**Integrated Corridor Management Webinar:**

**Dallas, San Antonio, and Seattle Pioneer Sites**

**Transcript**

**July 24, 2008**

**Introduction**

**Jennifer Symoun:**

Welcome to the integrated corridor management (ICM) webinar, focusing on
Dallas, San Antonio, and Seattle. The webinar is being recorded and the
recording will be posted on line in about a week or so. Today\'s webinar
will last approximately three hours and is designed to be interactive.
There will be an opportunity to ask questions following each
presentation and at the end of the webinar. We may not be able to
respond to all the questions, but will follow-up after the webinar.

All participants are in listen-only mode. The operator will give
instructions on how to ask questions on the phone, but you can also type
in questions in the chat area. Please send your questions to everyone.
Throughout the webinar there will be multiple choice polls, participants
cannot tell who responded to the question but the host will be able to
associated response and are therefore not totally anonymous. If you have
questions regarding the format or technical issues, please type them
into the chat box. I will turn it over to Steve Mortensen to provide an
overview of the ICM initiative.

**Steve Mortensen:**

I am Steve Mortensen, Senior ITS Engineer with the Federal Transit
Administration, office of Research and Demonstration. I am one of the
three project managers for the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT)
ICM initiative; the others are Brian Cronin of the RITA ITS Joint
Program Office and Dale Thompson of the FHWA Office of Operations. I
would like to thank our pioneer sites who will present today, and I
would like to thank SAIC and Noblis for today\'s webinar.

First I will give an overview of the ICM program. When I am done we will
take questions from our audience today via the chat window and then open
the lines for questions. After any questions on the overall ICM program
we will hand it over to three of our eight pioneer sites: Dallas, San
Antonio and Seattle. After each of these presentations presenters will
take questions. We have held two webinars on July 17 and July 22 with
the remaining five pioneer sites. We have recorded these presentations
and will be posting them on the ICM website for you in about a week. At
the end of the Webinar we will open up questions again via the chat
window, and the phone lines and you can ask questions collectively of me
and our pioneer sites.

These are the topics I am going to go over:

-   The goals of the ICM initiative;

-   A description of ICM;

-   Eight pioneer sites and corridor assets;

-   The phases of the ICM initiative;

-   The next steps in the initiative;

-   This year\'s milestones; and

-   Information on our knowledge and technology transfer activity.

This Webinar has three main goals:

1.  To recognize the sites; they have worked hard on their concepts.

2.  To maintain outreach to the transportation professionals and
    industry; to provide them with lessons learned to date in the
    development stage.

3.  To get feedback from you, the transportation community as we move
    forward in the initiative.

We would like to know where you are in ICM, if you are just starting
out, also the type of information you would like to get to help you. We
hope for the webinar to be very interactive, so we encourage you to
submit questions to us.

The ICM initiative is a joint effort between the Federal Highway
Administration, Federal Transit Administration and the Research and
Information Technology Administration ITS Joint Program Office to better
manage traffic congestion. We see it as the next step in congestion
management.

The greatest concentration of congestion is along critical
transportation corridors that link activity centers, residential,
business, sports arenas and shopping areas. To date, efforts to reduce
congestion have mainly focused on networks within corridors. When I say
networks, I mean freeways, arterials, bus routes, and rail lines. To
manage those networks independently, corridors often have significant
transportation capacity that goes unused, such as adjacent routes and
single occupant vehicles.

So, what is ICM and how is it different than today\'s state of the
practice of transportation management? ICM is the management of freeway
and arterial corridors using real-time network and corridor performance
data rather than the more traditional approach of managing the
individual networks within the corridor. It includes technical,
operational and institutional integration. The key areas are load
balancing, demand management, incident management, recurring congestion,
planned events such as construction, specialty events such as sporting
and entertainment, and weather.

The USDOT selected eight pioneer sites. We recognized these as leaders
in the area of congestion management and consider them critical partners
in the development of ICM concepts. These include I-270 in Montgomery
County, Maryland, I-10 in San Antonio, I-10 in Houston, Texas, I-15 in
San Diego, I-880 in Oakland and I-5 in Seattle Washington. They
represent characteristics the USDOT believes represent many other
corridors across the nation.

We have three stages we are going through with the eight pioneer sites.
Stage one we began in the Fall of 2006 and will have completed at the
end of this year. Each of the sites developed a concept of operation for
their corridor and an ICM specification requirement. Stage two, we are
moving into, USDOT will select three of the pioneer sites to analyze and
model corridors using a methodology we already developed. This will be
about a 15 to 18-month effort and is scheduled to be completed in the
Fall of 2009. Stage three, we anticipate beginning a year from now in
the Summer of 2009, and lasting until 2012, up to three of the pioneer
sites will demonstrate their ICM strategies and we will provide a
demonstration of each of them.

This illustrates the various networks, assets of each of the sites. All
have real-time control capabilities on their arterial networks. All have
fixed route bus systems and express bus service. A number have bus/rapid
transit, a few have rail, a few light rail, and a few heavy rail
systems.

Throughout the whole course of the initiative we have and hope to
continue to solicit input from various stakeholder working groups. From
2004 to 2006 we assessed the current state of \[?\] and technical
memoranda and developed a generic concept of operations and ICM
implementation plan. Phase two is corridor tool strategies and
integration activities, which began in fiscal 2006 and is running
concurrently with phases 3 and 4. Phase 2 consists of two parts, a
modeling and simulation methodology was developed to \-- see which ICM
strategies provide the biggest impact locally. We tested it in a test
corridor, a 35-mile segment of interstate 880 in the San Francisco Bay
Area. We analyzed and modeled about five or so ICM strategies
individually and in combination. We are addressing a number of
outstanding ICM issues and needs such as arterial and \-- data gaps.
Developing core requirements for decision support systems. A number of
our pioneer sites identified they are planning on developing decision
support to help implement their ICM strategies. We are also planning to
identify various ITS standards, most applicable to ICM, and to identify
various corridor performance measures.

Phase three, I already talked about that, our activities with our eight
pioneer sites, which has the three different stages. In phase four, our
outreach and knowledge and technology transfer activities, also began in
fiscal owe six and will continue for the duration of the initiative. So
far we focused on conducting outreach to the transportation community
and to raise awareness about ICM. We are now moving to develop a range
of ICM KTT resources that equip transportation practitioners to
implement ICM for their corridors.

So far we have gone through the concept development phase with the
pioneer sites, each developed concept of requirements and system of
operations. We will move to development or design phase, then into
implementation. This diagram here we call the virtuous cycle diagram. I
want to emphasize here all three of these components are necessary for
successful ICM implementation. To characterize one needs archived data,
a validated and trusted model, and system-wide performance measures,
relying on travel time reliability. If you are missing any of these
three components, you are not going to be able to successfully model
ICM, and to effective performance of your corridor.

In phase two we developed a methodology for modeling ICM. It consists
basically of three types of simulation models that pass data back and
forth among them. The first, in the top oval is macroscopic travel
demand, these are effective in regional travel patterns and mode shift,
provide transit analysis capability enhanced by a mode shift module. The
second is mesoscopic, which is effective in analyzing congestion and for
modeling region diverse patterns. Finally, microscopic which is
effecting in analyzing things like ramp metering and traffic signal
coordination. With this methodology we developed one is able to analyze
the individual and combination effect of ICM strategies under different
operational conditions such as low, medium and high-travel demand

So what are the next steps in the initiative? We plan to apply the AMF
tools; methods we developed in it phase two, up to three AMF pioneer
sites to validate the methods and results. We plan to analyze arterial
data, decision support, and mode shift issues. That\'s a part of our
phase two activities. And then to upload deliverables that we have
developed to date to our knowledge and technology knowledge base, such
as concept of operations, lessons learned. I believe some (not all
eight) of them have already been uploaded. Also, we plan on posting our
technical \-- resource and test corridor findings.

These are our major milestones for 2008:

-   In January we completed our methodology, and applying that to ICM
    test corridor.

-   At the end of March all of the pioneer sites completed concept of
    operations and the system process.

-   We are trying to finalize the selection of up to three sites to
    become AMS pioneer sites

-   We anticipate in the fall, towards end of September we will have
    completed the AMS plan for up to three AMF sites.

Now I would like to talk about our knowledge transfer activities. You
can see, you can access the ICM website, there\'s the URL
(http://www.its.dot.gov/icms/index.htm). We have developed an ICM
knowledge base, part of the website, is searchable, you can search for
information using key words or you can browse the different topics. It
contains all of our ICM initiative product and deliverables to date,
including our foundational research documents, the pioneer sites,
Con-Ops and requirements document s. The data gap, AMS resource
findings, developed a number of fact sheets, two newsletters so far. We
encourage you to sign up to receive any future newsletters. We have
several articles on the initiative and have published them in a number
of trade journals, such as Public Roads, Mass Transit Magazine and are
planning to publish additional articles in Traffic Technology
International (TTI), APTA Passenger Transport, and ANDINA Traffic, a
Latin American publication. Resources coming soon that I want to bring
to your attention, will be posted on our knowledge base, include
additional webinars with the pioneer sites, webinars on modeling results
as we move forward, additional fact sheets, presentations from
conferences and peer-to-peer exchanges, additional lessons learned as we
move forward, and updated resource guidance documents.

With that, that concludes my portion of the webinar. As I stated
earlier, these are the initiative project managers. Here are their phone
numbers, feel free to give us a call. I encourage you to bookmark the
website and sign up for our ICM email list, that\'s the newsletter, so
you can stay informed about future developments in the initiative. With
that, we would like to open up the webinar to questions. First, if we
can submit questions via the chat window.

**J Symoun:**

We have one open-ended question, which is what corridors in your area
might be feasible for implementing ICM. Feel free to type questions you
have for Steve and we will open the phone lines momentarily if you
prefer to ask a question over the phone. I should mention the
presentations today are available for download on the bottom left hand
corner of your screen. There are instructions on how to download the
presentations.

We encourage you to fill out the poll questions, give us valuable
feedback about ICM.

We will give you a minute or so to respond to the polls to get a better
idea of where everybody is. Why you are implementing or why you are not?
You can type in your corridors that you think might be feasible to
implement ICM in it your area. We will give you a few more minutes to
answer these questions, but it looks like, as far as the different
stages of ICM, the majority are currently developing a concept of
operations and requirements; some are not planning, and some are in the
planning stage.

I think that\'s it for the poll questions. Thank you very much for
giving us that feedback, we appreciate it.

All right, moving on, then, to our three features Pioneer Sites. Today
to talk about the Dallas ICM Pioneer Site we have Koorosh Olyai of
Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) and Chris Poe from the Texas
Transportation Institute.

**Dallas - Koorosh Olyai:**

Thank you, good afternoon, I am Koorosh Olyai I would like to present an
overview of the ICM pioneer site and the lessons learned from stage one.
I-75, covers five cities, two counties, in additional to the regional
authority, state DOT and the MPO. Each of the agencies is highlighted in
our cover slide.

Based on TTI\'s 2002 mobility report the Dallas-Ft. Worth area is the
congestion, the ninth largest city in the U.S., the population is
currently 6 million, and we keep on adding 1 million people every eight
years.

U.S. 75 is a major North/South /South corridor \-- future ability to
handle growth is depend on ability to handle transit and move people to
other modes. In addition the freeway corridors that interconnect will
all go under reconstruction in the next five years. I-13, I-635, and
state 121. Our ICM feels the corridor will be a showcase for the V FW
region, over a dozen corridors could benefit from ICM concepts in our
region alone.

The I-75 corridor is shown in yellow. Five cities within our corridor
are Dallas, Highland Park, University Park, Richardson, and Plano. The
full travel route is shown by the thicker blue line. The CVD is at the
southern end of the travel shed, the corridor is over 25-miles in
length. The corridor includes an 8-lane freeway, 14-mile HOV concurrent
flow lane in each direction, light rail transit, the toll road, another
light rail line bounding the eastern side, and regional arterials
crossing the corridor for significant lengths, with local and express
bus service.

The U.S. 75 corridor has a diverse range of infrastructure components.
Our roads in the corridor are freeway and frontage road system; recently
completed 5-level interchange. I-635, HOV toll, and SOV lanes, arterial,
two light rail transit lines, bus transit, express and local. Three
city-owned transportation management centers. One transit owned TMC and
toll authority owned TMC. The 10-mile section of U.S. 75 recon
instructed in the 90s has won several awards, such as urban design award
and the Marvin Black award. When we first put our proposal together for
the integrated corridor management, these were the assets we had in our
system. Since then we have opened up additional HOV facilities as we
indicated we would over the last six months. The rest of the assets in
the corridor remain accurate today.

The ICM team is divided into two groups, the operating agencies in the
corridor and the technical support team. The Texas Transportation
Institute provides ITS, systems integration for freeway management,
performance measurement and ITS standards. University of Texas in
Arlington managed lane modeling evaluation. Southern Methodist
University offered dynamic traffic assignment, transit modeling, and a
model that incorporates travel mode shift.

There\'s strong regional support for ICS in the Dallas Ft. Worth area.
There\'s a transit authority, MPO, and airport authority, execute a
memorandum of understanding under the region\'s cooperative approach to
ICS and operations in the region. The Executive Committee is supported
by a steering committee made up of technical staffs of all the agencies
in the region. The ICM project will use the existing committee structure
and the steering committee for the five-year duration of the project,
with the objective of making the I-75 corridor the model. The regional
is financially supportive of the regional communication system and
development is currently funded. A Dallas-wide ITS plan was developed in
1976, going through an update this year. Individual agencies have
developed their own ITS plans, for example, the rapid transit, in 2003.
The regional architecture and concept of operations have also been
developed.

Currently operates a regional traveler website with real-time
conditions, incidents, lane closures. Pictures, shows a snapshot from
the website. The regional telecommunication system, ITS is being built
out, establishing a regional center for video and data sharing system.
The MPO is developing regional data archive to support evaluation and
modeling. The state of Texas has interoperability standards, ensures
compatibility of strategies in every corridor.

The U.S. 75 corridor is fully instrumented with equipment such as
detectors, cameras, South of I-635 which cuts across our corridor
approximately in the middle. They are expanding the deployment of ITS.
Currently posting real-time travel time on their \-- the new \--
transportation management center opened last December, including
personal from \-- and Dallas Countiy sheriff\'s department. As Dallas
operates the HOV lane and enforces, and also provides motorist
assistance services.

Dallas, Richardson and Plano have systems with 100% of the systems
connected to the signal. Projects to implement the interface for each of
these. The cities, as well as the state, have integration with 911
systems and all have camera surveillance on the city streets. The city
of Richardson provides surveillance to the wrecker service. On the
arterials that intersect, currently funded, the placement of freeway VMS
messages during incidents and special events. The cities have priority
for transit. Rapid transit, regional transportation authority, 13 member
cities provide light air transit, park and ride lots, manage lanes,
local and bus systems, automated vehicle locations, centralized transit
control, passenger alert systems, transit signal priority and consists
of up to 300-strong team.

Our vision. Key point is that we are focusing on the customer, not on
any specific mode or agency. The corridor team will operate the corridor
in the best interest of the transportation customer. This diagram shows
the ICM physical architecture, run from the regional station management
center; operator can see the real ICM data coming in from the corridor,
evaluating conditions, running \-- the conditions under different ICM
strategies. Diagram also shows how each agency, with the IKM system
using the regional center to share information broadcast using the
system regional ATI S. Data will be stored in the existing regional data
archive.

The U.S. 75 concept includes four primary strategies:

1.  Enhance the ability of the agencies and responders to share data,
    which is the foundation for the other strategies.

2.  Develop a performance-measures approach that focuses on the
    customers.

3.  The evaluation of real-time operation.

4.  Improved traveler information in the corridor.

The planned decision support tool is driven by a model called DIRECT,
developed by our partner southern Methodist university, running faster
than network to predict conditions, 30 minutes in the future under
various ICM strategies. The support tool will estimate the benefits,
preventing specific ICM strategies. The U.S. 75 team has developed
community goals. Transportation goals include increasing throughput,
travel time, and incident response and clearing response. The key to
these is enabling travelers to shift modes. Even en-route, optimize the
trip, corridor performance. The figure shown here shows the performance
measure.

The next three slides highlight the lessons learned from the ICM stage
one. From an operational perspective, the only extra capacity available
in the corridor can be on the light rail transit. Thus, some of the U.S.
75, ICM strategies include when and how to reduce congestion. We learned
earlier, all agencies believe they are operating their system well, and
to full capacity. The operational challenge occurs when something goes
wrong, the typical plan doesn\'t work. For example, a major incident.
The stakeholders to take a different action, they need more decision
support tools. From an institutional perspective, we learned it\'s
important to have institutional structures in place. Trust exists from
the traffic management, incident management and HOV lane, taking place
in the university.

From the technical perspective, here are the lessons we learned. More
data sharing is needed. The DFW has a need for comparative data, the
agencies in the corridor, and corridor strategies, need data across all
mode and jurisdictions. This requires having congestion and throughput
data. One of those measures that can be used across all modes. There\'s
also a need for better arterial data, good data at the intersection, but
not on travel time and congestion for arterials radio.

The region is planning for an ICM needs, systems analysis. Significant
amounts of time were spent working through the engineering process. The
consultants have been through the process and can assist local
stakeholders with the value.

In conclusion, individual agencies are operating the systems well. The
opportunities were congestion reduction, aligned traffic management,
reduced congestion for travelers. The U.S. 75 corridor will be
successful as a scenario under the right modeling scenarios of
significant length, alternate time to travel, also providing travelers
with options.

Agencies need a common reliable data platform for decision. Lastly,
building on existing arrangement was the key to going forward; we feel
we will need to build trust with the population. Thank you very much.

**J Symoun**

Thank you. Do we have any questions for Koorosh or Chris? We will open
the telephone line, and you can use the chat window.

Question: Has transit use changed any as gas prices changed this year?

**Koorosh/Chris:**

Absolutely they have. All modes that we operate are seeing significant
ridership increases. True for local bus, express bus, commuter rail,
light rail, HOV programs. A recent article in Mass Transit, actually
gave percentages of increases. I think it\'s a national trend we are
experiencing. We did have a response from via Metro; a 15% increase in
ridership.

**J Symoun:**

All right, why don\'t we move on to our next presentation, which is on
the San Antonio, I-10 corridor. We have Brian Fariello from the Texas
Department of Transportation.

**San Antonio -- Brian Fariello:**

The ICM project covered the I-10 corridor, connecting the central
business districts with residential districts on the side of the city.
Main campus on the northern edge has a satellite campus in the downtown
area, students attend both campus and there\'s an express bus between
the two. The employers include the South Texas Medical Center and the
tourism industry is very big, both ends of the corridor, Six Flags, the
river walk, and the downtown area.

Increased congestion, decreased reliability, the arterials become
congested. We are working on a project to update the traffic signal
control, doesn\'t exist now, we have decreased bus transit reliability
on the express ways. Looking at future construction in the area of bus
rapid transit system, and on the express way.

This is the I-10 corridor, as you see here. It\'s approximately 15-miles
of I-10 from the northwest side of the city into the downtown area.
There\'s a split level express way near the downtown area. We have
parallel frontage roads the length of the corridor, many adjacent
arterials, will talk more about. As well as the road on the western edge
and military on the eastern edge. There\'s significant ridership in the
corridor, highest of any area in the city. Express bus from the UT San
Antonio, main cam us being in the northwest side of the city, downtown
being at the southern edge of it. As well as multiple marking locations.
Other things going on, recently two major reconstruction projects were
completed on the corridor.

One of them on I-10, from 410 to close to the downtown area, as well as
the new interchange being constructed in the I-10, loop 410 area.
Earlier we mentioned bus/rapid transit. That\'s projected to go online
in 2012. It should begin construction next year, so from 2009 to 2010,
the construction project will cause a lot of disruption to the traffic,
which will really impact the need for ICM.

The ITF system was installed on I-10 in the late 90s, as part of the
reconstruction project we have been able to update the ITS system on the
corridor. The city traffic monitoring using older equipment so many
controllers will be upgraded in the near future.

How ICM helped San Antonio. From the operational approach and strategy
we will improve information sharing, improve the efficiency of junctions
and intersections, promoting alternate rates using the dynamic method
science, improving throughput, supporting diverted traffic and improving
our travel information services. We will use the ICM during the bus
rapid transit to mitigate the impact on the corridor. We use ICM in
conjunction with management to promote \-- will help with special event
management on the corridor.

This is a graphic showing our operational tactics. Again, we are going
to be relying on a decision support system, real-time archiving. Will
provide information for our DMS subsystem that will allow us to use our
entrance ramp, frontage road \-- arterial information. We don\'t have
metering, we have small dynamic message signs. Those have traditionally
been used only on conditions to expect \-- in addition to that, we are
going to use the ICM project to allow us to put information on those
same method signs on conditions to expect the arterials, upgrade the
steady signal systems, expand congestion management program, dynamic
message signs, Internet, and via the transit system with on-street
signing.

Who are the ICM stakeholders? The Texas D.O.T., the city of San Antonio,
the San Antonio police department, emergency operations center, the fire
department, southwest research institute and the Texas transportation
institute. Created the vision statement based on common themes from the
public stakeholder, vision statements and goals. This will offer
executive level support from the public stakeholder agencies. Utilizing
existing facilities, working relationships to facilitate institutional
cooperation. San Antonio\'s existing ICM policy, procedures, ICM
oversight and management of the structure planning for the region. The
community reviewed current and planned projects, use the ICM on to put
essentially an umbrella over projects. We were moving towards
implementation. The decision support system is a strategy really
brand-new.

Technical. The San Antonio ICM system architecture. There are a number
of data providers via the AVL, the traffic signal subsystem, traffic
centers, and San Antonio police 911 CAD system. We will use data
interchanges using center to center. The decision support system will
provide historical data analysis, alarm management, alarm trigger
thresholds, AVL travel time engine, will be updating San Antonio\'s
travel time.

There\'s going to be an ICM-specific web server. That information will
be shared with through an agency\'s net in the application. There\'s a
plan to update the transguide website in the works, and that will be
done, including the ICM strategies. There\'s going to be a corridor
specific website, trip planning, corridor as well as PDA content.

At this point please note that the light color, our existing systems;
the darker blue are new systems as a result of the ICM project. Data
transportation related data from regional systems. Data \-- for
distribution to agencies and systems, and it is standards based. Our
data archive, the center to center data, historical data is available.
The newly proposed subsystems, center to center interface between the
agencies, the operation user, decision support system, again historical
data, event management, I CMS, arterial travel times, web nag providing
personal and emergency trip planning, mobile device, accessible website.

Lessons learned, operational, the collocation was essential, has been
throughout the history of transnet. Working group meetings were key.
They ensure stakeholder involvement, provide a forum to provide input
and reach consensus. The time frame in which we implemented our ICM
documentation, involved stakeholders with decision-making power, more
than one stakeholder per agency.

Institutional lessons learned, leveraging existing relationships,
utilization of existing forums, ITS key to the development of our ICM
proposal. Understanding public agency objectives and current issues,
communicate ICM in terms of other\'s needs.

Technical lessons learned, focus requirements on when the system
functionalities, avoid designing system details during the requirements
development. Maximize building on existing systems and capabilities.
Arterial travel time conditions and data are a challenge, the structure
for gathering, nationwide. I believe that concludes our presentation.

**J Symoun:**

Why don\'t we take a couple minutes to receive some questions from our
audience for Brian and his partners. Look like we have at least one.
Thank you again.

The question here is, will you divert across classes of facility,
including main line down to local streets?

**B Fariello:**

The correct answer is probably all of the above. We have historically
used the main line AVS, to say in the event of a full close cur, simply
the road is closed completely. Find an alternative route, without
specifying. Something on the main lane, again, we can use the frontage
road, remain on that. I don\'t know if I mentioned, the construction of
the interstate at 410, didn\'t complete frontage roads all the way
through. They were continuous to 410, and then they weren\'t. Now they
are. The frontage, continuous alternate routes to the main lane. The
biggest thing, real answer to the question is that we do intend to use
the frontage road DMS to get information on upcoming arterials,
something we have not done before.

**Question:**

How do you monitor?

**B Fariello:**

How do we monitor the information? Not sure if that means \--

**Question:**

Monitor conditions on the arterials?

**B Fariello/San Antonio Team Member:**

That is where our work with the city of San Antonio comes in it. Part of
their traffic upgrade includes the installation of CCTV cameras, control
cameras, as well as bringing back snapshots will be the biggest step, as
well as the sharing of information with the police department, receiving
information from the city\'s CAD system, wells the traffic dispatcher
for traffic incidents.

**Question:**

Is bus AVL the only means to measure arterial travel times?

**B Fariello/San Antonio Team Member:**

At this time we believe the answer is yes. We haven\'t identified a
strategy, even with city's new focus. I would like to add a part of the
ICM initiative, phase two; we are conducting a activity to filling the
gap on the arterial data such as travel times and speeds.

**Question:**

Can you describe the personal trip planning from the perspective of the
consumer?

**B Fariello/San Antonio Team Member:**

I don\'t know that we can give a detailed description. We know we have
plan to do it, haven\'t done the detailed design of that. You have
probably seen that in other applications in the past. One of our
intentions would be to do an stray industry review, find out what\'s
been done, both with individuals and corporate partners we have been
working with.

**Question:**

The next question, with high ridership on existing transit routes, how
much capacity is there on these services? Capacity and reliability often
need to be seen to exist before people will switch modes. Is the ICM
project considering transit capacity (and transit\'s public image)
alongside the importance of ITS?

**B Fariello:**

We might be able to get \-- don\'t have budget in the room with us, but
I noticed someone was online, maybe they could provide a comment. As
many others we referred, significant respect in transit, focus on that E
we are attempting to ensure capacity issues are being met. Our
understanding is that the express bus service specifically from the UTA
campus of down down is at or near capacity during the school years.
That\'s really critical. I know as part of ICM, ensuring students can
get from the main campus to the park and ride, get on the bus to the
other campus in time to not be late for classes. We feel that ridership
on the transit routes and the corridor is critical. San Antonio is
planning to implement a VRT, added capacity, and transit signal priority
along with that, to help maintain the travel time reliability, so
there\'s different transit strategies to help transit be more
attractive. You have to have that additional capacity in any mode shift
to transit.

**Question:**

What are the challenges using the IDAS software results?

**B Fariello/San Antonio Team Member:**

Based on feedback from stakeholders we used a generic approach for
estimating ICM potential use based on the analysis system software. The
difficulty applying early in the process, the benefits, expected result
from ICM deployment. The other thing to consider was one of the
difficulties was the lack of appropriate data to feed into the pool,
limitations with the data, but not with the tool.

**Joe Roach:**

Yes, small DMS signs, is that in lieu of possible ramp metering?

**B Fariello/San Antonio Team Member:**

We do not have ramp metering in San Antonio. It was in place here many
clears ago, but all those gun laws, ramp meters didn\'t fit well
together. The plan is that we don\'t have plans at this point for
deploying ramp meters in San Antonio. We do have many of the dynamic
method signs deployed, we will continue to deploy those.

We have a written response from Via Metro, concerns the one response
about available capacity, congestion on transit routes. They said our
system has plenty of capacity as a whole. We are planning a public image
campaign, branding to help address the image issue. We hope TSP will
help to attract riders.

**J Symoun:**

Okay, moving to our next, final presentation, the Seattle ICM site, Vinh
Dang from Washington State DOT, who is being joined by John Toone.

**Seattle - Vinh Dang:**

Good morning and afternoon everybody. This is Vinh Dang for Washington
State Department of transportation. I am here to share with you our
experience in developing Con-Ops in the requirements of our I-5
corridor. Our corridor is compact, linear, about 10, 12-miles, going
from the South end bounded by the on the East side is I-5. On the West
side is highway 99, and multiple arterial operated by the city of
Seattle. All within one mile. These interchanges are adequately spaced
to provide network crossing between arterial. Operationally the I-5
traffic is fairly congested. We have about 210,000 on the I-5. Then the
characteristics of the peak traffic flow is that I-5 is frequently
congested, the peak on I-5 is fairly flat. As soon as about 6:00 in the
morning it is operating at capacity, hovering at capacity until 6 pm,
very unstable. Whereas, the parallel routes, like the fourth avenue, on
the city side, has shopping, and as a result is at capacity in between
the peak this is why we feel the ICM would help us balancing the load
across multiple routes.

In this corridor, this agency is operating their facility very well, and
they have a very mature ITS system, very well, very mature freeway
management system operating VMS camera, and solid communication system
throughout the region. In the city of Seattle has a central arterial
control system, within the corridor city of Seattle has a little than
100 traffic signal connected in the system downtown.

In King County there is also a very robust transit management system,
equipped with ABC, ABL, and we also have transit signal priority at
multiple location within this corridor here. Again, each of these
agencies has been operating very well, independently, and that\'s why we
need the ICM to integrate the activities together to maintain traffic in
the entire corridor.

So how ICM will help our site, with the ICM effort, it helps the
corridor to collaborate on developing corridor-wide incident response
plan. We realize that when the system is disrupted, we are not in
balance anymore, traffic will divert, find a way, go to different route,
different mode. ICM is a forum for partners in the corridor to get
together, stay ahead of the curve by developing those plans so that when
the need arise we are prepared for it.

Also, by preparing these response plans for the whole corridor it
presents the opportunity to coordinate the traffic control, for example,
if the agency in the corridor agrees to the incident response plan, one
agency is not available 24 hours a day, another agency can activate
those plans.

So, who are our ICM stakeholders? We have the state DOT, city of
Seattle, and King County transit. Because of the similarity of many of
the corridors within the region, there\'s a wide stakeholder that have
interest outside the corridor and into the corridor. We have the
metropolitan planning organization, PSRC, has a keen interest in this
project. Likewise, the federal level, we have FHWA and FTA as well.

In achieving buy-in, in this corridor the is the lead agency, and mainly
serves as facilitator among the other partners. Because each agency has
been very well advanced individually in terms of ITS deployment, the way
we set up is each agency will maintain their own primary control of
network and asset. Then each agency will also retain their own
ownership, operation, device, within the area of responsibility. But
within the corridor we will have personnel to operate specific ITS
pertaining to the corridor. I guess that is one of the reasons buy-in is
people buy-in, because we don\'t have to relinquish control. We still
have control of our facility. Then the other thing we can see, I see,
helping people to buy in as the working together, developing the
corridor goal and needs, and trying to answer the question, what is in
this for us, rather than what is in this for me.

Here\'s the pictorial diagram of what our ICM system looks like. I
don\'t know if you can go into detail to see the fine print there, but
mainly the system is composed of several major subsystems, as well as
processes, and the system basically \-- let me get the pointer and show.
The yellow is the ITS system, and the data acquisition is the first
process, basically collecting data, and some process information from
the current agency server or system. As it collects information from
individual systems, it will sort so that only information pertaining to
the corridor would be used. After that is publishing information out to
the public, the user or agency.

So, I won\'t go into detail on each of the four processes in the ICM,
but I will take one example, in this case the season support module
process. This process will continuously monitor the performance of
individual network. For example, IT will continuously monitor arterial
from the city side, the freeway from the state side, as well as the
transit schedule and operation, and it will \-- historical value,
baseline performance, then the real-time performance is being compared
to that. There will be triggering, check, where the current performance
will be checked gains against the baseline. At that point IT will either
prompt the operator for system imbalance, and suggest remedy action, or
suggest response plan. The primary means of collecting current condition
on this incident is through the internal agency. One other thing about
this incident reporting process will also generate a tool based on
another set of rules.

Lesson learned. Right in the middle of developing the Con-Ops for the
corridor the state has a major I-5 project, to replace the one and a
half mile stretch of freeway, which is on the viaduct, on the bridge
structure. The Northbound freeway was reduced from five lanes to two
lanes, three lanes, through various stages of construction that was last
year. The displaced commuters were shifted on adjacent arterial and \--
prior to construction, King County, metro, city of Seattle, got
together, collaborated on the general plan, the response plan, recovery,
as well as timing on the corridor. As a result, the impact with the
mobility of the corridor was minimal. As you can see in this example
here, based on the data we collect, this is Fourth avenue South, which
is about a quarter mile West of I-5, and the signal around this corridor
was increased to the shift.

Anyway, another lesson learned, we have, is that developing the Con-Ops,
it is an iterative process. The biggest issue with our crew is agency
come to the table with a wish list of actual improvement they want to
see if their own system, but somehow we have to work together to get
through that improvement, look into the actual what is the need of a
corridor that would reflect all agency. Once again, to get through that
mode, identify the corridor, the need, is it easier to get into the
developing the Con-Ops that would help the corridor. Then, as we worked
through, into the system requirements, the constraints during
requirements, also to go back to the Con-Ops, make revisions to it. A
legacy system is also something we have to deal with or be concerned
with. At this point you probably have to go back, do some intermediate
interface to get information out of legacy system so it can be somehow
read or transferable into the ICM.

The institutional lesson learned we have, I guess the main thing we
always find out, partnering with your neighbor is very important to us.
The MPOs in this area have a great operational committee, bring people
together, different local agencies together, and that forced the
partnership for ICM. The other thing, discussing the ICM strategy during
the non-crunch time, relaxed environment, instead of waiting until the
last minute and talking about emergency response.

This concludes my presentation. So I am hoping up for questions.

**J Symoun:**

Thank you, Vinh. Now we will like to take questions from our audience
for Vinh and John. Looks like we have one.

Are variable speed limits on I-5 an option for modeling? Although it can
be an expensive solution, it can be a very effective option for
regulating traffic flows and controlling how quickly downstream traffic
reaches accident locations or congested hotspots. I drove I-5 recently
and thought it could be an ideal candidate!

**V Dang:**

Yes, variable speed is something that recently came in under the urban
partnership agreement we have. This is something we will go back, make
revision to the Con-Ops, to consider variable speed limit as a control
strategy on I-5.

**S Mortensen:**

While we are waiting to touch on what Vinh said about going to the
Con-Ops development process. We found for all the pioneer sites it was
the engineering process, very rigorous and challenging, but in the long
run it will be very beneficial, will pay off in developing ICM systems.
They will get what they were planning to implement.

**Question:**

When you give signal priority for N-S how do you inform E-W that they
may have longer wait as priority given to N-S?

**V Dang/John Toone:**

I assume your question is on when we increase the signal split.

**Question:**

No, as a result of the shift traffic, or signal priority due to transit?

**V Dang/J Toone:**

Let\'s assume you are going about giving more green time to shift
traffic. The construction.

We had lots of media, public outreach before the construction, and we
identified those parallel, North/South routes and access to the major
arterial, predominant movement is still North South in this corridor.

**J Roach:** Have you considered hot lanes in your congestion
management?

**V Dang:**

Not on I-5 yet, but \-- this is the reason why I mentioned we have lots
of interest from other agencies in this region. This corridor we have
another corridor 10, 15-miles long with hot lane. What I call the valet
corridor, highway 167, we have a pilot project with hot lanes, and we
have very good North/South network. Whatever success we have in this
corridor, we can replicate for the southeast of us within this region
here. Yes, we do consider hot lane as part of the strategy for ICM.

**Conclusion**

**J Symoun:**

We have a few more poll questions we are going to put out there, we will
give everybody time to ask questions if there\'s anything else. Give me
one second and I will bring up the remaining poll questions. If you
think of any, ask over the phone or feel free to type them in. If you
have questions, please feel free to ask them. We can take the time to do
that now. Two of these polls are asking if it you would like to support
the program as an ICM stakeholder or be on the newsletter e-mail list.
For those questions, if you answer yes, I need your contact information.
If you registered in advance, I will have that, but if you don\'t,
please send it to me and in the chat box and I will type it in.

**S Mortensen:**

We want to access the performance of arterials in real-time, one
activity. There\'s a summer activity for filling the transit data gap,
which is to determine demand at transit stops and on buses in real-time
to accommodate mode shift to transit, for example if there\'s a freeway
incident. Also, in our decision support systems, we plan on developing
some needs for that, and core requirements, and identifying corridor
level performance measures. That\'s some examples.

Please feel free to be completely honest. We have thick skin, and would
like to improve the initiative and our knowledge and technology,
transfer of activities to you all in the transportation community.

If you haven\'t visited the website I encourage you to do so. There\'s a
lot of good resources, as well as we will post information about
upcoming Webinars as well.

Same thing with being added to ICM newsletter e-mail list, it comes out
periodically, and keeps you up with data, and what\'s going on with the
initiatives.

Looks like the audience would like to see downloadable templates or
Con-Ops requirements. We will; our goal is to have all the Con-Ops
requirements posted soon, as well as the generic Con-ops and the ICM
implementation guidance, and the transit data gaps, arterial, support
systems.

**Question:**

Will we be made aware of the approach used for arterials?

**S Mortensen:**

We haven\'t really determined how we are going to make that available if
we will have another Webinar on that. If you submit your contact
information we will make sure you get put on the e-mail correspondence,
if you would like to review materials developed so far. I believe there
has been at least one workshop where there\'s a question on what are the
issues, some potential solutions. There\'s currently a white paper being
developed. I don\'t think it\'s been made available yet to the public.
There\'s going to be a plan put together to address the transit data
gaps and arterial data gaps. Hopefully that answers your question.

**Question:**

How will ICM protect intellectual property/capital of companies?

**S Mortensen:**

Let\'s see, any of the pioneer sites want to answer that? Property
rights, perhaps? That basically would be on a site to site so the answer
to that would be different from site to site. I don\'t think the USDOT
has a policy for that.

**Question:**

How long is a typical ICM project? How long would something last?

**S Mortensen:**

Concerning the length, for the pioneer sites, we are seeing anything
from 10-miles to 35-miles. As far as how long it takes to implement,
develop concept, create design, implement, we are going through that
process now. It\'s been two years so far, taking the time out to do
modeling, and will take three years to design, deploy, and evaluate.

We have a comment from April Armstrong helping with the technology
initiative. If you have thoughts on how to improve future Webinars to
make them more useful, helpful, we welcome your comments on that.

**Question:**

How are you measuring your success?

**K Olyai:**

We anticipate having the performance measures tell us if you are
successful or not. That is the key indicator to us, have they improved
mobility, safety, air quality. At this point we haven\'t implemented the
strategies on the I-75 corridor. So time will tell.

**V Dang:**

Mainly, in this area here, the success of ICM would be measured by how
well the adjacent network, the \-- address the shift, highway quick, for
example, if there\'s the need to shift traffic to a different mode,
route, how quick the \-- being age able to absorb that. Then, how many
other similar corridors in the region, following suit with this one
would demonstrate \-- whether or not they see it as a successful model
they can adopt and practice. Like I mentioned earlier, we have multiple
corridors in this region. But if we see that the other corridor is at
least adopting some of the strategy from this corridor, these early
pioneering efforts, then we see that it is a success.

**B Fariello:**

Like the others we would be looking at the performance measures to put
in place as part of the project specifically looking at vehicle
throughputs, user surveys to find out the available tools and how they
impacted the users transit ridership, I guess that about summarizes it.

**J Toone:**

This is John from the Seattle group. This kind of summarizes the
different comments. The overall goal is transportation in general,
provide as many trips as possible and have them be as fast and reliable
as possible. There are a lot of success indicators for the different
modes. And our region there is fair amount of specification from the
transit side. We have a lot of data and a kid and customer feedback
system. Rider, non rider survey. I wanted to highlight what Vinh said.
Aside from our regular success indicators for each of the most part of
our success will be and how easy we make it to do balancing. So we will
be looking at overtaxed systems that have improvements in performance
and in reduction of use and underused modes or networks and have an
increase in use without really used losing any performance.

**S Mortensen:**

From the USDOT perspective I guess we would measure success as have we
met our goals of a producing the methods to help locations around the
U.S. to implement ICM? Have we developed the tools and the knowledge to
address the institutional issues, operational issues, and the technical
issues? That is how we plan on measuring whether this has been a
success.

**Comment:**

I want to give some clarification about the intellectual question.
Planning could be difficult for small companies who don\'t want ideas
stolen by large companies. This should be a topic of discussion.

**S Mortensen:**

Thank for that clarification. We will take that under advisement.

**J Symoun:**

Another question. I would just explain this. The NTOC is the National
Transportation Operations Coalition. The ICM initiative does work
closely with it. That is another way to get some good transportation
information. I\'ll type that web address in as well.

There are various venues that we used to advertise these. Another one
was ITS America.

In response to the poll question of whether you would like to be
included as a stakeholder, many people answered yes. So if you can make
sure that you have provided your contact information so that we can
contact you and your area of interest we would appreciate that.

I should mention also if you registered with a different name than what
you used to log in today, if you could send an e-mail with clarification
on that as well because I will be using the registration list as the
primary means to obtain contact information.

**S Mortensen:**

I guess that concludes today\'s webinar and our webinar series on
lessons learned. I would like to thank today\'s speakers. I would also
like to thank Jennifer Symoun for helping with the web logistics\'
today. I would like to thank the audience. Thank you very much for
sending us good questions and providing us feedback. I want to encourage
you to go to our ICM website. We will be getting the recording of
presentations online shortly. Thank you very much.