The title of today's webinar is marketing and outreach strategies for pricing products. I will be giving a brief introduction to the web conferencing before turning the session over to Darren Buck. Darren Buck will serve as the moderator for today's webinar. This will last approximately an hour and a half with an hour allocated for the presenters and the final 30 minutes for questions and answers. Please be advised that the webinar is being recorded. During the presentations, if you think of a question, type it into the smaller text box in the chat area on the left side of your screen. Make sure that you send your questions to everyone rather than just presenters. Presenters will be unable to answer questions during the presentation but they are and will use some of those questions for the question and answer session in the last 30 minutes of the webinar. A file containing the audio and video portions will be posted to the in talk website. I will type that address in the box shortly. Activities will be notified of the availability of the presentations, recording, and closed captioning by email. We encourage you to direct others in her office not able to attend this webinar to ask -- access this online. Presentations available for download on 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 then click the button at the bottom of the download box that says save to my computer. At this time, I would like to introduce Darren Buck, the moderator for today. Darren Buck is the marketing specialist for the office of Federal -- Federal Highway. He includes -- [ indiscernible ]. He worked in similar roles within the bicycle community and at a small federal program creating jobs for people with disabilities. He received an MBA from the University of Maryland in 2005 and is currently studying transportation planning in [ indiscernible ]. Now I will turn things over to Darin to start things off. Thank you very much. This webinar about marketing and outreach strategies for pricing projects is somewhat timely. Pricing projects can often be controversial and meet with resistance from the general public, but by conducting a well-planned marketing and outreach campaign, transportation operators can get out in front of the inevitable questions about why the project is being implemented, how old work, and how it could ultimately benefit them. The result will be a project implementation will be at a minimum transparent but accepted and embraced by the community. We will talk with three jurisdictions that are planning and implementing effective use of marketing and outreach campaigns to inform stakeholders and the general public about and the general public about the pricing projects. Our first speaker is going to be Alicia Torrez who serves as a public information officer for the Florida DOT District six ICS program. He has -- she has more than five years experience in the communication field and in her career has worked in several aspects of the community. She has worked in several transportation projects with the department and recently led the successful marketing campaign that launched the state of Florida first ramp signaling system. She currently serves as a Project CIO for the 95 express project. She worked for the media relations group, one of the largest public involvement firms in South Dakota, and holds a bachelor of arts degree from Florida international University. Next, we will have Cherie Gibson who is the marketing and communications director for the state road and pull way authority in Georgia. She is currently co- leading the public outreach. She has worked as a public affairs officer transportation for the last 15 years with the experience at polling agencies and transit authorities. Originally from North Carolina, she bridged the ACC rival regret -- rivalry Cap. She will be joined by Karlene Barron. She's been at the the Department for 16 years. She holds a Masters degree in public communications from the American University of Washington and has worked in entertainment, social service, and government [ indiscernible ]. Finally, we will be hearing from Linda -- from Lynda Bybee who is the executive officer for [ indiscernible ] which is the Los Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In this capacity she is responsible for forward groups. She has been the agency since 1996. And during her tenure, she has been involved in the completion of the red line subway, Pasadena and go live right -- [ indiscernible ]. First, I will pass it to Alicia Torrez from Florida. Good afternoon, everyone. Can everyone hear me? You sure can. Great. Thanks, Darren. My name is Alicia Torrez. I am the public information officer for the IDS program. Currently, I guess managing all the public information for the 95 express project. We have already deployed the projects. We have already deployed phase one and phase two of the 95 express project on the I-95. I will go ahead and start with my presentation. On the agenda, I have basic bullet points, which is to identify the project components. Remember come it is very important for us trying to deploy such a project. It is a multiagency effort. So, there will be different agencies leading this effort or working toward the deployment of the efforts. You also have to identify the project team and remember that communication is key among all the agencies when it comes to public information. Obviously, we have to identify who the audience is and who will primarily be affected. We have to create the message and remember that when creating the message we have to connect with the target audience, understand their questions, their frustrations, and be there for them whenever they have questions. Since we had to play the first phase of the project, I will talk about the lessons learned. Everything that we learned in the past phase -- in the past three years, more or less, and the results that have been achieved as the result of launching phase one. Just to start off, the 95 express project converted the HOV lanes into two HOT lanes. We reduce them from 12 feet to 11 feet so that we could increase the capacity in terms of the lanes and went from four lanes to four regular lanes. That really was very helpful in terms of our project. We implemented the 20 aspects such as congestion pricing. We also implemented the technology aspects and the dynamic pricing system. We also implemented already the [ indiscernible ]. We converted the former HOV of three carpools and gave those people at -- gave us people incentives. Recently in January we implemented the transit component which is a direct bus service from downtown Miami to downtown Fort Lauderdale. I think we have already implemented all for of these as part of the grant and as part of the project. In the different technological components and having components that the project calls for. In our experience preparing a plan, what I think was one of the most important things and one of the lessons learned was that there was different players at part of each agency. We have to remember that one project is one team. The public doesn't really know the difference between who is the tolling authority or who is the marketing firm or who is transit. When it comes to a service at a service that they are possibly going to be painful for -- be paying for ads to users of the agency, they aren't just going to see one. It is important to remember that regardless of the different agencies that are going to be involved in terms of marketing, we are still only one team. In the public eye, we are just one project. It is also important to remember -- one of the things that was really helpful was ongoing communication through weekly and biweekly meetings. Anything that came up, we would hold a teleconference and call the project lead, which is the director of communications. We called her with any updates, if I had any updates for my program or [ indiscernible ] had an update. We all made sure to keep each other in the loop. We knew that one initiative or one activity could adversely affect the other. It was really a chain, in other words. If one link was missing, then it would upset the rest of the team. One of the things that we did was identify the target audience. We looked along I-95. We realized a lot of these people that were using the highway and that were essentially creating the bulk of the traffic where the Cross County commuters. So, we targeted them. We also targeted local commuters. We targeted them as wealth through email blasts, letters, public meetings, et cetera. We also targeted the current [ indiscernible ] owners, which are very centrally the users who had [ indiscernible ] to get onto the highways in the state. We targeted them as well as potential users. Also, the HOV users, the ones that were currently registered as well as the transit users. We identified down and realized that they were also an important part of this project since they would be using the 95 express as well. As well as community leaders, opinion leaders, and the media. The media was a very good partner in some ways in our project by always disseminating information in a timely manner and being transparent and clear even when things weren't as clear to the public. We always made sure that it was clear to us and always maintain an open line of communication with the media so that any questions they would have had, they would come to us first. In identifying our target audience first, we were really able to connect with them and to communicate what our message was. In creating the message, we realized that we had to educate the public. This is a very novel concept that was pretty controversial in our state and much less in our city where we have a lot of tourists, a lot of out-of-towners, a lot of special events. Not only do we have our local folks that live here and that use the facility every day, but we had the out-of-towners and things like that. We really made it a point to educate the people as best as we could. We realize that we had to connect with them. As I mentioned before, and deploying a project of this magnitude and something that is so new and so foreign to everyone, we had to connect with them and really make sure we understood their questions or the frustrations or just be responsive to them. One of the lessons I learned in dealing with the public -- and I am actually the one who is in charge of answering all of the complaints now -- is when they have a question in terms of why are you doing this, why are you implementing -- what is congestion pricing? What is this going to do for me? How is this going to help my commute question mark we always make sure to emphasize the need for this project. We emphasize the fact that the DOT is not going to implement a project that is not going to help them. We also always state the facts. We always gave them the numbers in terms of the pre-existing conditions of the highway prior to the 95 express. We reiterated that previous to this project, everyone was going at 20 miles per hour during the rush hour. We reminded them that the current -- the pre-existing conditions were not favorable to them or anyone in Miami or in South Florida. We always make sure that they knew the pre-existing conditions were not favorable. This is what we were doing to help them. This project wasn't just about tolling but also about transit. It was also about HOV incentives and utilizing technology to increase the operational efficiency. Once you tell them and you make sure that that core message is implemented in all of your advertising material or your marketing material or somehow integrated in all those items, then you are able to connect with them. They are able to understand what we are doing is there to help them. Pre-existing conditions weren't helping anyone. That was one of the things I think was very helpful and continues to be helpful as well even after deployment. One of the things that I was asked to talk about was the perception versus reality aspect of project such as this. One of the things that we encountered that just by the public but also certain politicians and stakeholders and business leaders was the [ indiscernible ] concept. I guess that is one of the most negative concepts people have about this project. We talked to them. Before deploying, we told him that this wasn't the case. This was a project that would benefit everyone, but I think after we deployed, obviously, it was a lot easier for us to hone in on that message because we actually had numbers. When I talked to them numbers. When I talked to them and when I talk to them before and continuing to talk to them now, I emphasize the fact that this type of project benefits everyone. One, it is providing a choice. We are not forcing anyone to pay the toll. You know, it is used in the HOT lanes along I-95, but even those using the express lanes that are paying butt or even not paying but have the benefit, we have concrete numbers. As I mentioned before, the pre-existing conditions of the highway along every single lane was 20 miles per hour. After we launched in the first six months of operation, the HOV lanes -- the HOT were [ indiscernible ]. The local lanes are people using I-95 and are not paying for the HOT, their speed doubled to 41. That is something always we want to hone in on. It doesn't matter if you use the facility itself. Even those that are not paying are going to benefit as well. The reason they will benefit is not just because of the congestion pricing but all the different other traffic management techniques that have been implemented as part of the status of projects. The multimodal aspect of it and really about targeting the root of the congestion problem at the core. So, that is definitely something that, yes, most people focus on the Lexus lane concept. If you've are paying, you will go faster. That's not the case. Everyone receives the benefit. Another misconception, another thing that continues to come up even now is, why are we paying more tolls on a non- toll Federal Highway question mark again, it is the same thing. Motorists can choose to use the facility or not. We are not forcing anyone to pay tolls. Again, those that are not paying tolls are still getting the benefit. It is not like any other facility that mandates holes along every single lane without actually even guaranteeing them a benefit. Definitely it is something that we always want to hone in. No matter what, if it is federal highway or not, you are still getting the benefit. Also, remind them that, yes, it is state and federally funded but the tolls maintain the operation of it. That is something also very key to remember. Another lesson learned or another thing that we came about pretty recently as part of this congestion pricing is that folks sometimes tend to think that the high toll rate equals high congestion levels on the local lanes. Therefore, that signifies better speeds on the express lanes. One of the things we had to customize our messages was we had to be educate folks on the fact that the toll rates are actually based on a change in the level of demand on the express lanes. The higher toll rate probably means that the facility is reaching its capacity. Therefore, it is not exactly guaranteed speed. We increased the rate because once the facility is reaching its capacity, we want to deter motorists from entering the highway. That is one of the things you might have to deal with as you deploy such projects. Of course, people think if you are going to pay for something, you are going to be guaranteed absolute free flow speed. Also remember that there are limitations to this facility. That is definitely something we want to keep in mind. Another thing that people always talk about is the fact that the 95 express isn't safe because of the delineated are and things of that nature. People tend to think that they are unsafe or because of the lanes decreasing by a foot, they think that it is unsafe. In actuality, it is a lot safer. We have implemented management resources on both the express lanes and local lanes. We have incident response vehicles. We contacted Florida Highway Patrol. They are monitoring 247. That is one of the perceptions that the public tends to think. In our experience, operating the facility, we have learned that these misconceptions [ indiscernible ]. One of the useful tools in the lessons learned has been the project website and keeping that as the ultimate source for the public and media. We dedicated a call center that operates Monday through Friday 12 hours a day and answers all the projects -- all the public questions. We also utilize the internal resources, which is very helpful in terms of remaining in budget. We utilize public surveys through one of our partner agencies. Email blast, the website, news flashes, everything of that nature. We also conducted several media [ indiscernible ] where we invited the media to come to our transportation management Center, see how our operations work, see how our operators are monitoring the system 24/seven. Invite them over so that there is always a clear line of communication and a transparency between what the agency is doing and what our intentions are for the public, which is obviously some mobility. I think those resources were pretty cost effective and very useful in terms of deploying our system. Another thing that we also learned was to be flexible and for the project leaders of such a marketing plan to [ indiscernible ] for all ongoing projects. We have different activities going on at the same time. For example, you have the redesign of configuration of the lane. You can have construction activity if and [ indiscernible ]. It is very important to make sure that all of the activities going on you know how to reschedule and schedule them appropriately. We had one instance where we had about three different connectivity is going on in the month of March. That was a couple months ago. We had to reschedule and postpone some of them so everything was launched in a cohesive matter and we would not confuse the public or media. Another thing that we learned was also the Delaney are installation. delineate or installation. We implemented this. There was a couple lessons learned. One of them -- once we launched them, there was public confusion. We immediately rose to the occasion. We had to reconfigure our original plan in terms of delineate her's. We changed the delineate or from white to bright orange. We space them closer together from 20 feet to 10 feet therefore doubling the Delaney enters. That was one thing. Also, the high toll rate was something we learned as we operated his congestion pricing. I think the results have been very positive. We have been very fortunate that the public has accepted our projects. We recently conducted a survey and where it's at 76 percent of users use the express lane and have a more reliable trip. 58% of commanders -- of commanders -- of commuters would like to see it and audible. We've received a lot of national recognition statewide as well. We receive the best of innovative products in the IT essay for 2010. We were also voted people choice award by Ash told. I think just having a cohesive message and always being transparent every step of the way to the public into the media has been very helpful to us and just utilizing all of our resources has been beneficial. I think that the numbers and results are pretty evident of our campaign so far. All right. Thank you, Alicia. We will pass it on to the folks from Georgia. Cherie Gibson and Karlene Barron. Hi, this is the 10 -- this is a 10. I am going to be co- presenting today with Karlene. Hi, I am here. Okay. I was trying to figure out how to -- Just click on the right and left arrows at the bottom with the PowerPoint presentation. Got it. Thank you. Just as a little bit of background, we are kind of halfway there to our implementation of our project. We are about a year away from opening. We got our grants in 2008 three of the grant was to find the first phase of the 18 hot conversion. It's about 13 miles in metropolitan Atlanta. The other part of the grant included significant transit improvements in the quarter and throughout the region. You can see there are several park and ride facilities. We are getting additional buses and an express operating facility. So, the communications plan we have put together we have kind of divided into about three sections. Stakeholder and community relations, media relations, and then our marketing. Our marketing also involves branding a new transponder product for this road. Georgia, currently, only has one Toll Road. It will fund that next year. In essence, we are phasing out one product and introducing a new one. In our communications plan, the key messages are reliable trip times, toys, and leveraging federal dollars to enhance transit in the region. As was said, this project is a huge effort from several regional transportation partners in the area. State and road tollway authorities, clean air campaign, and we have lots of folks on board helping to make this project happen. So, identifying our targets and designing which strategic vehicles to use. The key stakeholders we identified early on in the process. Elected officials, opinion leaders, one of the big hurdles we had was really educating folks about HOT and about tolling. Again, Georgia does not have huge experience with. That was a big effort that we put on early in the process. Our strategic vehicles with our stakeholders, Art Project FAQs, highlight video and testimonials. A great example of those, we had an expert panel in the first of the year in January where we had people from across the country who have familiarity with congestion pricing in these kind of projects come and talk about their projects. We hosted it for our legislature. They came in were able to ask questions. Our local folks here, particularly the elected officials, are very interested in hearing from their peers what worked in their area, what didn't, kind of what was your experience? We are finding that kind of testimonial in existing product case studies very effective with our stakeholders. The next one is our carpoolers. One of the other big hurdle here is that part of the implementation of our HOT plane is the change of occupancy from [ indiscernible ] too HOT three. We have carpooling communities that will be impacted by the implementation of this project. We would do that through research. Open forums and media, then additional partners like our community improvement District and clean air campaign who really provide data, direct involvement, and current information. These are folks helping us get information out, helping us advertise when we are going to be out in the community. Obviously, then the media. We are really not -- we really haven't had a lot of media yet. Like I said, we are still just half way there. We are anticipating a lot more media on our project once we start construction. The masses strategy, and this is kind of how we are linking all of our groups together come is true. We always want to tell the truth about what is happening. What is happening? When will it happen? Who is responsible? And the big question we have been getting so far is, why are we doing this? Now we are getting ready to start construction. The relevance. What will be the impact on them? How is this going to affect you? How is it going to change your life? Where you are telling the story with candor simply and completely. We are really excited about our project. It has a lot of technology behind it. But we are really trying to relay the benefits of this project in very simple terms that everyone can understand. Obviously, relevant detail and timely delivery. And then, why should they care? What is in it for me? Okay, I think you are up. Okay. And I am just going to touch on the outcomes. Just to reiterate that we are still a year out from our project actually launching. This is what we are anticipating in what we are working toward. Our goals are strategically placed so that we are -- we will get these outcomes and hoping that this is the outcome we will get after we have gone through all of our strategies. But for our stakeholders and partners, we definitely are on a consistent knowledge base with them building knowledge consistently and keeping them in the loop and letting them what -- let them know what is going on. We are educating them that they will become advocates. Cherie touched on the issue of champions also, but advocacy is definitely a key part of this and having these people educated enough on what this project will bring to the region. Of course, for them to be involved, we have -- we are about to go on a second round of our involvement or our education outreach with our stakeholder partners. We did a round of it earlier in the project where we went out and spoke to our key legislators. We are about to do a second round. Now that we are closer to the beginning of this wanting to do a refresher course and reengage them and wanting them to be the champions of the project so that in essence they can influence those that are around them and help to lead the opinion on what to believe about this project. Our consumers, of course, we are working toward acceptance. Of course, we are doing that with consistent and accurate information. We are trying to make sure that our webpage is updated. We are reaching out to different groups we have been through and we will touch on the public information open houses. Definitely trying to pique the interests. Trust is a huge issue that we are very aware of. Again, I think as was mentioned, we have only one Toll Road in Georgia. There can be, and we think to some extent, there is some apprehensive miss or not understanding fully what is going to be involved with tolling this road. Also, this basic trust of, you are going to be charging me to use this road. I have already paid for this particular road and you are charging me again. Building trust through absolute openness and trying to let people understand we are being very open and transparent in this project getting all the information and we are trying to make the decisions right for this project. Of course, building anticipation and being open to whatever questions. [ indiscernible ] questions asked, we were putting those back out there on the website. We try to weed those into a quarterly news what -- newsletter that we post on the website. Again, this is all before the actual project has started. There is a consistent effort to build trust, to be open, to be transparent with our consumer groups. And then for media, we are playing a very important role just educating them. Again, we are focusing on the quarter. We have a major -- I think many people know there is a major newspaper here. What we are trying to engage is other papers along the corridor, other papers within the region to kind of make sure we get focuses on this project. Sometimes this key paper with their focus could kind of be the issue of finding out what is wrong with the project. So, trying to find other sources that can also push our key benefit from how the project will benefit individuals and those that are key ideas. Trying to position the project, again, within this group to have them understand the benefits of the project, have them understand -- you know, look at the project of what it will bring not just to the quarter but to the region also. Positioning the issue with the transit component that we have been criticizing in this area of not focusing on totally. This is a project that will definitely bring additional funds for traffic within the whole region. We are starting to position it also with the media group that this is something that will not only managed lanes and manage in a particular region but we will also have a windfall for traffic for this area. Leveraging the relationship we have had with media, construction coming up, and that is something we typically have had very good relationships with media during construction time of giving them the information. We are trying to make sure that during this time we are as open as possible. Bring them in with traffic reporters and get them not only lane closure information but it has been a group we have worked with before during construction of previous projects where we have made a special effort of educating them on how this project will work. We notice that during just time traffic information, they start spilling that message out, this is how it is going to benefit. We cannot wait for this particular project to open because in this area you will see the benefits. You know, get ready to use it. Just key messages they typically will leave into those traffic reports also. Fairness, as I said before, we are trying to make sure that we go to other papers and seek out if they are smaller papers and also looking at opportunities that might exist with the online papers, online publications, different social media aspects that we can use to get -- to balance the story and have a fairness of the story being out there. As I mentioned, our primary newspaper sometimes, you know, is very key to looking for what is wrong or what we are not doing within the project. So, trying to go to other areas also to get that fairness and balance out there. As I mentioned before, we have done open houses. We have done a series of open houses before with public meetings. We had about 300 people attend last year -- well, the first round and second round we had to close to 100 people that attended. During those public meetings, we got verbal and written comments and also pushed the website. One of the things in this that I have mentioned, we did a couple of those within a major mall that was in that area. That was one of the areas that we really got a lot of interest. We saw people stopping to look at the information to get information and find out ways to continue to get involved in the project. The comments during that time, basically, war abroad and enforcement. People were concerned about how enforcing the issue of equity which we have addressed so far with the fact that there is an option there. People will have an option. The second thing is that also the transit piece is that this is a project that will bring about 36 different buses and that we can -- there will be equity there. The issue of going to three lanes and the technology that is involved with that project. Cherie. Okay. I alluded to earlier the research. We found really great success with doing some market research before we are implementing. So, we did some focus groups and we did a quantitative survey with our impacted group. The data is really helping us kind of drive our marketing and communications plan. The HOT lane benefit are listed here. There is lots of people that kind of understand the concept and that it is an option. The issues and concerns we found kind of the same folks at focus groups. The people that came to our public hearings were really wondering how it was going to be monitored, how was it going to be enforced? What is going to happen with incident management question mark just really the in's and outs of how am I going to maneuver, how am I going to use the lane? The carpooling study that we did, we got a 30% return rate on a server that we did with our partner clean air campaign. We really wanted to focus on this group because they are really going to be impacted and they are very vocal. We got some key findings from them. Again, we are going to use these findings to help craft messages to this group and really help them find ways to become three-person carpools from two-person carpools. Finally, these are just things that we have learned so far. Again, we are midway in the project. HOT three is a big deal. Lead with research and make your message is brief and easy to understand. We found a lot of success with marketing the HOT lane kind of as a product and appealing to people's emotions and how it affects them not just as a road project. Develop comprehensive construction and communications plan. That was alluded to that. They are doing that on most all their projects with great success. Reengage our stakeholders closer to construction. We have been out in the community for about a year. Now construction is beginning. Finally, transit can really help tell the story and generate positive response. Transit is always a great benefit to people. Whenever weekend we've transit into the messaging or tell good stories at public events when you are a transit facility, that helps get the word out about the entire project. All right. Thank you very much both of you. Two quick notes for you. Just one reminder. If there is more than one of you watching this presentation, just go ahead and type the number of folks you have over and above yourself into the chat so we can track the number of people on board. And if you have questions, just keep them coming on that cat and we will look at them. At the conclusion of our final presentation, which I will ask Lynda Bybee from LA natural right now. Lynda Bybee. Thank you. In this segment I bring your attention to Los Los Angeles County. Geographically, we cover 4080 square miles with a population of 10.5 million. Every year for the past decade, the Texas transportation Institute provides our fair region with the dubious standing of being the nations worst for roadway congestion. Typically, this creates a flurry in the local media about who is responsible and what they are doing about it. This is accompanied by sometimes a stream of recommendations from contributors. But we may be in the midst of an epic overlap as we broadly navigate how to reallocate energy resources while investigating the definition of mobility in our daily human profile. Especially, as it applies to the use of vehicles on roadways. That sets the context for an opportunity that has come to Los Los Angeles County in the form of our US DOT congestion reduction demonstration project that we have identified as express lanes. Los Los Angeles is known for its experimental pop culture. That has not been the case when it comes to roadway tolling. Our neighbors in Orange County took the plunge some years ago, but this is our first jump into the big pool. But they share a little bit about the express lanes court orders where we are going to be doing implementation. What is advantageous for us with this program is that we are able to accommodate HOT transitions on both in East/West and North/South major density and corridors so the harbor transit way is an 11-mile corridor that connects downtown Los Los Angeles with the communities of the South Bay and the [ indiscernible ] busway, which is the busiest busway in the country since it has been opened is 14 miles going east and west through the corridor connecting the San Gabriel Valley into downtown Los Los Angeles. That also connects to the counties that are used of us. There is a significant commuter population coming in from adjoining counties. With our program, we started with some very basic building blocks communication. We always start here at Metro with our projects by getting out with a grassroots effort. In fact, our county stakeholders are now really sort of expecting that in our outreach programs. Significantly, what we did was formed three corridor advisory groups. We made that a blend of stakeholders from small, important community-based organizations to large institutions who have employment centers. With that, we initially started by holding sessions. That we prepared information books for each of the members of the corridor advisory groups, and we also prepared an initial DVD that addressed the basic principles of how our lanes would be managed in the principles of pricing and lanes. I managed lanes and being able to explain to them, because it seems counterintuitive when you first exit lane and howl a HOT lane might work. We found that to be a tremendous advantage to us in covering the first important ground. Once that principle of the HOT lanes had been expressed, it was very easy to then begin to move into the remainder of the program. As our colleagues in Georgia, we have a very, very significant transit component in our program overall. So, just going back to the public participation, this grassroots effort also helped us in our relationships to the elected officials, because it helps us take the temperature of the affected communities, and we were then able to -- able to report to the officials that we were meeting with their constituents remembering always that this is Los Los Angeles County's first endeavor with road pricing. We also set up a good bones website that provides all the basic information as well as providing links to areas of interest so that those who were inclined could continue to be educated on the topic. We had a Herculean effort on the part of our executive in charge of this program and other staff members in making presentations County wide to any neighborhood council or organization that expressed even a flutter of interest in the topic. So, our grassroots effort on this it really has been significant. Initially, we commenced with the media -- with media briefings to set the stage with this. In the Los Los Angeles area, we are very fortunate to have a rich media market. We have two major dailies. Of course, we have a very significant ethnic and sub regional publication. In many cases, of course, we find that the ethnic publications and the small weeklies are the go to source in the communities. There is a higher level of trust about what takes place in those publications rather than the major dailies. We also have a very, very vibrant blog, which is instant. We find in many cases it is quite articulate and very knowledgeable about transportation issues. With the media, we have been advantaged in the first stage of this to have support from the Los Los Angeles times, which was covered last year. At one in an editorial on the editorial page and really giving a strong support to the program. There were other editorials that appeared in the same month. Congestion pricing is the only thing that works. Spending billions on rail and [ indiscernible ] measures have failed to alleviate the traffic nightmare. That was another interesting boost in terms of looking at this and lending support to this concept. We have also conducted Web chat sessions, and with our 80 I. are processed, we had webcast for the public hearings. Now, we are at a stage right now where this is going to get very interesting, because our operations plan has been set. We are about to go out for the next really important phase of what is going to be going to be, ultimately, the implementation. What we are coping with is really coming to terms that this is changed, and we have to really deal with change in the broader Los Los Angeles context. On our programs, what we always try to do is go back and sort of reshuffle to the basics. The basics for us now in relation to change our our agents have changed, who have been the project champions. We must always continue to take special heed of their role in this process. For us, that has been our Metro board at some of the legislators. That has been extremely important to us. We have also added a number of major institutions. We have been extremely benefited from the two major universities here in the Los Los Angeles area. You see a out -- UCLA and [ indiscernible ] who have urban planning programs. They have also provided their support. Obviously, in the academic world, road pricing and congestion management have been under study for years. It is understood that it is not a socially -- what do I want to say? It does not negatively impact lower income communities. So, what our other change area is that we are coping with now -- and that will be in the marketing side of this. Those who have an appetite for change. Those who have an appetite for change, for some reason, they have been persuaded that either this program is going to benefit them personally or they think it is a good idea. But the bigger issue, I think that we are also going to be dealing with is to ensure our roll out are those who we need to measure their change tolerance. By measuring changed -- measuring change tolerance, that means that we have folks that we know are going to need to be addressed through some special target messaging and letting them appreciate the fact that what we are implementing here is not something that is going to be deleterious to their daily routine. In fact, we want to try to make some conversions with that group. We are going to have a very sophisticated effort here. We have a very broad range that we need to be addressing. For us, our key partners are the Metro board, the state legislature, [ indiscernible ], the California Highway Patrol who will be part of the enforcement, the municipal operator is also involved in the opportunity with the grant, the municipal operators of foothill Gardena torrents, and also the Southern California rail Authority. Our transit users, the carpoolers, the banned coolers, the media, and of course we consider those who have an appetite for change significant partners for them. We need to find out who all those people are. Naturally, US DOT has been the primary agent for change in providing us the support for the grant initially. What we will be doing next is now taking these aspects and developing both some surveys that will help us target this message and then be able to start testing these messages. We will then begin to incorporate this into the plan that we are working on in the communications group here at Metro Broadway. That includes the marketing Department, Government relations, as well as the outreach program. Our partners, of course, are going to be extremely important to us. In the end, they are managing the Rose, managing the roadway signs. All of the operations plans we need to engage in, we need to put ourselves into the position of, what is going to take place as we start rolling this out? We are fortunate now that because of the complexity of our program, we are actually starting to accumulate some of the construction programs. We have our transit center. The new one is just started construction. That is going to advantage both [ indiscernible ] and our service. We have implemented already a surveys that feeds both the core doors. Now those traveling from the South Bay all the way through the San Gabriel Valley can come through downtown Los Los Angeles and they can take the same service for that. That is part of the implementation. In addition, we will be providing about 60 new buses brought into service. We have a myriad of opportunities with us that we can begin to call out in the individual communities where these changes are taking place. So, we have the aperture needed to build the ownership, and we are being responsive to the request being initially came out of our corridor advisory groups. Those were very interested in improved transit and improved security. Anyway. We have a very broad program and we are really about to launch into this very important next phase. All right. Thank you very much, Lynda. That was fantastic. I am going to attempt to go into some question and answers based on some of the questions posed. A lot of them were with regards to some of the more technical and design aspects of the project. While I will ask our presenters what they might know about them, a lot of this because we have a presentation that was host -- focused on communication, we might not be able to get you satisfactory answers on those, but I was asked to promote the opportunity for you to get together to discuss some of the more technical aspects of implementing the pricing project. Federal Highway administration is participating in the national road pricing conference from June 2nd to the forest. For more information, you can go to the Texas transportation Institute website. Just look under the conferences Cap for that. That is a wonderful opportunity to be able to get together and hear and discuss with practitioners. That was just some of the details of the pricing projects. In the meantime, the first question I will pose to the presenters and make sure your finger is over that new button so you cannot talk into an empty phone like I often do, but what sort of numbers could you provide out to the public in either your ongoing or upfront implementation? And did you make forecasts about the types of improvements they might see? Did those forecasts -- he did provide that data and it was based on forecasts, did they turn out to be accurate for you? Alicia, why don't we start with you? Sure. I think toward the beginning we were promising speeds of 55 miles per hour. More or less, if I remember correctly. We were providing an exact figure of speeds. We quickly realized that, yes, we weren't delivering those speeds. Probably 99% of the time we were, but I guess as we went on with the project, we just [ indiscernible ] free flow speeds. We kind of stepped away from providing a specific number, because that is not always -- people expect that at all times. Even though you provide that 98% or 99% of the time, it is better to not give an exact speed. Maybe at a specific day you cannot provide those specific speeds. At the beginning, we did give out a specific speed. Yes, we have been delivering, for the most part, but we kind of curtail the little bit by giving a specific number. Karlene or Cherie, did you make any use of data forecasts or make any sort of promises about that service in your outreach? In our public information open houses last year, we did give some data to kind of talk about what the future will be like so that this is kind of a proactive measure. We did give out data about capacity, existing capacity on the road right now and what it is going to look like in 10 and 15 years. We are not -- you know, we are all very kind of afraid to use the word guarantee when we talk about reliable trip times. We do say that the goal is to maintain free flow movement 45 miles per hour. That is kind of what we said, but the terms that we are using, reliable trip time, free-flowing, and movement. So, we are trying to shy away as Florida is about actually using a number. When we first introduced the concept of HOT, we did use a lot of data to support the need to move to this project. Linda, Saint -- Lynda, same question to you. Yes. Absolutely. We actually vetted our performance measures through six public hearings. We are guaranteeing 45-mile per hour flow in the HOT lanes as well. You mentioned six performance measures. What are the other five? No, six public hearings. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Okay. But we do have other performance measures in relation to the transit programs and the enhancements. Okay. How do you respond when you do get complaints about a perceived service failure? If a motorist is paying say a peak price for the travel in the express or the HOT lanes and there is some sort of failure, do you see a lot of complaints on that issue that they are expecting a premium service, and how do you respond to those? I will go ahead and answer that question. It is definitely an issue when they are paying. Obviously, they are accepting premium service for their premium dollar, I guess you could say. Actually, what I do -- through the website we have a comments section. People write in and it will go straight to my email address. By project leader and a couple other people are proud -- copied on that. We try to be as responsive as we can do all customer complaints. Obviously, we understand that money is tight. If you pay for something, you want something in return. I respond to them personally. Actually, I talk to them on the phone. I think that is a little bit of a better tactic talking to them as opposed to sending an email. I respond to them by simply telling them that even though they pay for something and they didn't get exactly what they were expecting, it is still providing a benefit. It provides a benefit 99% of the time. Maybe that one day it didn't, but it doesn't mean that the facility itself is not working. There is a million ways you can answer. You can answer that question, first of all, as I always try to tell them that what they are paying for it, first of all, they have a choice to pay for it or not. Even if they decide to pay for it and use the facility, the source that they are getting is a lot better than before the facility was implemented. Just remind them that the pre-existing conditions were not good. Even though they are probably not going at 60 miles per hour, they are still probably going to 38 or 40 miles per hour, which is double what they were going before. I also remind them that it is not just the. that the transit components. We are using that to maximize the operational efficiency and increase the capacity of the existing highway. You know, things of that nature. Also, if the facility is closed because of an incident, we do refund them in full when that is the case, but we just talked to them. We try to listen to them and remind them that whatever it is that they are getting whatever it is that they are getting them up for the most part, is a lot better than what they were getting before. For the most part, when you talk to them and explain to them that the department has implemented the system as something beneficial to them, they for the most part understand. They are very appreciative of the fact that you took the time to talk to them, whether it was 20 or 30 minutes at the time, so they understood it. I personally have not had too much of an issue with that. This is Lynda. Just to let you know in Los Angeles, it is our intent to credit the accounts if the 45-mile per hour is not maintained in the corridor if there is an incident. That is our intent with implementation. In Georgia that decision has not been made yet, but it is something we have talked about. But that decision has not been made as to -- the discussion has this -- has come up, but that decision has not been made yet. Whenever a customer is requesting a refund because they are not happy with the speed, we do go back and research through our dynamic pricing software here at the transportation management Center. We also speak to the Director of communications with the toiling authority. We worked together to essentially make that decision. But we always try to tell the customer that we will research this specific case so they don't feel that there is no help for them. And I think that has also been helpful. Even if we come back with no answer or a negative answer, they still feel happy or satisfied that we did our due diligence in trying to satisfy their concerns. Okay. Excuse me. We have had a lot of questions about at least two of the projects that I know of here. I am not sure about LA. They have included the HOV to to HOV three change. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the targeted outreach you have to make to talk about that change, how maybe you are trying to facilitate accommodating that switch from two to three and what sorts of reactions and maybe metrics you might have on how those changes are being received by your carpooling populations. Cherie, you want me to start? Go ahead. One of the things that we realized it was going to be an issue, we had to focus on -- we saw it as one of the key concerns at focus groups that were done earlier on in doing the research of project. Also, that was achy message that was coming out of the public meetings that were held along the corridor. Realizing that we engaged our partners clean air campaign, which is a group formed -- pretty much funded by [ indiscernible ], but focusing on -- they focus on reaching out to carpoolers. When we started getting HOV lanes in Georgia, this was a group formed to totally focus on pushing that issue. We engaged them because they have built a significant database that focuses on building carpools, write sharing, and getting people to connect in who work in the same place and live in the same place. There is a whole database that they've created that deals with that. We have engaged them to work on reaching out to those people who are two-person carpools and trying to get ways for them to try to find a third person. Opening up a database, encouraging them to find ways to find a third person. The other piece that we are pushing, and I think Cherie mentioned it, is transit. That is something that is open to folks who if they are losing their two-person carpool, that is an option that they can move to the opportunity. Cherie, anything you wanted to add? No -- well, yes. Does that clean air campaign is going to be working with us for the education piece but also coming up with promotions and incentives that are just for carpoolers. We have not bedded out exactly what those types of things will be, but we do have budget and scope to be able to try to do some things, particularly in the beginning when we first launched, that will help carpoolers. I don't know if it will be discounts or just some kind of promotion, some kind of something that will be just for those two-person carpoolers to award them for finding the third person. You know, giving them the resources. Clean air campaign has been promoting three-person carpooling for a while now. They recognized that this was going to be a change that the two-person carpool or was not as effective in Georgia. In time, we were going to have to change capacity in order to make sure that the road flowed smoothly. They have already being doing that. They do a great job. They are well-respected and they have a wide reach. Our relationship with them and our work with them will really help reach those carpoolers. Yes. In Florida as well we have a program. They have an extensive -- they have done extensive work. Their goal is to promote carpooling, van pooling, and all those things. They have an extensive database. They reached out to their folks and members. In Florida we have provided an incentive for three plus carpoolers if they register it as a three-person carpool, they get a sticker or decal mailed to them and they get to ride on a 95 express lanes for free both northbound and southbound. That goes for hybrid users and motorcycles as well. They can ride the 95 express for free. Extensive outreach was executed to those members and those groups. Okay. I believe Linda -- I believe Lynda made mention of some social media news tax six. I haven't heard too much from the other speakers. Can you address exactly how either you used social media tools in your outrage or are planning to add to what extent you have engaged sort of the nontraditional social media outlets like the blog and doing your media outreach question Mark? I have to say, they have actually become part of our day-to-day monitoring of communications here in Los Los Angeles. In fact, we have our own in-house blog called the source. That has really changed the dynamic. We also have a number of other transit studies that are under way right now. It's one of those studies has its own Facebook and twitter. We have a major freeway program going on the West side of LA. That is almost a 24 hour a day social media information outlet for us to get to the regional travelers because it is a major regional and even statewide and interstate roadway. So, I would expect that we are going to take all the lessons that we are learning from that program right now so when we are ready to go to implementation with our program, we are going to really make use of this as a chief communicator to our patrons. So, we are -- it is becoming increasingly more important to us in our work. Alicia, I will pose the same question to you. Have you used and are engaged social media question Mark? Directly, no. The department right now the us far we have not been engaging in any use of social media Summit not for this project or any other projects coming up. We have essentially gone very traditional in terms of our outreach. I know, currently, there is going to be a pilot program that is going to be made as part of the central office. About as part of the 95 express project, we did not use nor do we have any sort of social media initiative going on. Got you. Cherie and Karlene, any involvement on your part? We currently don't have social media as part of our outreach. We are anticipating implementing a social media as part of the peach passed ball out. That will be the new product. But we are developing a social media policy and working as we are putting our website together, so we do anticipate doing some social media. It is very new for us. We kind of want to roll out very slowly. We anticipate doing probably a Facebook page and then possibly a blog that we can use to kind of control the kinds of things we want to get out and hear from our customers. But that right now we haven't used in any of the outreach because we are implementing our policies now. And we are using it on other projects but not on this project. We are using Facebook particularly. Okay. Let's see. I was wondering to what extent your outrage has focused on speakers in other languages, outreach to groups that might be impacted by environmental justice concerns and issues. I will address it first to Linda from LA. I know she did mention a little bit of outreach to the Spanish-speaking population in LA. I was wondering if you could just expand a little bit more under outreach to not only speak other language but also groups that are impacted by the environmental issues. Yes. I am happy to. We have, obviously, a significant Spanish speaking population here. In fact, it is the policy with all of our major information campaigns, packages, and signage that they are bilingual, both Spanish and English. In some communities, obviously, I think we have some data in a presentation about a significant Chinese population in the San Gabriel Valley. So, we have produced materials in multiple languages as we take note of those communities. On this program thus far, that has been English, Spanish, Korean, and Mandarin. Of course, we will provide interpreters at the meetings upon request, and we almost always have Spanish interpreters there. So, that is just typically the way we really engaged in our outreach. We want to make sure that we are reaching into those communities. It is interesting the kind of support that you can garner by coming in and brilliant being sensitive to that issue. Also, we do a lot of advertising and interviewing with the community papers. I think I mentioned the multiple languages. There is a great opportunity, because that is an area of trust in those communities are receiving their information. We value those very highly. I couldn't agree with Linda anymore. I think it is very important to gain the public trust from the very beginning and to reach out to everyone, in Miami particularly, we have a lot of -- a very large Hispanic community. Along the project itself, we had a very big Haitian community as well. We did a trilingual campaign -- Spanish, English, and Korean. We reached out to them as well. Spanish and English very heavily and the Creel papers as well. We did radio spots. The print media was in English and Spanish as well. We also reached out and did a grassroots campaign. I remember going to the Haitian community group and the Haitian officers and talking to them and giving them brochures and making myself in the department available if they had any questions. Just to make sure that they didn't feel disenfranchised because they are part of the minority, both the Haitian community and Spanish community as well. I couldn't agree with Linda Moore. If you really want to gain the public trust, you have to reach out to everyone and give them equal time and an opportunity to voice their opinion. With producing essentially, you are letting them know that, yes, they are important. They do have a voice and they could come to the department if they have any concerns. Okay. We are running short on time here, so I am just -- one final question to all three jurisdictions here. I was wondering if any of you plan to continue doing any sort of extensive outreach and communication after you completely implemented and deployed your project and it is up and operating as you dream that it will. And I will start with Alicia. Phase Phase one has been completed and is operating, thankfully, as we hoped that a word and it continues to operate, but we still have to implement phase two. That is going into another district. So far, marketing wise, our budget is not what it used to be. It is not like we can buy billboards or good earplugs or anything like that. We continue to update our website with an email blasts. I guess I would say due to the budgeting and budget restrictions, it is not going to be as expensive as it was. Obviously, we will feel very -- we will be very responsive to any questions and continue to be a presence in the community but not before because we don't have the budget for that. Although, we still plan to deploy phase two. That is going to be a dual district effort. This is Cherie in Georgia. We do plan to do something similar to what Alicia is saying once we arrived up for launch and opening. This is our first project and potentially the first of a network. There'll be continuous education that will have to continue as the system kind of moves throughout different jurisdictions. Again, SB eight said, the marketing money is not there to do a lot of massmarketing commercials and things like that, but we will continue to educate the public about it. We also want to go back and do surveys and kind of gauge the satisfaction of our customers to see what is working for them, what they would like to see as far as the peach pass as a product and the benefits there. We definitely plan to do some level of effort post- opening. Certainly, not the heavy lifter that we will have to get to launch, but definitely staying out there. Just to add to that, the surveys have been a great tool for us. If you are planning on doing that, I would recommend it very greatly. Lynda, any plans for ongoing communication? Absolutely. I think we will be on very high alert for message adjustment. If the program begins to roll out, we will be experiencing what adjustments we need to make. I think that will be part of the campaign. We will be looking at that as part of the campaign to make message adjustment and look at how we can get those out as quickly as possible. There is going to be so much riding on the two and beyond. All right. Thank you all. We apologize here at the home base for having some minor ethernet problems, but we are still live. I just wanted to throw in one more plug for the national road pricing conference June 2nd and 4th are going right up on us. Register and get more information. Go to the Texas answer -- Texas transformation website. I will talk it back to Jocelyn. I will give you some information on the national transportation [ indiscernible ]. On the monitor here you will see the member organizations. We encourage you to go to the website listed on the next slide to find out more about the organization. Here you will see that the website contains information about upcoming webcasts. The site also contains a webcast archive page with recordings of previous webcasts. It is a great resource if you haven't checked it out yet. We will have the slides and recordings from today's presentation up within the next week. We also have to discussion forums, one focusing on high-level or strategic issues and the other focusing on IT as [ indiscernible ] and lessons learned. You can also sign up on the website for the newsletter that is e-mailed out twice monthly and gives announcements of upcoming talking operations webinars. Darren, would you like to close at all question marks they mature. First, there were so many questions we couldn't get to do to time. We are going to get a list of those questions and asked our presenters if they can provide for answers to some of them. Those that we do get, we will post them up on the website where you can read them and discuss them. We will provide a link to that once we send out the archive of this webcast. I would invite you to check out the archives. I believe we haven't gone over at least one of these projects in the past to talk about sort of the details of it. Coming up next week, we have our next session, which is just a basic overview of the revised [ indiscernible ]. I'm sorry. Manual and uniform traffic control device is released back in September of 09. Join us next Thursday. Thank you very much for joining us. As always, a huge thank you to all of our presenters. Alicia Torrez, Cherie Gibson, and Lynda Bybee. Please join us next time. Thank you. (end)