Thank you for waiting. All participants will be able to listen only throughout the presentations. I would like to introduce your speaker for today's call, Ms. Jocelyn Bauer of SAIC. Ma'am, you may begin. Hello and welcome to the National Transportation Operations Coalition. The NTIMC unified goal at one year, a look at the future. My name is Joslyn our creed I will be giving a brief introduction to the -- we are very pleased to have Dave Helman with a sprained please be advised that today's seminar will be recorded rate will be approximately one hour 30 minutes. The final 30 minutes is for audience question answered. During the presentation, if you think of a question, you can type it into the smaller tech stocks in a chat area on the lower left side of your screen. Indicate to your question is directed toward a muster question is intended for all presenters did please make sure you type into the text box and not a large white. Please also make sure you send your question to other it -- over one rather than just a presenter. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentation by Dave will use some of the questions type into your chat box. A file containing the audio and visual portion of the seminar will be posted to the National Transportation Operations coalition within the next week. I have typed that address into the chat box already we encourage you to direct others in office to we have not been able to attend this conference to access the recording. The presentations for today are available for download in the file downloard box on the left side of your screen for you we also have some X18 sheet and brochures on the national unified School. If you would like more information. To download a file, click with your mouse on the file -- the name of the file you would like to download and click the button at the bottom of the dollar a box that says say to my computer. The presentations will also be available with the next week on the National Transportation Operations coalition website. Attendees will be notified of the availability of the presentation, recording, and closed captioning of this seminar. At this time, I would like to introduce Dave Helman, the moderator of today's what Kasper did he is the traffic incident Management Program Manager for the Federal Highway Administration for Washington D.C.. He guides that development, execution, and assessment of the federal Highway program and also provides technical assistance and guidance to public and private sectors and federal Highway field offices. He was one of the founders of the National -- he serves on the various committees and working groups. He serves on technical committees of the Transportation Research Board and is a member of the freeway Operations committee. Now, I will turn things over to Dave will start this off for us. Thank you, Jocelyn trade one year ago today, November 20th 2007, representatives of the member organizations of the National Traffic -- National Traffic Incident Management Coalition, or NTIMC as you'll see the abbreviations. Participated in a formal ratification ceremony of the coalition national unified gold for traffic incident management. The national unified goal is respond safety, safe and quick clearance, and prompt, reliable, inoperable is and will. The NUG is a policy level statement of the NTIMC organizations on the future direction of traffic incident Management in the United States the NTIMC, a coalition of a national organization currently has 23 members that include transportation, public safety, and private sector partners in a traffic incident Management reviewed. There are 18 strategy's declined to implement the NUG. During the past year, NTIMC has developed a strategic plan to guide implementation of the 18 NUG strategies. Today you will hear three presentations that summarize progress over the past look to the future of the coalition and to the efforts to incorporate the NUG categories. [ indiscernible ] -- and discuss how it evolves in the NUG. Rebecca booster, a private sector ought member of the NTIMC will present profit -- traffic management through a private industry perspective and discuss the establishment of the NTIMC Foundation it will be the source of private funds to support NTIMC activities. Kimberly [ indiscernible ] of the Federal Highway Administration will discuss traffic incident management as a part of a broader effort within [ indiscernible ]. John Corbin is the state traffic engineer of the Wisconsin Department of transportation. He has also served as a Operations engineer in intelligent transportation systems program manager in the metropolitan/milwaukee area John is the [ inaudible ] and a task force leader with the America of -- and assemble. He is the manager -- excuse me. He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers for you get a the T RB free the operations committee. And the DOT advancement group. John. Thank you, Dave, and thanks to those that are joining in. The accomplishments so far under the National Unified Goal. I look toward into providing in the next two minutes kind of a brief refresher. For many it will be a credit -- reiteration about why this is so important from a safety as well as a congested management standpoint on the nation's highway system. I remind you and reiterate also the value of the partnership that is -- that has been afforded. I will recount briefly how the coalition has emerged and where we are at as an organization of organizations bridging the public safety in transportation communities. As a starting point for talking about strategic new directions, I would like to just briefly recap and reminded of the national unified goal and what it is. Dave has started that process. The focus of the presentation will be in its conclusion highlighting or providing an introductory briefing to you of what the strategic plan is for the National traffic -- National Traffic Incident Management Coalition as we build for work on the cornerstone of the National Unified Goal particularly highlighting the value of partnerships with our member organizations as well as other entities such as the transportation -- Transportation Safety advancement reported in making the business case for a traffic incident Management, I think in the transportation community we have long been aware of the congested management implications of traffic incidents. More recently, I think jointly with the public safety community, it has been emphasized to us and we have become more aware of safety as the primary business case for enhanced traffic incident Management and appreciating the risks and understanding the hazards of traffic incidents per you'd certainly, a significant proportion -- certainly, a significant proportion include that 25 percent of the suggestion that is attributable to accidents. We recognize the risks to motorist. One in six crashes involving injury and death, particularly on higher speed roadways like freeways and tollways, result in -- result due to secondary crashes resulting from an initial primary incident or crash. While we recognize the danger to travelers, we also respect the equally critical risk to responders, emergency responders, including those in fire and police but also the tolling and recovering community. We are reminded that cars are a much greater hazard than bullets to law enforcement officers. In fact, about half of the 300 block enforcement deaths annually in this country are attributable to vehicle crashes including struck by incidents at incident scenes. About 20 percent of firefighter deaths are occurring on the roadways. Certainly, particularly, the more dramatic highly visible incidents are but we think about when we think of the danger to responders, including telling and recovering responders. My experience has been that these responders are at relatively much greater risk when they are next to the lower visibility minor incidents. I think that will be kept come to understand is that the practices and procedures that become more visible and more dramatic at the major crash scenes are practiced and are integrated and ultimately realize some of their greatest value at some of the minor incidents. These minor incidents, by the way, make up about 80 percent of all of the incidents that occur on highways and yet are responsible for about 60 percent of the lake. Further estimated, for every minute an incident including a minor, even just a shoulder blocking incident, affects the flow of traffic on a highway particularly a higher volume highway. There is four or five minutes of residual the late trade and other boards, that extra ten or 15 minutes that is a vehicle sits on the shoulder during a high-volume. A day, it cannot lead to residual congestion up 30 or 45 minutes. Congestion -- and I've highlighted the implementations of congestion. I just want to emphasize that when we talk about congestion, we are also aware of the implications of unexpected congestion, particularly on the freight and trucking community. Overall, it is estimated that the trucking industry, basically, has taken out of it about 17,000 drivers years of time wasted every year in congestion. Another way to think about that is there are 17,000 drivers in the trucking industry that right now are being wasted because they need to spend that time on an annual basis sitting in congested. About 25 percent of those, based on the statistics I quoted earlier, of course, would be attributable to the human cost, the human value of time costs in the trucking industry of incidents. And other birds, by about four to 05,000 extra divers needed to mitigate the delays. Not only is it a cost industry, is a significant implications for the just in time global supply chain and the cost associated with that in the manufacturing community. There are also implementations for our service, where for example, a trucker taking a shipment on April interstate highway between two metropolitan areas probably has not budgeted an extra couple hours to sit in the back up from a major traffic incident that may clothes, Rob Blake very unexpectedly in what might otherwise be perceived as the middle of nowhere. That could have any significant impact for the driver and their our of server step deleted perhaps having to take a complete additional trouble they to make that shipment. I have also been made aware of significant impacts for just-in-time delivery delay and the penalties, which can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars for being one minute late and causing the shutdown of a very extensive supply chain, including manufacturing chains. One of the fringe benefits, of course, of aggressive traffic incident management, that ongoing coordination between public safety and transportation communities to respond better to the routine incidents, the minor incidents, the incidents that are occurring right now on the nation's highway systems, is that we are much better prepared for crisis. The value of traffic incident management programs is not just their ability to solve new and changing problems at one point in time but to address those problems as they evolve and become more significant overtime three preparedness for crisis is a byproduct of court -- byproduct of cooperation and cooperation in the team. Programs involving Service patrol activities, plans for alternate and emergency rodding of traffic around Highway closures, enhance seen management guidelines to improve traffic safety and traffic management practices, and other activities of our ongoing traffic incident management programs as state and local levels have benefits demonstrated benefits reducing incidents duration by up to 65%. Providing the benefit costs of up to 20 to one or 3214 certain free weights safety patrol activities, reducing secondary crashes by as much as half. If you are interested in more information about how effective traffic incident management works, I would prefer you to the documents on the slide, specifically those that are contained as white papers on that Tim coalition website and report referenced on the second bullet from the bottom. That is an excellent document from the U.S. DOT that captures the expensive benefits and well substantiated benefits of aggressive traffic incident management on the highway system. A cost effectiveness and the benefits of traffic incident management is one reason that, quite frankly, for an extended period of time the transportation has understood in a growing proportion of that community the benefits of more aggressive management of incidents. Particularly, on freeways and expressways and higher speed, higher volume roads. That appreciation began in metropolitan areas that deployed for with traffic management technologies in the 1960's. The appreciation of and need to work more closely with emergency services beginning with, for example, [ indiscernible ], emergency medical community. It led to an understanding in the '70s and '80s of the need for a more national problematic approach, development of some of the additional DOT and set management -- incident management material. In the mid-1990s, an earlier version of what became more recently the National traffic incident Management Coalition was convened under the leadership of the American trucking Association and the earlier incarnation of the research of element of 88, which is now represented by the next speaker. The National incident Management Coalition really Excel berated the national awareness of the need of approached traffic incident Management in a more consistent and more assertively, not just in metropolitan areas but in intercity -- intercity corridors across the country. As a result in the early 2000's and 2002, there was the first-ever national conference. It was convened as a partnership between [ indiscernible ], which is a national organization for state Department of transportation as well as eight Research Board, the Federal Highway Administration, IT E, and others freed one of the key outcomes of that conference was the recognition that if all we're going to move forward nationally, we did need a sustained voice. And we needed a table that could bring together the national organizations representing the transportation community and the national organizations representing the public safety and emergency service community including those representing the private sector interests in those communities. The outcome was the commitment of a number of organizations including those that I have mentioned convened the conference in 2002 as well as the International Association of Fire Chiefs, International Association of Chiefs of Police, ultimately being joined by the American Automobile Association. Groups that had been involved on the technology side of the public's safety and transportation integration, namely the Association of Public Communications individuals, Society of America, the National Emergency number Association, these groups committed as charter and early members of the National traffic incident -- National Traffic Incident Management Coalition. The coalition was convened in 2004 with shepherding and assistance and older siblings and guidance from at the time the public safety advisory group ultimately being renamed the Transportation Safety advancement reprieve will continue to share key members and key leaders between the coalition and a transportation groups. The coalition's purpose and goals were pretty clear and pretty ready to understand from the outset. Namely, to provide a forum extending the public safety and [ indiscernible ] communities to improve the safety of on seen responders as well as motorists to strengthen its services delivered both by the transportation emergency services community and victims including standard motorists. And to reduce delays and cost of both retain and expected congested and assemble as well as the unexpected locations and unexpected delays to which I alluded to earlier are so devastating to the global supply chain. Initial activities of the coalition included the opportunity to collaborate in promoting and contributing to and really precipitating the development of the first standard for high visibility best for public safety responders. That standard now has been used to promote the much broader use of a reflective of the best that does not impede, for example, law-enforcement officer access to Delta's mounted weapons or other devices and they may need in a crisis situation it has always been designed to be tear away and to be more amenable to a firefighter and other on seen responder operations. In addition, the coalition was able to develop a partnership with those working on the manual for uniform traffic control devices, particular chapter 6I which deals with emergency traffic control. In fact, there are some developments under way to significantly expand and further detail that guidance to insist in making traffic incidents safer. We have been able to begin to leverage the significant resources associated with transportation research for efforts such as the whopper to a high wave research program, a program that invests $30 million in transportation ratios. We have started to see some of that redirected to meeting the needs of the community. The highway research program is another area where we have significant developments including those related to developing and multiple -- mouth the disciplinary Training and firemen. One of the key opportunities for the coalition was an opportunity brute -- early on in 2005. You could participate in European scanning toward. It was the first tour of this type. It involved both public safety and Transportation practitioners. It was a scanning -- the scanning aborted several of us the opportunity to visit the countries of Britain, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands to observe their traffic incident management to practitioners in to understand the strength as well as the weaknesses but also the opportunities they presented for lessons to be learned in the U.S. As a result of that tour, we were able to understand and appreciate the value of a national approach to a traffic incident Management three we certainly saw a standardized approach -- we certainly saw a standardized approach to policies and practices. Perhaps more importantly, what we saw was the value of a national policy commitment and recommendation to traffic incident management as 81, a top priority, Transportation and Safety strategy. For. When we came back to the United States from that tour, we looked for ways to could give the federal government a return for what we saw. We focused on the needs for a national unified School Corps traffic incident management that could be both meaningful and understandable at the national level but in a nonthreatening way be flexibly understood and implemented down to the state and local level. As Dave mentioned, the national unified School -- National Unified Goal was but developed an adopted most formally a year ago today in Montgomery County at a media event at which key member organizations of the coalition were present. The National Unified Goal Today are these three things. Responders safety, safe, quick, Clarence, and prompt, reliable interruptible communications. An additional layer of detail behind this would be that for example with this undertaking we want to develop strategies for promoting responder safety that include recommended practices or aren't seen activities and responder safety, the adoption and consistent promotion and communication of will over in slowdown was coming and consistent immigration into general driver training and awareness. Drivers and motorists can better and more safely approach traffic incident scenes and closet -- including those minor incident scenes that can be overlooked but can present such significant hazards. Safe, quick clearance is the went to encompass the development of multidisciplinary traffic incident management procedures or both on seen operations as well as upstream warning and traffic management. The establishment of guidance for consistent response and clearance time goals so that we can in a consistent way across the country to measure how we are doing in reducing the time that incidents blocked highways and put it responders at risk. Finally, the insurance or the assurance that we have a consistent 247 availability and commitment to trafficked [ indiscernible ]. That is the biggest response. We have been used to obfuscate ours and now we need to adapt rapidly through traffic -- [ indiscernible ] Finally, the technological corner scorn of the national unified goal is prompt, reliable, interoperable organizations trade including practices and protocol for utilizing available links between responding agencies. Ensure that responders and protect -- correct -- the encouragement of better broadband solutions we're not just voice and also data and video sharing, in the consideration of the traveler. Insuring that we have affected and proactive communications to warn travelers of hazards as they emerge. Whether it blows be due to more dramatic emergencies and events -- those be due to more dramatic emergencies and events. We recognize that there is an underpinning of crosscutting strategies within the National Unified Goal including those related to training and awareness, the development of performance measures. Most notably, we recognize that for the National Unified Goal we have to ensure that they are consistently structured and sustained and committed traffic incident management programs at local and state levels. That can be networked together across the country. The National Unified Goal will provide value to these programs by helping them avoid the need to reinvent the wheel, sharing best practices, providing consistent guidance. Certainly, it will offer a way that the best practices and gas resources in training can be shared and implemented. It will provide us with some common tool for promoting traffic incident management programs within some of our own agencies as well as to the public and selected officials created. Finally, the National Unified Goal is already proving to be a leveraging point to engage National opportunities for driver awareness, including those that have been realized that partnership, for example, a Triple A and their relationship with NASCAR. Specific activities that are under way related to the National Unified Goal implementation include the definition, and some of this -- in fact, a lot of this is available online if you are interested for further information trade please access and utilize that upset. One, is the definition of small tight disciplinary Corp's competency. In a structured way, defining fire, police, calling and recovery, and other partner responders in traffic incident management fee of how we can talk about the core competencies, but core capabilities that we need at the individual level. Training toward those core capabilities include [ indiscernible ] related by things such as the I-95 quarter coalition, their development of a quick clearance tool kit as well as a traffic incident management training framework and approach that together can be used as resources to move responder agencies across the country in a consistent way toward enhanced capability. We also are realizing the benefits of federal highway administration efforts to pins with the traffic incident Management Assessment and handbook. Utilize them as a mechanism of of reach to the traffic incident Management Group meet nationally. There is a training and research activities that are being integrated into the national unified School -- National Unified Goal implementation. There is a very nice thing. It will be updated to maintain accountability to our membership and the progress that is being made in implementing the unified cool. While we recognize the value and the strength of the National Unified Goal, we realized we needed a strategic plan to move forward with the coalition, building on and build around the national unified goal particularly in support of what the DOT -- with the DOT. The coalition's strategic plan was developed rather briskly and rather intently in the middle part of this past year. The National Unified Goal it certainly is understood as kind of the overarching value of our strategic plan. We see the National traffic incident Management Coalition now moving forward in coracle areas to promote and support traffic incident Management to provide technical support and guidance, to provide leadership and alignment along the initial tests in to assure that we are aggressively reaching out and delivering the products, services, a prospectus, and about of the coalition in its member organizations. Doing that involves working through our member organizations in a fact as a "work as a national network. It allows all familiar to get to the front lines where the rubber hits the road was literally. This concept of network of traffic incident management programs that are consistently implemented through our member organizations and their distributed repeated -- repetition across the country is a heart and soul of the strategic plan and will continue to be the key to the success of us as a coalition for the advancement of traffic incident management. Very quickly, let me just highlight the goals and refer you to be a strategic plan, which is a document, available for your reaction, comments. Hopefully, for your partnership in implementing over the next 12 to 24 months pregnant the first ball, successful development and conduct of local and regional statewide management but we recognize that this will allow us to a identify opportunities to leverage traffic incident Management partnership and reduce redundancy. Certainly, we want to use the traffic incident Management Program mechanism at the state and local levels to increase awareness of the stay at the same time we use these. We recognize that probably the best way to do that is true, for example, but the ours like this as well as regional workshops and activities that bring adjacent state programs in adjacent programs together face-to-face to expand those partnerships and Bilbo's networks. The second goal, providing leadership [ indiscernible ] guides and standards recognizes that the standard was not designed to do this alone. Rather, we will do this by aligning ourselves with the U.S. DOT in their administrations, both federal highway administration's as well as RITA. The third goal, appropriate research problem statement. Take advance -- a lot of money gets invested in transportation research. Money also gets invested in the emergency response and homeland security research. We recognize we can do a lot to leverage, even small proportions, of that massive amount of money being invested in research. The objectives of not just research and knowledge, but also training. Speaking of training, that is the final goal area of the National Unified Goal planned we recognize that we want to continue to reach out through our member organizations to their members to provide timely delivery and responsive delivery of TIM and national unified projects per year we also want to identify that that -- including classes, some may be partially online. I do want to, in conclusion, recognize a key kind of, if you will, big brother of the National Traffic Incident Management Coalition three that this was actually the U.S. DOT's first sponsorship of table to bring public organizations to the table bird we approached them, those of us that were in the process of forming the coalition back in about 2003 or 2004. They graciously accommodated sharing of some of their key members with there including [ indiscernible ]. That relationship continues. It is continuing to grow stronger. More recently, the Public Safety Advisory Group has become the Transportation Safety advancement group. We recognize that transportation safety advancement group is a key partner for.net , they focus on opportunities for Technology integration and technology development, crosscutting, and a rate of public safety programs including but not limited to a traffic incident management. As we move forward, we recognize that we kind of have a crisscross relationship with this key partner group, the Transportation Safety advancement group with the National Coalition being focused just on a traffic incident Management including the technological Ullman of it but extending more broadly into some of the operational and problematic issues. It is also exploring areas for Technology integration between public safety in transportation communities adjacent to and beyond the area of traffic incident Management 3I do appreciate the time and don't want to abuse or infringe to much on the other speakers time. I do look forward to questions and discussion as we proceed into the remaining discussions and the question and answers following. Thank you, John. Our next speaker is Rebecca Brooster of the American Transportation Research. As president and chief operating officer of the American Transportation Research Institute, Rebecca S. Brooster three left -- leads the research in the areas of safety and human factors, environmental factors, technology, transportation security, and economic analysis. ATRI cannot -- she serves on the executive community of the National of ten -- academy and on the board of trustees invisible. She is also charter member of the Management Coalition for yet about the treatment thank you, date. It is certainly my pressure to take -- Thank you, date. I would draw your attention to my subtitle their creed in is for the long haul. Not only is a catchy, but it really is intended to convey the importance of what we have been involved in for the National Traffic Incident Management Coalition to the trucking industry and how valuable these efforts are to the bottom line of the trucking industry to keep our trucks rolling on the world. It is also intended to convey the importance that we have put on making sure that the NTIMC remains a viable organization and hence our close involvement in development and the National Traffic Incident Management Coalition foundation so that we can ensure that it to is here for the long haul. Just briefly, jade -- Dave mentioned in my introduction freed up with those of you not familiar with ATRI, we are the [ indiscernible ]. We do work research in the five areas UC mentioned there. Essentially, if it has some access to trucking, you can rest assured we have either done some research in that area or have some research under way. We are governed by a board of directors represented by the CE 0s and president of the organizations here. I put this up here because clearly no matter where you live in the country, you have seen vehicles traveling down your local roads with these logos on them. This is just to reiterate how very important we do through the National Traffic Incident Management Coalition is to the trucking industry at large but particularly to the leadership of ATRI. Italy is a very big deal to us. Just a quick snapshot of the trucking industry for those of you poult have numbers what we do in the research world. The trucking industry is responsible for removing -- moving about ten-point -- you look at freight revenue. We represent about 84 percent of it. We are 8.7 million workers across the country, 3.4 million of those are truck drivers. The vehicles you see on the road, about 3 million Class A vehicles, that is a large combination that most people associate with the trucking industry. Congestion cost us dearly. Even with the decreases we have seen recently in fuel costs, diesel fuel costs, this is still going to be the biggest year yet for the trucking industry in terms of expenditures on diesel fuel. We are on track right not to spend about 149 billion as an industry on diesel fuel. To put it in perspective, five years ago in 2003, the industry spent 52.2 billion on diesel fuel. We are -- we have increased at more than 2.5 times in five years. It is clearly a big deal for us. It has surpassed even labor as our number one expense for motor carriers. Each year my organization does is a write on behalf of the American trucking associations to identify what the issues are concerns -- issues of concerns are three in the 2008 survey, fuel came out as 13. John touched on this briefly in his presentation, but I would like to talk about our involvement in traffic incident Management, the fact that the driver ours and servers will. In fact, the [ indiscernible ] just issued their final rule this week. There is no congestion credit, if you will. Truckdrivers do not have a built-in cushion for unexpected delays or congestion that may come into as they make deliveries. It does not stop the clock. It keeps the driver's amount of time they can drive, it keeps ticking away as they sit in traffic. It begins to impact the bottom line of the men and women who drive for a living. So, if is a big deal to the trucking industry, obviously. And John touched on this earlier and Dave did as well. We have been involved in National Traffic Incident since the early 1990's when my organization, which prior to becoming ATRI in 2001, we were the American trucking Association foundation. One of the first research I was involved and was taking a look at a traffic incident Management three of that research identified TIM clearly as an effective tool for mitigating congestion. We have talked about the fact that incident congestions is responsible for about one-fourth of the congestion in this country. The case was very clear, as a result of that research. The trucking industry needed to be a leader of efforts to advance [ indiscernible ] prayed with our partners in federal highway and a number of a number of other folks like AAA, [ indiscernible ], the Highway users federation, the American Traffic Safety organization and a number of other national groups. We formed what was then called the NIMC. My organization, the ATRI lead that in conjunction with Federal Highway Administration. The early traffic incident Management Coalition was focused primarily on education and outreach through a series of conferences held around the country that were designed to build consensus among the many TIM Partners for quarter ended traffic incident management. They believe were focused on tearing down the institutional barriers that had existed between responders and others involved in traffic incident Management in a way that we got folks to work together in a more coordinated way to expedite and safely clear incidents on the roadway. The activities of the early NIMC were supported through the Federal Highway Administration and by annual dose bid by the member organizations through the NIMC. Today's coalition, the NTIMC, is designed to go way beyond the law of reach of the original NIMC. As John details in its national unified School, it provides a real free market of tangible concrete approaches for retrieving the strategies of responders safety, clearance, and prompt reliable communications. But it is very obvious that those things are required without some real serious resources. Since the NTIMC first convened in 2004, the support for its activities to date have been provided solely by the Federal Highway Administration.