defined can play a significant role in reducing these problems. Just to highlight a couple of examples of the transit. [ Indiscernible ] May play in this particular effort they can participate in regional objectives operations to planning partners. Recommend transit based strategies for improving regional systems performance and implement performance based objectives on their transit planning process. I know earlier the model plans document does a great job of highlighted -- transit and truly multimodal. Rick spoke to the fact sheets and management objectives and strategies that FTA is excited about. Right. Thanks. Just real quick. We're going be having two speakers that Darren is going to introduce among a number of MPOs that were very involved with us in crafting this document. They participated in a number of peer exchanges. We're pleased to have both Eric hill from the or land done and. [ Indiscernible ] From Rochester to speak. Great. Like rich said we have two MPOs that are going to tell us about their experiences. First is Richard [ Indiscernible ] Who serves as Executive Director of the? [ Indiscernible ] Held in February of '04 this. Capacity he is responsible for directing -- policy planning and investment. [ Indiscernible ] Which includes the Rochester New York metropolitan area. Where he was responsible for the production, the long range transportation plan and. [ Indiscernible ] Various programs and projects including those related to economic development and air quality. Before joining the general see transportation council rich managed the development of several land use programs and. [ Indiscernible ] Regional planning council. Currently he serves as vice chairman of the. [ Indiscernible ] Committee processes committee. Locally he serves on the executive committee as vice chairman. Take it away Richard. Thank you very much. I think really the purpose of my presentation is to give you some idea and background of how the draft guide book and desk reference have been used and is very useful when we begin to develop long range plan. LRTPOMTP. Just a matter of background -- I'll leave it at that. It's located in central -- western central New York kind of covered both from our western to eastern borders. Over all population and employment has been very stable. Growth is minimal. Not projecting a lot of variation either. We have a transportation system in terms of the system being both infrastructure and services. We can meet the current volume. We're not having issues associated with capacity. At do same time we -- if we see the growth that we want, we're going need to be prepared to handle it and that cast pay the that's there is going be quickly diminished. We're putting a large emphasis on maintaining our infrastructure. We want to improve it. We want to improve capacity. That's where we stand right now. That gives context to where we are developing the long range plan. And actual decisions we're making for the capital program. We also want to further integrate the congestion management process. Incorporated in to the long range plan but as you saw from that graphic that Rick discussed where it had the various steps, that's similar to what a CMP is supposed to incorporate now. For us without a major emphasis on congestion and delay. How that can be applied to all the regional priorities. Comparison between transportation system. Such as reconstruction or replacement of facilities. I think most importantly that the MPOs as we know are. [ Indiscernible ] Other appointees. We want to demonstrate to them what we're actually getting for the investment that we're making with the federal dollars and the non-federal dollars. Here is what we could get. Where we apply to what our regions will look like in the future. There's also that opportunity we see through the subjectives driven Performance-Based approach to be able to talk about the investment scenarios would be. Ultimately what we want to do is how do we use this money better? It's not ours. It's the taxpayer. How do we improve our project prioritization processes and how to make the best of the limited financial resources? So with that said, what we see in our region as far as those things to determine how successful we are, at least transportation contribution to the region, we have a current commitment to operations. We recognize we've been doing this but it's very much when you compare to the principles of smart objectives. We're doing a loft those things but we're not getting to the hard numbers. This is what we're doing. I don't want to characterize what we're doing as being on the soft side but it very much is on the planning and programming side. We're taking it as a service that people understand what the benefit of 07 rations are. We are drop -- operations are. Not going to be an updated. A completely new plan. To really integrate what the guide book and the desk reference process that they lay out into this next plan. It's due in June of 2011, which as we know from looking at it, it's coming up pretty quick. There's also this varying availability of the data that we need to actually have Performance-Based -- processes to say what those outcomes actually are. So we've been struggling with that. What should our approach be to selecting metric that we're going to measure our success by? Also as Rick noted -- stakeholders regarding performance measures and ultimately what it gets to is this accountability to the public and what those standards are going to be. Very much tied to each other. We see a limited amount of funding from all sources and at least in the northeast, we have an aging infrastructure. It's also subject to inclement weather for a good portion of the year. How do we ensure that we're maintaining our facilities that's safe and to benefit efficiency and mobility as part of that? In terms of GTCs operations? We don't own or operate any type of facilities or services. We've coordinated those activities across the region. Both in terms of planning. We're now the lead agency -- took the lead on that. We convene and facilitate multijurisdictional committees. Transportation operators and law enforcement, transit authority and local elected officials. What we've done to date is try very much toe incorporate management -- to incorporate management in to our long range plan and our tip. In terms of the planning side. We son-in-law three categories of recommendations in our long range plan. Preservation, maintenance, management and operations and exPACS. As I mentioned before CMP is incorporated in to the long range plan: Outside of that we've done projects that have tried to advance the strategies for actions of our long range plan from a planning perspective. That includes the strategic plan update for ITS. Study to determine what the best organizational structure would be for us to ensure that there's coordination and cooperation among management and -- currently doing a transit signal prioritization study. All at planning levels. In terms of our commitment to operations and actually providing funds to it, we have regional traffic operations center which combine New York state transportation. [ Indiscernible ] Who access the engineers for the city of Rochester for city as well as New York state police. Funding for that excluding the law enforcement side is taking right off the. To as soon as we start developing a tip what do we need to fund these for the span of time that the tip covers? On the safe side in terms of operation center staffing. We ask for specific ITS projects. But more or less, we also want to see those in any type of highway or bridge reconstruction proposal. It can improve scores. When it comes to those projects the decision of whether or not they're going receive federal transportation pumps by the tip is very much made on the margin. Adding another 10 or 20 of the total cost can be covered by federal funds makes a lot of sense and that's what we want to see. But we say complete streets is more than sidewalks, more than [ Indiscernible ] Lighting, more than bike space. It also includes those elements that are critical to better management and operations of the system. Again, with our emphasis on maintaining on open rations, projects that don't add physical capacity are going to rank the highest so long as it's not a replacement in kind. You've got do something else. Whether improving safety or using management and operations to increase throughput. Increase reliability. Anything that's going to lower emissions, which is a lot of efficiency and reliability -- going to rank the highest for us. So just to go through the framework for the current lock range plan the -- long range plan. This is more or less how we take from the regional goals and motivational down to specific actions. So as we go through with that, you can see a goal would be to increase the mobility options. Provide mobility and support of economic vitality. Economic opportunity. From there we get into a policy, various policies. One specific relevant to this topic is further deployment of ITS technologies an associated management and operations practices that increase three of our major emphasis areas which are safety efficiency and reliability. Those come through separate actions. But looking at this, what you see in terms of the goal and objective policies which were very top heavy on the goals and motivation. When we get down to the specific actions how are we measuring those? So the guide book and the desk reference helped us in both of those in terms of the draft guide book and desk reference. But in terms of how do we turn the goals and objective policies in to more specific smart type of objectives? Then how do we create actions or develop actions that we can actually measure? We can be held accountable to that can play into performance measures? So our proposed framework is something -- here is how we want to change things. Or should say, the next month, February. Don't want to jump the gun too much. We still have goals. You'll see this goal now combines goal from the previous plan. It allows us to get more into these smart objectives. So what we looked at for the objectives was we can have things that we really want but might not be able to obtain them giving constraints on the decisions that are made -- programming process. So in this case, we said here's an objective and desired outcome. What we like to get is a reduction in the travel time index. Realistically, we may just have to suffice that we're going. [ Indiscernible ] If we didn't do anything. In terms of the action that go about doing that would be the act of single management on all the freeway ramps by a certain time period. And then in terms of the measure we would look at two different types of measure. Outcome oriented, which is to say what was that change in the average travel time index that we wanted? The other would focus on whether we implemented the action. That would be more activity based. So as we get into that, what we're finding is the key point here, going to be, I would say of those five elements that go in to smart TA which is agreed to. It's in the middle. That's going be the determinant of how much con essence we're going to -- con sentence we're going get on -- to achieve specific outcomes and not just have it process activity based but actually say recognizing that we don't have full control of the elements. Whether we meet that objective. So when we said -- covered through 25 which was adopted in -- but when we started looking at it, we got these objectives and got these performance measures, but how do we get more specific on the performance side? What we found is we wanted to have a certain guiding principles. The availability of data should not be the primary determinant. We know that data collection can exhaust resources but in the end, we wanted something that's meaningful to customers. Just because it's available doesn't mean it meets our other qualifications. That elected officials will ultimately make the decision with respect to adopting long range plans. We wanted to make sure we were choosing quality over quantity. Focusing on the right ones and again, this comes down to creating an understanding of what they are. Would be more or less can we integrate these across modes to look at specific corridors. I emphasized the simpler. Why not? Part of that does require working closely with project sponsors operations staff and that may not be the same as the typical engineers an construction staff that we're working with. It gives us that and tray to further work with them and to really talk about what are the key project issues based on the operations side. There seems to be general consensus that they will focus on national interest. Dealing with mobility and delay including freight. Obviously given its importance to the national economy. Structural adequacy of existing assets and then the environment. Beyond what we would do say the conformity process? [ Indiscernible ] Areas. Figure out how they're going to be set. We don't know that right now. If we can meet the national interests hopefully there will be flexibility than is what we want to be able to say that our performance measures are getting at. Proposed performance measures rite now for the long range plan. They focus on safety. The typical ones for mobility are delay that you would see in the CMP, the environment. System preservation, parking management. I think it's important to note that while we're looking at all of these, when it gets to project prioritization we're very much going to be placing different priorities on each of these. The highest will always be safety. That's something our MPOs said. In terms of safety -- the freight travel time index would be a subset of those roadways effectively if we have a roadway with daily truck traffic that's more than 20% of the regional average. So we would too a subset there. Transit on time performance and effective volume capacity ratio by a load factor -- what we're going to look at on the transit side. Figuring out how -- significant facilities. We want to see what the type of parking demand is out there and how it's being used. Point being we can measure all these systems wide but everyone better than that we can start to look at those and combine them to be corridor management. We don't define a corridor as a single roadway or facility but movements along facilities. Based on the root that makes -- route that makes the most sense to them. Along the course of a single trip. As well as looking at it from the perspective of we can begin to focus our resources going in to the future. How that Alt really translates in to the prioritization selection for the tip, what we want to have is prioritization and selection that better estimate what the potential benefits will be. We recognize that we'll have to make a call on these and we're very cautious on applying things in other places. It's absolutely critical since we're going to take this onto build credibility for operations. So we don't want to be overly conservative -- rather than the other side of it, which is to say we're going have this all accomplishes but we didn't. Capital projects so that every road is a 7 or every road is an 8 and every bridge is defined. All the bridges we're fixing those that need to be fixed but we have a number of -- over the course of a day and there might be opportunities for parallel to handle that additional operation -- greater bang for the bunk on a system wide perspective that we want to be able to conduct scenario analysis for our investments. Associated projects that are proposed as a result of their inclusion in the long range plan are balanced. It gets down to if we choose to fix one thing, what are we giving up? That allows us to do it to a greater degree. Funding flexibility, as opposed to what we have now with a multitude of programs, we're going to have that opportunity to address operations but we need to position ourselves to do so. The estimation of potential benefits that we want to sample some of the projects that are out there. We're not doing as much estimation, we actually have concrete examples that we can fall back on. Again, when we decide whether or not we've been able to meet these performance measures that we've set and whether or not we're achieving our objectives, we do know we're going have to look at external factors that affect the project results. That's -- safe and efficient system but you don't have authority over some of the things that place not only the level but the type of extensive demand on the system. Following up, we're still fairly early in this process. But we have found that the guide book and desk reference have been extremely useful. I would say they not only outline but they fully discuss the key steps and tasks to accomplishing this. We found very few things that aren't covered in the guide book as we went through this. Mainly we think because it's in a format that provides structure to the process but flexibility to the output. That's my presentation. I'm looking at a couple of the questions that came in as far as active signal management. It's not so much ramp meters but to remotely control signals at the ramps to provide more throughput or constrict some of the movements that don't necessarily need as much time on the lights. So we haven't been talking about ramp meters yet, we've looked at it more how do we coordinate that throughout the whole system. As far as the travel time index, we're using the GPS based runs. We have floating cars out there taking a look at the travel time indexes. Basically 1. 3 -- if the trip takes you a third longer in peak hours we're going to consider that trip likely congested and have to address that. The travel time index that we're using is specific to links that we can build upon corridors and aggregating for the system as a whole. As far as collecting and archiving the data most is done in excel right now. We may at some point probably beyond the capacities of our staff probably look to build in macros to automate the process more in terms of interfaces that we can use. We want to make sure there's assurance and availability before we make the actual structure for collecting and archiving too permanent. I hope that's sufficient for right now. I'd be happy if there's more specifics to answer on those. Thank you Richard. Again, if anybody has any questions, please go ahead an put them in the chat pod. We are going to have a few minutes left for questions afterward. We'll open up a lot of these issues to the presenters to discuss. We'll move on and bring onto the stage Mr. . Eric T. hill who is director of systems management and operations for metro plan Orlando. A native of New Jersey. Employed in the industry since 1984. Career in the transportation industry includes progressively responsible -- Mr. . Hill is responsible for promoting the development of efficiencies in the transportation network within this area. Congestion management systems. Local and national transfer stations committee. With that Mr. . Hill? Thank you Darren. My study is -- story is going to be more about collaboration. It's going to mirror more of the work that we have been doing that looks at the guide book to integrate management of the transportation plan. Later on I'll speak more about desktop reference tool and how we can use our plan to become smart. Close out with what I called a digital considerations that we all should look at as we move forward. MPO for the Orlando urbanized area. [ Indiscernible ] Our MPO is made up of 3 counties. Orange, seminal and [ Indiscernible ] County. Five largest cities in those three counties and the transportation operating agency such as Florida Department of Transportation and turnpike enterprise system. As I said, our story and how it is a story of collaboration. About five years ago in 2006, we started in the area of operations management. Our chair at the time orange county commissioner Edward. He's the gentlemen in the picture here with the red tie. He and I had a discussion on congestion. I helped him -- not so much as the non-congestion that occurs out there. One area that we discussed is incident management.