Good morning and thank you for standing by. All participants will be able to listen only until the question and answer portion of today's call. I will turn the session over to to the speaker. All right and thank you and good day. Welcome to the operations conference. I will be giving a brief introduction to the Web conferencing in garment. We are pleased to have Greg Jones as our moderator for are talking operations seminar. Please advised that to this seminar is being read courted. The seminar will last approximately an hour and 45 minutes Babbitt and a final 30 minutes for an audience question and answer. During the presentation if you think of a question you can type into the smaller text block underneath the chat area. Indicate who your question is directed toward an as your question is intended for all presenters. Please make sure your typing in the text box and not the large white area. These also mature that you send your questions to everyone rather than just the presenters. Presenters will be unable to answer some of your -- to answer your questions during the presentations by, but I will use some of the questions type into the chat box for the question and answer session over the last 30 minutes. A file containing the audio and video portion will be posted to the National cut traditional operations coalition with site within the next week. I will type that address into the chat box shortly. We encourage you to direct others in your office you may not have been able to attend this, to access the recording. The presentation used during this recording are currently available on the air with said. Attendees will be notified of availability of the recording and closed captioning of this seminar by e-mail. And I must also note that we are having some connection problems at least with the Department of Transportation server move that has caused some of the presenters to be in of locations to try and connect in. Some things are going into different today. So be patient. We will get through this. Hopefully we will have a successful summer. And also if you are a DOT employee who is just sending into the phone line you can go to the upside. The address I will type in to the chat areas and to download the presentation so that you can review those as you are listening to the phone. So at this time I would like to entries Greg Johnson is trying to be the moderator of today's vote cast. Mr.Gregory in John's is a freeway Management and I T S specialist at the freeway Research Center in Atlanta Georgia. Mr.Johns has been with the Federal Highway Administration since engine 84. He has been in his current role. As a member of the Operations Technical support Mr. Johns for by national technical support and the following areas. Vance plans to offer a management operations partnership, urban [ indiscernible ]. Regional architecture and emerges the transportation I will now turn things over to Greg crew will introduce our first speaker. Thank you. Our first speaker is Ms. to see him. This young is the freeway Management Program Manager for the federal highway demonstration. She is in the office of transportation management accord in Washington D.C. Mr.Angus Reid also for the program of for rate management and managed lanes and included in as lines are both age of the lines and high occupancy toll lanes. And today she's going to give us a presentation on FHW a policy and dance with a specific aspect towards HOV and HOT lines. Thank you and good afternoon. I will provide an overview of the policy and gas for implementing high occupancy tolls known as HOT lines. In August 2005 the president signed a safety bill account will and efficient Equity act. Prior to safety their hotlines were only implemented under the program. I15 hot lines in San Diego California, I10 U. S. 290 also known as Katy freeway in Houston Texas and I394 in Minneapolis Minnesota. As I indicate in the previous slide 62 main strands the hot line program. [ indiscernible ]. It provides states more options and flexibility to manage facilities. It can be underutilized or overcrowded. Under 23 U. SP166 they have options to provide certain non age of the access to facilities. In addition, to their exemption of motorcycles, bicycles and inherently low emission vehicles Congress created three more, and they are public transfer station vehicles that do not meet the occupancy requirements such as vehicles that are all service. The emission and energy-efficient vehicles such as hybrid and natural gas vehicles and high occupancy told vehicles. My presentation today focuses on the height equals exceptions. I want to point out that house plants may be established on both interstate and not interested facilities. They have options to toll all vehicles except for motorcycles, bicycles and vehicles that meet the establishment. For example, if the facility has a minimum occupancy requirements of three then motorcycles and HIV must be free of charge. Now let me explain some of the requirements contained in the FHWA USP1664 states to implement hot lines. First a state [ indiscernible ]. 2F is to leave a. This contains the state's commitment to establish program and address how motorists can enroll and participate in a hot flame programs. Sustainment must also commence to develop branch and maintain the automatic toll collection system and to establish policy and procedures to manage the facility by varying the total amount. Enforcement is also required. Prior to the opening of the Hot lane project a toll agreement must be executed between the FHWA, state DOT, and operating agencies. This toll agreement addresses the eligible use of revenue. This commitment will be reiterated in the annual [ indiscernible ] S was certifying the operation up conformance to requirements. I will discuss the operational performance standards and the next slide. States are required to maintain at a minimum average operating speed 90 percent of the time over a hundred and 80. During the morning and evening. A memo operating speed is defined as 45 miles per hour for a HOV facility with the speed limit of 50 miles per hour greater or not more than 10 miles an hour below the speed limit for facilities. If the facility has a speech in less than 50 miles per hour. For example if the facility has a 65-mile per hour speed limit and the facility must maintain at least 45 miles per hour 90 percent of the time. [ indiscernible ] might have 35 miles per hour speed limit and the minimum operating have been [ indiscernible ] over that period of time. And 90 percent of the time. I want to clarify that this performance standard is to determine when a facility is upgraded. So they should live up the height of the did with to determine their optimum operational performance. So what happened when a facility is determined has degraded? They must take appropriate actions to bring the degraded facility into compliance. Actions include managing the demand by varying toll amount of or in some situations limits or discontinue the use of facilities but all vehicles. This is enough to bring the facility back into compliance. Today we have granted to state told 44 there have been projects under to three U.S. be 166. In Jan 2006 the average execute the first zero agreements with the car depart and a transportation and the Enterprise for the I25 Express line in Denver. Call rodeoed he will provide more details about this project leader in her to a presentation. The I-15 expressman insult likes the top was the second Hot Line project implemented under section 166. Currently we are also working with the Washington Department of Transportation to execute tolling grants were the state's drought hot link project. It will be open in spring of 2008. The current balance that was issued a few years ago is available at the FHWA Program Management. This balance was issued prior to the city live and all the information presented today is not included. However it provides general kitchen facility information and guidance on how to [ indiscernible ]. A revised balance will be available soon at this web site. And I also want to mention that transit administration has issued a final policy earlier this year in regards to have frank and fixed address. I understand that I have covered a lot of affirmation today. I have any questions or need additional and permission please fill free to contact Greg Jones are me especially during the absence of the revised guidance. Thank you very much for your participation and I never conclude my presentation. And Jessie, two we also have terret Horner who is going to say some words from have to eight? We do. Okay. Great. That would be me. I will be very brief. My name is David Horner. I were two hats. I am the acting chief counsel of the federal transit administration. I want to direct the group's attention to guidance published by the Federal Transit Administration on the topic of how to care for conversion and specifically the terms and conditions on which FTA would count hot lines as fixed guideway miles for purposes of formula fund allocations under the transit program. The purpose of the guidance is to fold. His first to eliminate the disincentive for transit agencies that may have tried to fund his assertion hub facilities with states DOT to agree to conversion of how plans to halt plans. If those lines are currently being teamed fixed drive way miles and generating formula funds that slow in favor of the transit agency. FT a has a new balance eliminating that this incentive by describing team conditions and terms on which of to eight would continue to treat a hot line as a mixed grab a mile for purposes of transit funding. This, we think, is a flexible policy that ought will describe to you in a moment. But the second purpose of this effort to eight guidance is to dramatically improve the coordination of policy objectives of FTA with FHWA. So the expectation published by the FDA and it will support and does tell with the policies and procedures announced in the hub to haunt data is published or about to be published by the Federal Highway restoration. We found previously that there was some lack of correlation which we are trying to -- or I think receive in addressing three discussed. Very briefly I want to describe the principal terms under which FTA would agree to count a hot line as a fixed bad way mile for purposes of generating transit formula money that flows to transit agencies in a given jurisdiction with a hot line that is perhaps operated by a state DOT. The first condition is that the -- the three principal conditions, the first is that the hotline was previously an age of the line. FDA is not proposing to find were to count as fixed got where miles of lines that were previously general purpose lines or that are newly constructed hot lines. The second condition is that the hot wind maintain free flow conditions for transit vehicles on the facility and the free flow conditions are defined as those conditions for flow of traffic set forth in title 23166 b. In order to achieve some continuity of measurements and standards for performance of the facility between the transit program on the one hand and the FH to leave a program on the other. The third condition is that hot line toll revenues generated by the facility be expanded for so-called permissible uses. The permissible uses, the budget by the FDA guidance are substantially the same permissible uses of hot wind toll revenue identified in total 23 section 166. Those are the three principal conditions that the haj was previously held, that the hot and intense free flow conditions for transit and that program and, from the hot line, October revenues are used for permissible uses that are substantially the same. The two other things to notice that FTA will mocks require certain policies for transit. That is running on the hot facility as a condition. It continues to count as the tricks Cavanaugh. And we will not require the return of starts bonds by jurisdiction that use such funds to build a health plan. If the hot line compliers with the policy guidance. So that this to drop of water to lead the audience to this public to hot gas published by FDA for the recently. I provided a link to our guidance to the organizers of the conference call and I hope will be publishing its to the web site for this call in the village of the near future. Thanks very much. And I actually will send that line out to folks who have registered and put that on the side as well. I realize that you are not going to be staying for the question and answer session so there are a couple of questions that came through that perhaps he could handle real quickly before we move on. Sure. Would FTA have to account hoplites as fixed deadline miles only if the funding was used to create the lines in the first place? No. The age of the alliance are accounted as fixed cap with miles and it's restrictions that have registered them as fixed GABA miles and the National Trust database. Whether or not the FDA funded the construction or maintenance of the HOV lane. Okay. And this one you may have already just announced, but when Louganis be available from FTA? It has been available for several months and we will be circulating the link to whoever is eligible to receive it following the call. Okay. All right. That is wonderful. Thank you for your time. Thank you. I think we will turn back to Greg not to introduce our next speaker. The view. Our next presentation is going to be I-394 that this design overview. This is in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Are two speakers are Mr. Bryan Scott has a principal with the FRF Consulting group. And a registered professional engineer with 20 years of experience in tradition and sharing in both the public and private sectors. Also we have Colette Shulman who is the operations engineer with the Minnesota Department of Transportation and I also note joining them is Jim McCarthy of the Federal Highway Division office. Thank you. This presentation will discuss the design aspect and lessons learned from the I-394 project which was a conversion of a HOV lane to a HOT lane. It was a public-private partnership come on the public's eye by the Minnesota deity and on the province side a group consortium puts together consisting of Wilbur Jones and Associates, SRS Consulting Group and Global will but the. The presentation will cover and our view of the product and provide some background issues or back and information on community input, outreach and education which was critical to projects success. The main focus of the presentation will be to provide an overview of the technology components the dynamic pricing and to provide some insights on the design Centers used in the present. I will also briefly touched and the dynamic pricing and show how it works and we will also briefly show on the next steps for the quarter. Following my presentation Doug Solomon will discuss some of the operational and performance information to show that dynamic person and hotlines are an effective tool. This slide as a device some of the characteristics of the I394 quarter. The goal of the project in general the conversion is to make use of the unused capacity which is to allow a single occupant vehicles to use the HOB lines by being equal and to continue allowing each of these including bus and motorcycles for you to use those lines. Adjusting the told a genetically to encourage or discourage users and maintain free forming lines the streets > 50 miles an hour at all times. The key to the success of the program with the Community average performed and the stick input sought from the communities along the corridor. Twenty-two member community task force was appointed by the it and cover to also serves as the commissioner of transportation. The task force provided input on access points and locations, the hours of operations, the legends of the good times allowed, enforcement, and et cetera. In addition, into it was sought from the public via open houses, focus groups and city council meetings. On the technical side of the project development valuable input was provided by the Federal Highway Administration and the central office and Mr. District which is the area where the I394 corridor allies. Due to budget constraints we have to utilize existing structures as much as possible. There were actually only five new over and structures that were added as part of the project. [ indiscernible ] has a fairly dense population of detectors on its entire freeway system which is critical should the operation of genetic pricing. I394 has detectors on each line of the freeway [ indiscernible ]. So the HOT lane actually as it got built was shifted two feet to the inside shoulder. New loop detectors were installed. It does require a fairly dense population, but we found that the haft offer isn't seems to be working okay. The project was the first implementation of tolling in Minnesota and probably with the first conversion of a HOT lane to a HOV lane without Having a physical barrier. Therefore a lot of new standards were developed a key document that was used as a starting point was the US T A T. Cat for hot and development which provides good guidance on the standards for the construction of new facilities and also provides information on the standards for retrofit projects which is what the I-394 project was. Also the Minister of a manual in uniform traffic control devices was used as well as the federal manual or as the Minnesota manual was silent. One area of greatest passion was the striping. He had to deal with the color of the strapping which was why versus yellow, the width and the spacing between Serbs and center. As part of the project a 3MA made available their test track which is located just south west or south east of the Twin Cities merge the engineering team was able to drive the various configurations of striping that we've laid out on the test track to get a good feel for how the stripping would look to motorists driving at highway speeds. The Minnesota set its provided the enforcement muscle which is essentially the law as it is enforced. Tickets can be issued for failure to obey the traffic control device. We also looked at California and Texas. Some of the signs instructing they have used, and the rest of the standards were developed using engineering experience and calculations. Testing on the modeling is a bit, [ indiscernible ] was the program we used to and I rate the differences from the traffic flow standpipe it was a good tool to use it to do a comparison between the different alternatives. The course model was also used to assess the impact to bus operations prior to making decisions on whether or not the buses could be allowed to cross the double was lines. The conclusion then that people are able to achieve coughs looking at the model was that there was. Little impact. So the decision was made to not allow bosses to cross the double white line. This figure shows a schematic view of the I394 corridor about 10 miles long from I4942994. The interchange spacing is about one per mile which is actually a fairly dense spacing for our freeway interstate. The spacing did provide several challenges to the design of the access point because we had to achieve a balance between providing adequate access to the house plan and the other goal of trying to maintain the same design in an express lane for traffic coming from the other suburbs. More typical spacing me be probably about one and half thousand miles between interchanges. One thing we did learn from the project was that probably the best place for the access point is actually placing the access points within an interchange. This figure is an artist's rendering of the access point which was used for education and average.