Thinking Highways North America June 2008

THIN KING

HIG HW AYS NORTH AMERICAN EDITION Volume 3 • Issue 2 • June/July 2008

VIRAL MARKETING

Bruce Abernethy and Harold Keeler fear for the Windows-driven car

OLDER, BUT WISER?

Phil Tarnoff’s guide to recognising Organisational Maturity

AUTOSUGGESTION

Randy Salzman’s first-hand experience of the US’s reluctance to think past the car

HARD TO SWALLOW

Part 2 of Gretchen Stoeltje’s food miles field study

INTELLIGENT

the

choice

Advanced transportation management policy • strategy • technology finance • innovation • implementation integration • interoperability

Vehicle Separation

Axle Counting

OSI LASERSCAN. WE FIT INTO ANY ENVIRONMENT. A dynamic industry requires dynamic solutions—extremely flexible options that can change when your needs change, quickly and efficiently. Options that are precise, upgradable, and able to work with legacy elements and emerging technologies. By deploying the AutoSenseTM or Idris® products either individually

Vehicle Classification

or in tandem, you’ll soon realize lower life cycle costs, increased accuracy and increased reliability. To see how well we can fit into your environment, contact Eric Carr, [email protected] today.

Vehicle Enforcement Security Camera Trigger

Data Collection and Transmission

Idris is a registered trademark of Diamond Consulting Services Ltd.

AutoSense is a product line of OSI LaserScan focused on the development and deployment of sensor and system solutions for the toll and traffic management markets worldwide.

www.osi-laserscan.com

Foreword Thinking

Kevin Borras is publishing director of H3B Media and editor-in-chief of Thinking Highways North American Edition.

The right climate for change H3B Media brings the inextricably linked subjects of transportation and climate change to the attention of North America.Which was nice... “Thank you so much for organising this seminar,” said one clearly enthused delegate. “It’s about time that we woke up to the fact that there are solutions to climate change within the transportation industry.We are not just ruining the planet, we’re also trying desperately hard to save it.” Pleasing though it was to be thanked for running The Climate Change Think Tank: Transportation’s Impacts and Solutions at the end of May, it did feel a little odd to take the credit for “awakening” the consciences of a quarter of a billion people. We usually get thanked for the quality of the lunches and we’re happy enough with that. But as David Schonbrunn, one of the speakers at our Think Tank, held at UMass’s Mullins Sports Center in Amherst, MA, said: “There’s a room full of people in there who can make a difference the question is do they realise and if so, are they prepared to

do anything about it?” Amy Zuckerman’s sterling efforts to ensure that as many of the USA’s climate change experts were in the room at the same time certainly paid off as the event, which was generously sponsored by the Quixote Corporation, garnered some fantastic press coverage - visit our website and the homepage features a blog containing links to a couple of Massachussets papers and a 30 minute program about the event on Corporate Watchdog Radio. The point I’m making (I generally get to it around the middle of the second column) is what’s odd is that it took a small multimedia company based in a small part of a small town in a Borough of London that you would otherwise not have heard of (unless you have a particular interest in UK knifecrime) to bring to the US the idea that transportation not only impacts on the climate, but the climate impacts on transportation. Thinking Highways

Editor-in-Chief Kevin Borras ([email protected]) Sales and Marketing Luis Hill ([email protected]) Tim Guest ([email protected]) Design and Layout Phoebe Bentley, Kevin Borras

Sub-Editor and Proofreader Maria Vasconcelos Subscriptions and Circulation Jodie Garvey ([email protected]) Visualisation Tom Waldschmidt ([email protected]) Conferences and Events Odile Pignier (odile@h3bmedia.,com)

Associate Editors Richard Bishop ([email protected]) Website Amy Zuckerman ([email protected]) Code Liquid Contributing Editors Financial Director Bruce Abernethy, Lee J Nelson, Andrew Martin Brookstein Pickford, Phil Sayeg, Phil Tarnoff, Darryll Thomas, Harold Worrall EDITORIAL AND ADVERTISING Contributors to this issue H3B Media Ltd, 15 Onslow Gardens, Bruce Abernethy, Mark Johnson, John Wallington, Surrey SM6 9QL, UK Kasik, Harold Keeler, Bob Kelly, Tel +44 (0)208 254 9406 Lee J Nelson, Michael Nielsen, Randy Fax +44 (0)208 647 0045 Salzman, Gretchen Stoeltje, Phil Tarnoff, Email [email protected] Harold Worrall, Amy Zuckerman

www.h3bmedia.com

Between Amy, John Collura (UMass’s professor of civil and environmental engineering) and myself, we managed to persuade the likes of Nobel Prize-winning geoscientist Ray Bradley, renowned paleoclimatologist Rob DeConto and Mike Replogle, transportation director for Environmental Defense, a halfmillion member non-profit organisation, to spend two days in a small conference room overlooking a 10,000seat basketball arena. Congressman John Olver and RITA administrator Paul Brubaker made the lunchtime keynote speeches and an already knowledgeable audience went home with their brains almost full to brimming with impact- and solutionrelated information. And yes, we did it. Have a look at Amy’s article on pages 42-47 to see just how we did it, and perhaps more importantly, why. Then perhaps take a minute to think why it had to be us that did it... TH

is published by H3B Media Ltd.

ISSN 1753-43Z1 Thinking Highways is published quarterly in two editions – North America and Europe/Rest of the World - and is available on subscription at £30/€40 (Europe/RoW) and US$60 (North America). Distributed in the USA by DSW 75 Aberdeen Road, Emigsville, PA 17318-0437 USA. Periodicals postage paid at Emigsville, PA. POSTMASTER: send address changes to Thinking Highways, 13705 North Ivy lake Road, Chillicothe, Illinois 61523, USA.

CEO & Co-Founder Luis Hill Vice-President, Publishing & Co-Founder Kevin Borras www.h3bmedia.com

Although due care has been taken to ensure that the content of this publication is accurate and up-to-date, the publisher can accept no liability for errors and omissions. Unless otherwise stated, this publication has not tested products or services that are described herein, and their inclusion does not imply any form of endorsement. By accepting advertisements in this publication, the publisher does not warrant their accuracy, nor accept responsibility for their contents. The publisher welcomes unsolicited manuscripts and illustrations but can accept no liability for their safe return. © 2008 H3B Media Ltd. All rights reserved. The views and opinions of the authors are not necessarily those of H3B Media Ltd. Reproduction (in whole or in part) of any text, photograph or illustration contained in this publication without the written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. Printed in the UK by The Manson Group

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

1

04

COLUMNS Bob Kelly and Mark Johnson ‘s Legal Brief

08

Harold Worrall’s Bright Ideas

12

THE THINKER Phil Tarnoff on what constitutes, and how to recognise, organisatinal maturity The Thinker

’t ! on et D rg fo

om .c r es te ys a su is is eg hw re s r ig tu ay gh fu hw kin e iv ig in ce H .th re ing w w To ink w h at T of OW N

e lin on

CONTENTS

Climate Change The Thinker When DAVID SCHONBRUNN read the April/May issue of Thinking Highways he felt compelled to write an article offering his own views on transportation’s impacts onm and solutions for, climate change

Stunted growth Thinking Highways’ financial analyst MARGARET PETTIT looks at the European Territorial Cooperation Programme and finds that like with any other major programme, it’s a matter of priorities

A mature performance When is performance good enough? What is Organizational Maturity? Does PHIL TARNOFF have the answers? Naturally enough, yes... 56

18

22

28

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

www.h3bmedia.com

www.h3bmedia.com

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

57

INTERVIEW Kevin Borras talks to Telegra Inc’s president and CEO, John Kasik PEAK OIL We’re used to being told to think outside the box, but to think beyond the car? Isn’t that the very definition of unthinkable? One man’s quest to make the US think differently, as told by Randy Salzman INTERNATIONAL ROAD TRANSPORT The IRU’s Michael Nielsen explains why the re-opening of the ancient Silk Road , the main trade route from Europe to China 800 years ago, would be a good move for the road transportation industry

p22 42

48

52 34

FOOD MILES The second part of Gretchen Stoeltje’s investigation into how far your food has traveled, what damage it has to done to the highways and how we can keep things a little closer to home Food Miles

Climate Change Food Miles When DAVID SCHONBRUNN read the April/May issue of Thinking Highways he felt compelled to write an article offering his own views on transportation’s impacts onm and solutions for, climate change

Stunted growth Thinking Highways’ financial analyst MARGARET PETTIT looks at the European Territorial Cooperation Programme and finds that like with any other major programme, it’s a matter of priorities

In the second and concluding part of her article, Texas DOT’s GRETCHEN STOELTJE examines the inextricably linked stories of the distance your food travels and the damage it causes to the road 56

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

58

www.h3bmedia.com

www.h3bmedia.com

Eating up the road

60

(part two)

So, how much did that burger you have just finished actually cost? It may be safe to assume that you haven’t really given it much thought ... wouldn’t it? We pay for cheap food in the form of economic loss to our local agricultural economy. “Get the Farmer Out of the Mud” was the slogan of the early nation-wide push to get farm goods to market, known in Texas as the Farm to Market Road system. In the early 20th century, rural Texas roads were often little more than deep, rutted trenches. Congress authorized the repair and upgrade of rural routes in 1912 enabling farmers to more easily transport and sell the fruits of their labor. Today’s food transport system begs this question, though: What farmers, and what markets? Economist John Ikerd estimates that American farmers, on average, make only about 20 cents of each food dollar spent; the remaining 80 cents going to pay for www.h3bmedia.com

processing, transportation, packing and other marketing costs. “Farmers who sell direct to local customers, on the other hand receive the full retail value, a dollar for each food dollar spent.” And for every dollar a food shopper spends on local food, the local food economy gains about three. States have begun to plug the leaks in their agricultural economies. In August of 2007, the Illinois legislature enacted The Illinois Food, Farms and Jobs Act. The law provides for support of local and organic Illinois farming efforts in the hopes of keeping food dollars within the State, thereby revitalizing the Illinois state economy. Among the findings that support the bill are the facts that food consumed in Illinois traveled 1,500 miles to the state’s consumers, but that only 0.2 per cent of Illinois farm sales comprised food sold directly for in state human consumption. Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

64

CLIMATE CHANGE H3B Media’s recent Climate Change Think Tank made for a fascinating and occasionally worrying two days in Amherst, as co-organiser Amy Zuckerman reports COVER STORY Bruce Abernethy and Harold Keeler ponder the intracies of life in a Windows-powered car. A computer crash is one thing... BORDER SECURITY Lee J Nelson on how the US’s reworked crossborder security system is impacting the transportation industry - and vice versa VII Will there ever be a time when we don’t need roadside infrastructure? Will the second I of VII ever be redundant. We spoke to some experts.... AUSTRALASIA For those of you that enjoy looking at other people’s vacation photographs, Bruce Abernethy presents an editoral and pictorial account of what was meant to be a two-week break in Australia and New Zealand Advertisers Index

57

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

3

Robert Kelly and Mark Johnson’s Legal Brief

Fuel to the fire ... or not

Robert Kelly is a partner with the Washington, DC based law firm Squire, Sanders, Dempsey

Will high gas prices slow down ITS? It is an often-heard joke among transportation professionals that the best way to cure traffic congestion is to have an economic recession. Whether this is in fact true is not the subject of this column. What is the subject is whether the recent spike in gas prices worldwide will have an effect on ITS. Recently, gas prices in the United States crossed the threshold of US$4 per gallon. Compared with prices in other countries, especially in Western Europe, US consumers are still paying much less for gas than much of the rest of the world. Nonetheless, the US$4 per gallon threshold appears to have been a “tipping point” in the United States. Already, recent studies are showing that the average miles driven by Americans will be down in 2008 compared to 2007, the first time this has happened in the 30-plus years of this study.

Saying vs doing

Anecdotally, drivers say that they are trying to drive less miles by, for example, carpooling, combining errands and turning to public transportation (which is reporting appreciable increases in numbers of riders). Not surprisingly, sales of gas-guzzling SUVs, large pick-ups and Hummers are down considerably. What is

4

also telling is that the North American automakers have announced significant restructurings of their plants to produce smaller and more gas-efficient cars and trucks. Clearly, no one expects the gas price hikes to end anytime soon. One question is whether the dramatic rise in gas prices,

“Unsurprisingly, sales of gasguzzling SUVs, large pick-ups and Hummers are down considerably” and their resulting effects, will also impact ITS. Many, but not all, ITS applications are directed to alleviating traffic congestion in urban areas, highways and elsewhere. Congestion pricing, HOT lanes, electronic toll collection, and even ITS-based parking applications, are responses to congestion problems that only seemed to worsen year-after year.

Less vs more

The question presented is whether the increased gas prices, and the resulting propensity to drive less, will result in appreciably less congestion and, consequently, less impetus for ITS-based solutions to congestion

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

problems. While driving is down, and is likely to continue declining for some time in the future, congestion is a persistent problem that will likely not be resolved simply as a result of the increase in gas prices or, more generally, an economic recession. What is also not likely to change due to the run-up in gas prices is the number of vehicles on the road. Rather than simply stop driving, in the years ahead the driving public will be swapping out their SUVs and other gas-guzzling vehicles for smaller, more fuel efficient (or alternative fuel?) cars and trucks. ITS applications that can demonstrate an appreciable effect on congestion will likely still find public support.

Value vs cost

Another question is whether the driving public will be willing to pay for ITS solutions if they bring with them a real or even perceived - added cost to driving. Already, we’ve seen the highest profile congestion pricing project in the United States - proposed for lower Manhattan - fail to win state approval primarily because of cost concerns, albeit not directly tied to the increase in gas prices. Despite the promise of a significant subsidy from the US Department of Transportation, in rejecting the plan the New York State Legislature succumbed to political

Mark Johnson is an attorney at law with Squire, Sanders, Dempsey based in Buenos Aires, Argentina

www.h3bmedia.com

Xxxxx


                                !      "  #          $"# %           
&'    (     (            

) )
*+,-&&./ 0 #1"&2)340'.

.# &5.#64)7 23663)4)40 89:;& <672)4)40 ,.5 <672)4720=  0 
 
    
                  
       
       

 

       
  



Photo by Kevin Borras

Robert Kelly and Mark Johnson’s Legal Brief

pressure from city residents in the outlying areas of New York City opposed to the imposition of fees to drive into Manhattan, even though the city government had pledged to dedicate the collected revenues to improving public transit into and throughout the city.

Obama vs McCain

Thie issue of the rising costs of driving has entered the political realm as well. During the recently concluded US presidential primaries, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain proposed that the federal gas tax - currently at 18.3 cents/gallon in addition to what an state may also impose - be suspended for a period of time to make it less costly to fill up a car or truck. (Barack Obama rejected the idea outright as an election-year gimmick.) The proposal went nowhere after facing significant opposition from not only

6

economists, who nearly uniformly said that suspending the tax would not appreciable affect gas prices, to states and other government officials that depend on the gas tax as the primarily source of funds for transportation projects. While this proposal failed, it does exhibit a new found public awareness and concern for the rising costs of driving - and, not surprisingly, an attempt by politicians to use this concern for their advantage. There is an added cost for drivers for congestion pricing and other ITS applications. Congestion pricing applications are based on demand-management techniques that attempt to quantity the cost of driving a particular street or highway at a particular time - and then charge a fee for doing so. What the failure of the proposed New York City project shows is that where the associated fees become the defining characteristic of the project,

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

public support will likely not follow.

Tangible vs feasible

The benefits from these types of projects are tangible but must be explained in this new context. Congestion mitigation techniques such as congesting pricing, HOT lanes, and the like, can have very real benefits in terms of reducing congestion. Mitigating congestion reduces travel times and, accordingly, reduces the amount - and cost - of the fuel consumed. Convincing the public that the benefits of such projects will be worth the cost is now going to be that much tougher in the face of rising gas prices, but there is a positive, and hopefully convincing, story still to be told. How ITS can save drivers not only time but also “buy” drivers’ some relief from rising gas prices may be the new story that needs to be told. TH www.h3bmedia.com

TUCM1461

Xxxxx

KEEPING CITIES MOVING Transurban is an international toll road developer and manager serving more than five million customers globally. Working in partnership with governments, Transurban develops innovative solutions to the congestion issues facing many urban road networks. Transurban is currently working with the Virginia Department of Transportation to develop HOT lanes for the Capital Beltway and I-95/395 in Northern Virginia.

HOT lanes will provide congestion relief while minimising the impact on the local environment, and will improve public transportation opportunities in the region. Transurban has earned international recognition for its commitment to sustainability. In 2006 and 2007, it made the DJSI World List of high performing companies for its approach to managing social and environmental impacts in its projects and operations.

www.transurban.com

Harold Worrall’s Bright Ideas

Harold Worrall’s Bright Ideas

All for toll and toll for all HAROLD WORRALL, in unusually verbose form, on the whys and wherefores of a customer-centric allelectronic toll collection strategy All-electronic toll collection, or AETC, is the topic of discussion, study and debate for toll agencies around the globe. The potential exists to eliminate the iconic toll booth and the costs of manual collection. Design, construction and maintenance costs of buildings, canopies and other facilities, along with utilities and the manpower to operate and manage manual toll operations could be eliminated. However, the potential for huge back office operations may threaten the conversion. When considering conversion to AETC the focus usually turns to the technology of AETC such as systems integration, radio frequency identification, enforcement, the legal framework, the cost of transponders, RFID readers etc. While these issues are important and must be addressed, it might be of value to consider those who use the toll roads, the customer. Rather than focusing inward and concentrating on efficiency, perhaps AETC conversion strategies should be set from the perspective of the customer. A customer-centric focus may result in strategies quite different from those where efficiency and technology are preeminent. What are the key

8

strategies that an agency should consider for conversion to AETC? Why would customers be interested in AETC? Why would they want to get a transponder or set up an account or prepay tolls? Are the answers to these questions different for each toll agency and/or country? What is important to the customer? Are the needs and desires of all customers the same? When the focus is moved from the technical, organizational, procedural, policy and other internal considerations and move to the customer the importance of various strategies is altered.

Called to account

For example, when considering the issue of account management, toll agencies have one data format for all account management records and therefore essentially one type of account. While this is being altered slightly as electronic toll collection has matured, the assumption remains that a minimum of data is required for setting up an account. Therefore, when describing the procedures for collecting customer information the focus is to ensure the most efficient methods for collecting all of the data. One could argue that this minimum dataset requirement is actually a

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

maximum data set. A customer-centric focus With so many complex and moving parts to the subject of electronic toll collection, it is difficult to focus on the customer. We prepare numerous marketing plans and public information campaigns, usually with the customer in mind but the reality of processing large volumes of transactions returns the focus back to systems and procedures. As transactions are processed, daily anomalies can accumulate. Small component failures and/or erroneous assumptions in the process can generate a wave of outstanding transactions to be dealt with. When this wave builds, the management focus turns to procedure, tasks, human resources, computer systems and survival. These and similar factors can conspire to cause an internal focus.

Dr Harold Worrall is president of Transportation Innovations and is past chair of ITS Florida, ITS America and the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (IBTTA). From 1992 until 2004 he was executive director of the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority

Something to think about Who are the customers of a given toll road? What do we mean when we say customer? Is there just one type? Are there just customers and violators? It has been clearly shown that there are significantly different customers of tollway systems. There are frequent customers who are composed of commuters, local

www.h3bmedia.com

businessmen and other local citizens who use the system for recreation, shopping and school related trips. This category of customer is likely to be familiar with the roadway system and toll roads in general. They are likely to read the local morning newspaper and watch local TV news and listen to local radio stations. They are familiar with local toll road organizations and those appointed to lead them. This customer is likely to have an ETC transponder and shares his experiences with other local ETC customers in the community.

FYI there is TMI...

If there’s a question about ETC there are likely many sources of information for this individual. Some toll agencies seem to have concluded that the frequent ETC customer, the transponder customer, is the only customer on the system. There are however, a range of other customers, many of whom use the system on an infrequent and irregular basis. Studies have shown that as few as 2 per cent of the customers of a toll road in a year generate a third of the total revenue and that the most frequent 11 per cent of the customers generate two-thirds of the total revenue. It is not surprising that ETC penetration rates stall at around two-thirds of total revenue. These frequent customers are however not the only ones. To collect the remaining third of the revenue requires dealing with the remaining 89 per cent of the total number of users. These infrequent customers may be vacationers or local citizens whose travel requires use of the tollway on an irregular basis. They may also be regular users that are infrequent. People who use the system once a month or once a week, perhaps to go to church or other scheduled event. www.h3bmedia.com

Customers and trips

Taken together, these infrequent customers constitute the vast majority of customers on the system. It is easy to confuse the percentage of trips collected electronically with the percentage of customers. There is a considerable amount of information that must be conveyed to customers and this is particularly difficult for infrequent customers because there are less opportunities to do so. Simply defining ETC-only lanes to infrequent customers can be a challenge. Many infrequent customers are unfamiliar with tolling in general and they are certainly unfamiliar with how to set up an account, install a transponder, which toll roads are interoperable with one another, who to call when there is a difficulty and what the local statutes and practices may be regarding violations. They tend to be more concerned than frequent customers about privacy and the potential release of personal financial data and are uncomfortable with their travels being tracked. They do not know the particulars of violation penalties nor whether erroneous violation data may result in repercussions to their driving record, employment and standing in the community.

Temporary customers

Some infrequent users may wish to establish an account for a specific period of time, perhaps one day. Toll operators have commonly used day passes to allow customers to travel the toll road on an unlimited basis for a given amount. Day passes do not require a transponder or knowledge of ETC procedures and processes. However, day passes are not suitable for a

vacationer or businessman who will be using the system regularly but for a limited period of time. A new type of ETC product is needed for this customer, one that would allow for the establishment of a temporary account with a beginning date and an end date. Further, day passes work well only when the toll road in question is not near other toll facilities and when it is not part of a larger network of toll roads. There are also local customers who may be very familiar with the community, the toll road and the process required to obtain an ETC transponder and account but still use the tollway infrequently. Retired individuals might fit this definition. Because of the infrequent use they’re not interested in obtaining a transponder and maintaining its use, especially if there is a monthly account fee that is charged.

What’s the infrequency?

Surveys of infrequent customers have also found that they are willing to accept a higher cost per transaction to avoid the inconvenience of establishing and maintaining an ETC account. Because the total cost of using a toll road is kept lower as a result of less frequent use, it is more acceptable to pay higher per transaction amounts for providing a more convenient means of payment. It is clear that an ETC marketing program that is intended to result in 100 per cent electronic transactions must focus on the entire range of customers. It is insufficient to sell the single product of a standard ETC account and consider the remaining customers to be violators. To accomplish AETC, a range of products must be available for the marketing campaign to be successful. The key

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

9

HaroldNajarian Worrall’s Bright Ideas Paul strategic element is to get as many customers (not trips) as possible onto a prepaid status. By doing so the percentage of trips and therefore revenue collected through an electronic means will approach 100 per cent or AETC.

by the need to maintain a high level of confidence that no one customer may receive a violation in error. Therefore, it is common practice to require manual review of the results of the optical character recognition software. While this can be done quickly, the volume of Pay as you go transactions that might not Once a customer is in a postsatisfy a 99 per cent paid relationship with a toll confidence level will be large. operator, the costs of collection Further, once the images are greatly increase. If a large properly converted there volume of transactions are remains the possibility that the allowed to go into a post-paid license plate under review is status, it will be very expensive from another jurisdiction and to attain AETC or alternatively the revenue unrecoverable. a large percentage of revenue Additionally, 20 per cent of will be lost. motor vehicle records in the Postpaid costs include video US contain incorrect mailing collection of the license plate addresses for the registered image, optical character owner. recognition to convert that image to letters and numbers Double trouble which can be looked up on a In some states there is also the motor vehicle database, legal possibility of duplicate plate and judicial costs, postage and numbers. Some states allow the human resources required government license plates to to process all the information. duplicate private license plate Further, violations are an numbers. aggravation to the customer Beyond the technical and result in negative feelings complications of a post-paid/ toward the toll agency. An violation relationship are the AETC toll system must offer legal aspects. Statutes must be ultra-convenient and widely enacted which support the available electronic payment ETC violations process. The methods beyond the standard statutes must support due ETC account. Otherwise, a process and recover the cost of large number of customers the court proceedings. will end up in the violations The legal costs of recovering process. small numbers of violations for a large number of customers Cashing in... or out? may quickly exceed a rational The availability of cash cost benefit analysis. However, payment in the lanes has if repeated violations are allowed it is unlikely that AETC heretofore kept infrequent customers out of the violations will be attainable. process. This will not be the case under AETC. Post paid Back office management situations should also be The numerous procedures and avoided because a loss of processes involved in postrevenue can result. There are paid transactions can quickly many steps in the process of a lead to a large back office staff. post-paid transaction that may People are needed to answer result in no revenue realization. telephones, set up accounts, First, the conversion of the resolve issues with customers, license plate image to a useful provide court coordination series of characters for and result in a smooth error database look up is hampered free integration of functions.

10

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

In such an environment human resource management becomes a significant function. Issues of compensation, promotion, recruitment, training etc. require significant management attention. Efficiency is crucial to maintaining minimum operating costs in such an environment. It is easy to understand how the focus can be redirected from measures of performance based on output to one which is internally focused. A large back office function can be a hindrance to the goal of attaining AETC.

Strategic offerings

Considering the potential for large back office operations to occur once cash payment is no longer accepted in the lane and considering the large number of infrequent customers, it is crucial to offer as many methods of prepayment as possible. Clearly, each toll operation’s external environment is unique and requires an analysis of the customer base to determine which types of toll payment products to offer. Pre-paid technical options include those using transponders, license plate recognition, GPS and mobile telephony. All of these technologies play a role in ETC today. GPS thus far serves a unique role in ETC and while it may be a major payment technology in the future, most current agency technology is provided via transponders.

Common commonalities Payment products are not just limited to the types of technology used, however. It is the combination of technology and business process that defines the types of payment products. For example, the standard ETC account which requires a transponder, a user agreement and the collection

www.h3bmedia.com

Harold Worrall’s Bright Ideas of considerable customer and vehicle data is the most common account type. Other alternatives, however, may be possible using the same technology. For example, a transponder sold at a retail shop could be preloaded with a set amount of tolls and activated with a simple phone call. Further, this type of account could be anonymous. These ETC Lite accounts might be set up with only the minimum of information. In fact, the amount of information might be left to the discretion of the customer. The account could be established as an ETC Lite account and later converted, if the customer chooses, to a full ETC account. However, it should be an option for the customer to provide only the minimum data to establish an ETC Lite account for convenience. Depending upon the amount of data, various versions of ETC accounts might be possible.

However, the potential is significant. If the goal is to attain AETC status then every option available to satisfy the various categories of customers should be considered. SMS messaging as a communications method has great potential. According to the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, the total number of cell phone users in the US was 207.9m at the end of 2005, a figure representing 69 per cent of the population. In some countries cellphone minutes have value as if it were a currency and is used to make small purchases. Cellphone billing offers yet another opportunity to avoid back office infrastructure and to introduce anonymity to the toll payment process.

Convenience store

Convenience is measured from a customer’s perspective. Program evaluation is usually performed based on various measures of efficiency and cost. From the perspective of the toll agency, it seems Licensed to bill inherently the correct process. A similar thought process may However, if the goal is to take be used for the technology of ETC to a new plateau of AETC license plate recognition. we will need to evaluate ALPR accounts could be programs from the customer’s established as full accounts, as perspectives. anonymous minimal We should evaluate the information accounts or functions of establishing an something in the middle. ALPR account, maintaining an is a crucial product strategy for account, installing a achieving AETC. This type of transponder, changing account could be funded transponder batteries etc. through cash or through the from a customer’s perspective. provision of a credit card. What may appear to be extraordinarily easy to While this option should be someone intimately familiar left to the customer, the with ETC may be quite difficult customer must accept greater for a customer, especially an responsibility for an account infrequent one. A survey at one that is not set up for automatic toll agency of customers replenishment. Another entering a customer service version of an ALPR account is the day pass which has been center revealed that 10 per previously described. Mobile cent of the customers who took telephony has only begun to the time to come to the service be applied in ETC. Few toll center and stand in line, were operations utilize telephony as there for the purpose of a toll payment method. obtaining double-sided www.h3bmedia.com

mounting tape. This is particularly interesting since the absence of double-sided tape could lead to a greater percentage of customers placing the transponder on the dash of their vehicle reducing the probability that the transponder transaction would be carried out properly. Because of the need to evaluate AETC strategy from a customer’s perspective, it is important to ask the customers for their opinion. Some toll operators carry out annual surveys to establish a quantitative understanding of customer desires and preferences. Repeat questions on annual surveys can also give an indication of trends. Further, focus groups are used to qualitatively enhance an understanding of the raw survey data. These techniques are a crucial foundation to the development of product marketing strategies to get as many customers as possible into a prepaid status. Only then will AETC become a reality.

All things considered

All-electronic toll collection is clearly the next plateau for ETC. Rarely is a new toll facility developed without consideration for AETC. Furthermore, many established ETC toll operators are studying methods for converting to full ETC. These goals are attainable but will be realized only by accepting the reality that there are many types of customers and each customer group should be consulted on the payment products that will be most convenient from their perspective. Payment methods will have to be priced for the effort the customer is willing to expend in setting up and maintaining accounts and they must be easy to obtain and maintain, reasonable in cost and reliable from the customer’s perspective. TH

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

11

The Thinker

Stunted growth Thinking Highways’ financial analyst MARGARET PETTIT looks at the European Territorial Cooperation Programme and finds that like with any other major programme, it’s a matter of priorities

A mature performance 12

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

www.h3bmedia.com

Climate Change The Thinker When DAVID SCHONBRUNN read the April/May issue of Thinking Highways he felt compelled to write an article offering his own views on transportation’s impacts onm and solutions for, climate change

When is performance good enough? What is Organizational Maturity? Does PHIL TARNOFF have the answers? Naturally enough, yes... www.h3bmedia.com

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

13

The Thinker Today’s transportation agencies face a dilemma. If they were to accept the impossibility of satisfying 100 per cent of their customers and elected officials, how do they determine when increasing investments in improved services have reached the point of diminishing returns? In other words, when is an agency’s performance good enough? Perhaps the answer to “good enough” lies not with the performance evaluation using measures such as incident clearance times and percent of construction completed within budget, but rather an assessment of the agency’s ability to ensure that its processes are predictable, repeatable, and continuously analyzed for possible improvements. If an agency’s culture is built around these three characteristics (predictability, repeatability and continuous improvement) the question of “good enough” never has to be answered, since the agency will be continuously evaluating and improving as an ongoing activity that is integrated into its business processes.

Perfectly capable

The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) described below might be new to the transportation community, but it has been accepted by many other disciplines. It began with the information technology (IT) community where it has been successfully applied to numerous processes and applications. The CMM process is not another quality management tool such as Total Quality Management (TQM) and ISO9000, but rather an approach to identifying and correcting organizational deficiencies in a manner that provides the assurance of predictability, repeatability and continuous improvement for the organization to which it is being applied. Upon examination of this process, it should be clear that it is readily adaptable to the transportation community. As described here, this adaptation emphasizes transportation operations, and for this reason, it has been designated the Operations Capability Model, or OCM.

The Capability Maturity Model

Predictable and repeatable processes within an organization are the key to effective, “surprise and error free” operation. Achieving predictability and repeatability requires documentation, training and performance measurement, which are also the tools required for continuous improvement of the processes they support. “Organizations that want their processes to be predictable and repeatable, must evolve “through a series of stages of maturity from informal (at the lower end of the scale) to highly routinized and with continuous improvement embedded at the higher end. As each process develops in this way, its capability will improve.” 1 To prevent the representation of maturity from becoming too complicated, the various dimensions of maturity have been integrated into the four stages shown in Table 1. 2 The formal process by which an organization’s maturity is judged includes consideration of people, process, technology and measurement. Definitions exist for

14

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

each of these categories at each level of maturity, as shown in Table 2. Any organization can be categorized into one of these stages, using the rule that its maturity level is the lowest common denominator of the characteristics of that level. While this table has obviously been developed for individual projects rather than a continuous process such as transportation system management and operations, the relationship between the two is evident. In essence, level 2 (which is the most critical level) requires that all processes be documented, that personnel be trained in their use, and that performance measurement be used to evaluate their outcomes. The results of CMM application are impressive. Although it is not possible to define results for of incident management, performance results from other specialities generally showed improvement in all areas as shown in Table 3 overleaf. These results were obtained from a mix of 30 private and public sector organizations. Perhaps equally important, the variation (standard deviation) of these results decreased with increasing maturity levels. In other words, there were fewer surprises.

A measure of success

Because of these successes, evaluation of organizational maturity is currently in widespread use for measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization. It was first introduced by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University under contract with the US Department of Defense for the purpose of improving the success rate (in terms of budget, schedule and functionality) of DoD funded software developments. Subsequently, the SEI has expanded the CMM concept to include: • Managing, measuring, and monitoring development processes • Service delivery within organizations and to external customers • Acquisition Leadership The Project Management Institute (PMI) has adopted organizational maturity as a concept known as OPM3, for assessing and improving the performance of an organization’s project management capabilities. The OPM3 model and the British Office of Government Commerce’s Project Management Maturity Model (PMMM) have been adapted to a number of different disciplines in both the public and private sectors

What does this have to do with transport?

The assessment of public agency performance is always a difficult task. The private sector “has it easy”, in that their performance can be readily judged by their bottom line profitability. Profitability in the private sector is a surrogate for customer satisfaction, product pricing policies, marketing effectiveness, and many less tangible measures. Transportation agency performance is relatively difficult to assess, and until now has relied on such things as: www.h3bmedia.com

The Thinker

Table 2. The Relationship Between Organizational Characteristics and Maturity Level 4 Level 1 Performed

Level 2 Managed

Level 3 Established

Level 4 Predictable

People

Success depends on individual heroics. “Fire fighting is a way of life.” Relationships between disciplines are not coordinated, perhaps even adversarial.

Success depends on individuals and management system supports. Commitments are understood and managed. People are trained.

Project groups work together, perhaps as an integrated product team. Training is planned and provided according to roles.

A strong sense of teamwork exists within each project. Everyone is involved in process improvement

Process

Few stable processes exist or are used.

Documented and stable estimating, planning, and commitment processes are at the project level.

Integrated management and engineering processes are used across the organization.

Technology

Technology supports The introduction of new technology is risky. established, stable activities.

Processes are quantitatively understood and stabilized. Improvements are identified and implemented. New technologies are evaluated on a quantitative basis.

Measurement

Data collection and analysis are ad hoc.

www.h3bmedia.com

Planning and management data is used by individual projects.

New technologies are evaluated on a qualitative basis. Data is collected and used in all defined processes. Data is systematically shared across projects.

Data definition and collection are standardized across the organization. Data is used to understand the process qualitatively and stabilize it.

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

15

The Thinker • Customer satisfaction surveys • Performance measures such as delays in construction zones, incident clearance times, number of construction projects awarded, number of projects completed on time, miles of pavement constructed, etc. • Correspondence (complimentary and otherwise) received as a result of the agency’s activities. Service patrols often use thank you letters as a measure of the value of their service.

The letter of the law

These techniques suffer from a common deficiency; the absence of a benchmark that can be used to determine whether a given level of customer satisfaction or a given performance measurement is good or bad. If a service patrol driver receives three complementary letters a month, is he doing a good job, or is he ignoring more serious incidents in order to please stranded motorists who will send complementary letters? The absence of benchmarks does not reflect an agency shortcoming, but rather differences between jurisdictions that prevent reliable comparisons. The absence of a benchmark prevents agencies from justifying their performance to the outside world, and also prevents effective staff management. How can an employee be rewarded for doing a good job if it is impossible to define a good job? This dilemma can be resolved by recognizing that the search for the definition of a good job is fruitless. Performance assessment should evaluate whether this year’s performance is an improvement over the previous year. In other words, is a process of continuous improvement in place? It goes without saying that continuous improvement is not possible unless all process are thoroughly defined and measured, and all personnel have a thorough understanding of both the processes and the criteria by which they are being judged (performance measurement). These ingredients are the basis of both the CMM and OCM processes.

A practical example

The benefits of OCM can best be appreciated through a practical example. Suppose that an agency wants to assess the effectiveness of its incident management program. This would be accomplished through the development of a baseline matrix dealing specifically with incident management, such as the one shown in Table 4. This matrix utilizes the same format as the more generalized matrix of Table 2, except that the cells have been replaced by characteristics specific to incident management. In actual practice, the matrix of Table 4 would represent the consensus of all the incident management stakeholders (transportation, fire, police, EMS, coroner, towing, etc.). Once the table has been created, and using the rule that an organization’s level is defined by the level of the weakest characteristic, it is then used as the basis for determining the agency’s OCM level. For example, if the agency uses advanced technology to support its incident management process, yet has not

16

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

Table 3. Capability Maturity Model Impacts for Systems Integration 5 Performance Category Improvement

Median

Cost Schedule Productivity Quality Customer Satisfaction Benefit Cost Ratio

34% 50% 61% 48% 14% 4:1

developed a comprehensive set of documentation to define the manner in which responses to all incidents are to be handled, it is a level 1 organization – even though its technology may be at level 3 or 4.

Rules of engagement

Based on the assessment, the stakeholders then jointly agree on an action plan to move from the existing level, to the next higher level. Another rule of the process is that it is not possible to skip levels. Assuming as before, that the documentation is at level 1, and assuming that the stakeholders have agreed on the desirability of moving to level 2, the next step would be to devise a plan for developing the missing documentation for all types of incidents that might be encountered. The preparation of documentation would then be followed by training, to ensure that all members of the incident response process fully understand its contents and intent. It would also be necessary to institute a measurement process by which the degree to which the documentation is being followed is evaluated. At that point, the organization would be able to claim that it is performing at level 2. A final rule of the OCM process is that an organization must remain at a given level for at least a year prior to aspiring to achieve a higher level. During the year, performance is continuously measured, and adjustments made to the process so that level 2 operation is solidified. At the end of the year, the cycle of moving to the next level is repeated.

Final thoughts

It should be obvious from this brief description that OCM can produce results that are repeatable, and adaptable to a wide variety of situations. In other words reliance on key individuals and unpleasant surprises will be minimized. It should also be clear that the process can be used to establish both near term and short term performance goals, since a short term goal can be defined as moving to the next OCM level. The long term goal can be defined as moving to the highest OCM level. The key to the success of OCM is the involvement of all stakeholders in the process. This powerful process should be considered for use as a management tool that can be applied to the operations activities of today’s transportation agencies. TH www.h3bmedia.com

The Thinker

Table 4. Definition of Incident Management Maturity Levels Level 1 Performed

Level 2 Managed

Level 3 Established

Level 4 Predictable

People

Fire fighting. Uncoordinated ad hoc incident response based on personal experience

Responders are trained. All participants understand the organization’s expectations as expressed through defined performance measures

Responders work as integrated teams, even though they are employed by different organizations

Strong sense of teamwork, in which everyone works to optimize their performance.

Process

Processes are undefined, and as a result, the manner in which an incident is managed depends on the personnel involved.

All incident processes are fully documented. Processes are stable and predictable

Incident response is integrated with other organizational processes, such as emergency management, commercial vehicle operations, and traffic signal timing

Processes are continuously reviewed and systematically improved

Technology

The introduction of new technology is risky since responders will not necessarily use it consistently or appropriately.

Technology is integrated into the incident response process. For example, traffic detector outputs used to support the diversion process.

New technologies are continuously evaluated qualitatively in terms of their ability to enhance the incident management process.

New technologies are evaluated quantitatively using techniques such as simulation to be able to define their costs and benefits prior to their introduction into the incident response process

Measurement

Ad hoc data collection unrelated to the overall objectives of the process.

Performance measured selectively. For example, performance measurement might be restricted to incident clearance times, but ignore other key measures.

Performance is systematically measured for all processes including incident clearance time, accuracy of sign messages, and the effectiveness of diversions.

Data is analyzed through after action reports to identify ways in which the incident response process might be improved.

References

1 “Innovations – Project Management Research 2004, Chapter 13 Measurement of Organizational Maturity”, by Terrence J. Cooke-Davies, http://www.humansystems. net/papers/measuring_organizational_maturity.pdf

www2.slac.stanford.edu/comp/winnt/system-administration/ Organizational%20Maturity%20Levels.doc

2 The CMM model actually contains five stages. This has been reduced to four stages for the transportation community, based on experience with the application of the model to agency processes.

5 “Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Version 1.2 Overview”, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, pg. 27, http://www.sei.cmu. edu/cmmi/adoption/pdf/cmmi-overview07.pdf/

3 From ‘Microsoft Readiness Framework Organizational Readiness”White Paper, website: www.h3bmedia.com

4 Ibid.

Phil Tarnoff can be contacted via email at [email protected] Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

17

Interview

Back, after a Stunted short growth absence... Thinking Highways’ financial analyst MARGARET PETTIT looks at the European Territorial Cooperation Programme and finds that like with any other major programme, it’s a matter of priorities

KEVIN BORRAS welcomes JOHN KASIK back to the ITS arena. One of the most wellknown (and well-liked) personalities in the industry, he has emerged like a phoenix from his selfimposed flames to head up the new US operation of a fastemerging, rapidly expanding European player

18

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

John, we haven’t seen you at industry trade events for a while, can you tell us where you’ve been and how you’ve been spending your time away? Well, last year, I was asked by Telegra-Europe, a prominent manufacturer of ITS products and services, to establish a business practice in the Americas. As a leading provider throughout Europe, it was clear to me that the US market could benefit greatly from their expertise, so since joining them as President & CEO, I have focused my energy entirely on laying the groundwork for US operations. European readers are likely aware of TelegraEurope, but can you share with your fellow American readers a bit more about Telegra, Inc., the US subsidiary. For example, what it does, something about its product range and why you believe it is uniquely positioned to provide products and services to the ITS industry in the Americas? Over the years, Telegra has invested significant resources in research and development and has a superb track record of delivering innovative and statewww.h3bmedia.com

Climate Change Interview When DAVID SCHONBRUNN read the April/May issue of Thinking Highways he felt compelled to write an article offering his own views on transportation’s impacts onm and solutions for, climate change

of-the-art products of the highest quality. Our manufacturing capabilities are fully automated and utilize sophisticated processes that breed the highest possible quality into all that we deliver. As we all know, healthy competition is good for the US consumer, in this case, our transportation clients. Hence, I firmly believe that our products and services will be sought after by those who seek to utilize the best in the industry.

Telegra has experienced significant growth throughout Europe and the timing was perfect for us to establish a US operation.

“As a leading provider throughout Europe, it was clear to me that the US market could benefit greatly from Telegra’s expertise”

How did the opportunity to establish the Telegra US subsidiary come about? Telegra-Europe has developed a systematic business expansion plan for growth in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, India, China … and now the Americas. We identified the US as the single largest market to deploy Telegra ITS products and services in the world. Extending our reach to Canada, South and Central America is, of course, a natural outgrowth of our US marketing approach. www.h3bmedia.com

What are your objectives for the rest of 2008? Most recently, I have been building the necessary infrastructure to prepare Telegra for entry to the American ITS market. Activities have ranged from obtaining product certifications and approvals from various US and Canadian Standardization bodies; developing marketing materials and supporting documentation suitable for our American customer base; building a team of US subject matter experts; setting up US manufacturing facilities … just to name a few. Our official kick-off is scheduled for IBTTA’s 76th Annual Meeting and Exhibition in Baltimore, MD, followed by the 15th ITS World Congress in New York City in November. We are confident that our products and Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

19

Interview Who do you see as your competitors in North America? Our key competitors include product manufacturers that furnish various hardware and components used on a wide variety of intelligent transportation and traffic management programs. Many of our competitors are focused on niche markets, where Telegra brings a broad portfolio of innovative products and services that will serve our customer base over the long-term. Telegra recognizes the demands of the industry and knows first hand how to customize its product base to suit unique customer requirements. That being said, our primary objective is to ensure that the driving public, “Our Customer’s Customers”, will benefit from our products in the form of time and safety. Some in the US may be familiar with your personal story. Your heritage and journey to the US is very interesting. Can you provide us with some additional background? I was born in Prague in what was then Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) and escaped over 40 years ago from the Communists who at the time occupied the country. As a young man I immediately embraced the American values of independence and democracy and quickly became an American citizen. Working my way through university studies with various part-time jobs, I eventually earned a Doctorate from Brown University. My career in the US has been focused primarily on business and academia, but I am most proud of being a Texan!

services will stand out among the competition as bestin-class. Is Telegra, Inc. an autonomous subsidiary in the Americas, or are you dependent on the parent organization for any specific support? We are working toward being an autonomous subsidiary representing Telegra-Europe throughout the Americas. Until recently, we were dependent on the parent company to develop product specifications and marketing literature to support our agenda. In order to meet the demands of the American market and comply with related design standards, we established an American base of operations, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with support and manufacturing functions in other strategic US locations. Driven primarily by business opportunities, we are aggressively becoming more independent every day. We envision unlimited potential in the Americas, so our support system and infrastructure is intentionally designed for agility and scalability. In addition, we have been focusing our attention on adapting our technologies to suit the specific needs of the American ITS market.

Considering how often industry and political objectives change in the US, it may be difficult to maintain a steady business approach. Are you planning to position Telegra as a “VII-friendly” firm? As a former Board member serving the Omni Air Consortium, I am personally dedicated to the advancement of VII initiatives and the user benefits that will ultimately be realized. Telegra will be a proactive partner serving the development of various VII programs and initiatives. I envision a day in the future when all of us will look back and appreciate how our daily lives were so positively affected by VII technologies. Telegra strives to assume a leadership position in pursuing and sustaining US initiatives.

“I escaped from the Communists who occupied Prague 40 years ago and now I am a proud Texan and a proud So, what’s next for John Kasik and American citizen” Telegra?

20

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

As I said previously, more on our official business objectives will be announced later this year. For now, rest assured that the full extent of our resources, are focused on delivering the highest quality ITS products to the North American ITS market. I think the industry will be very pleased with our business ethic, our corporate culture, and most importantly, our ability to achieve the highest level of customer satisfaction known in the industry. TH [email protected] www.h3bmedia.com

What Kind of Traffic Information Do You Need to Map?

Real-time display of traffic congestion and incidents.

Traffic congestion growth and incident trend analysis.

Information can be an expensive asset to acquire. Why try to capture it twice? Advanced geographic or spatial data systems can store and

Do you need help making your information system spatial? Contact our transportation team at 1-888-603-3218.

retrieve information in a format useful for various types of applications. Incident managers need an immediate display of events as they happen. Analysts need to see seasonal and longer term trends through multivariate, time series analyses. Geographic information system (GIS) technology allows a single geodatabase to serve both types of users. Call ESRI to learn more about GIS and traffic management.

ESRI—The GIS Company™ E-mail: [email protected] www.esri.com/transportation

Copyright © 2008 ESRI. All rights reserved. The ESRI globe logo, ESRI, ArcMap, ArcView, ESRI—The GIS Company, www.esri.com, and @esri.com are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of ESRI in the United States, the European Community, or certain other jurisdictions. Other companies and products mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective trademark owners.

Peak Oil

Stunted growth Thinking Highways’ financial analyst MARGARET PETTIT looks at the European Territorial Cooperation Programme and finds that like with any other major programme, it’s a matter of priorities

So it goes in the car culture

RANDY SALZMAN’s personal experiences of North America’s dependence on the automobile make for a fascinating account of a man trying to change things meeting the resistance of a nation in denial 22

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

www.h3bmedia.com

ClimatePeak Change Oil DAVID SCHONBRUNN TheWhen world must wonder why The United States – the country producing the most greenhouse gases – had read the April/May issue of presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Thinking he felt tax Clinton promoting Highways a summertime “gasoline holiday” which would worked to increase the compelled tohave write an article American emission of carbon dioxide. offering his own views on Since America already produces 45 per cent of the transportation’s impacts since American world’s automotive CO2 emissions and transportation already produces 1,959 onm and solutionsmillion for,metric tons of greenhouse gas annually, world citizens must climate question whether any policychange making American driving cheaper has any validity. Why, Europeans (who burn half the carbon the average American burns partially due to high auto fuel taxes) must ask, doesn’t America tax gasoline and diesel fuels heavily and use that income to build mass transit and hike and bike infrastructure? “That’s logical and therein lies the problem,” was the response Virginia Governor Tim Kaine gave to a businessman asking that same question last year. My lifelong experience trying to cause transportation behavioral change illustrates the depth of the cultural and political norms which allow America to continue burning 200 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel annually while engaged in a war which is partially over oil and while facing the fact that both Peak Oil and Global Warming and their inherent potential economic and social disasters, have likely already begun. In honor of author Kurt Vonnegut, I think of my experience as “So it goes in the car culture.” An inauspicious start

My quest began when I learned first-hand the “externalities” of America’s oil addiction with the death of my friend and boss one night on a Texas oil rig during the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo. Trying to convince friends that there are other ways to get around, I only succeeded in alienating my step-mother for pointing out that she and my father drove a 44-mile roundtrip daily from the same house to the same job in separate cars. I later got a ticket for bicycling on the shoulder of an interstate highway and almost got arrested for arguing that I wasn’t the problem, it was the cars zooming past at 70 mph in the 55 mph speed limit zone. Later, in my college communications classes over a dozen years, I’d give students a speech story writing assignment to cover me talking about the social, environmental, practical and financial rewards I got out of bicycle commuting. I don’t think a single student ever tried bicycle transportation. So it goes in the car culture. Finally, in 2003 as my son was sent to Afghanistan, I became aggressive in trying to put together a practical behavioral change program for Virginia Commonwealth University, an urban school in the middle of downtown Richmond. By the school’s own literature, at least 44,000 people arrived on that campus daily but the commuter university had only 9,000 parking spaces. Changing the parking behavior of some of the 12,000 employees, I thought, would free spaces to sell to students while decreasing congestion, pollution - and this new concept called global warming - while saving www.h3bmedia.com

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

23

Peak Oil the college immense amounts of money not building parking at US$27,000 a space on its limited, and very expensive, downtown real estate. I got nowhere with the president’s office or with the parking and transportation office but the crushing blow came from a PhD economist who agreed with my assessment of “The Big Rollover” (or Peak Oil) and the need for rational, economic behavior but dismissed my concept with,“I’d never ride a bicycle to work and neither would anyone else.” So it goes in a car culture.

The write approach

A 2004 research fellowship at Oxford’s Transport Studies Unit led me to write an article which highlighted the physical fitness and beauty benefits of muscle-powered transportation while underlining the pollution, foreign policy, congestion and health benefits of all alternatives to single occupancy vehicles. Though a dozen magazines called it “excellent,” they inevitably added but “not for us.” Other shorter op-ed pieces generally also went nowhere though a half dozen editors said the writing and concepts were good. So it goes in the car culture. With my son sent to Iraq, I moved to a small, famously liberal college town, Charlottesville, home of Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia and begin again trying to convince a university - which UNESCO had said loudly and clearly had the responsibility of practicing sustainability - to consider a well-conceived marketing plan based on in-depth understanding of consumer behavior, psychology, transportation and communications research and a long-term understanding of university politics. After eventually getting into the offices of such luminaries as the vice president of research, the head of UVA’s transportation, the chair of the transportation planning department, the dean of the business school, the dean of the architecture school – all of whom said my behavioral change concept sounded plausible and exciting – the university hired a consultant out of Boston. At focus group meetings, I discovered the consultant’s ideas were restricted to concepts that had helped 2.6 per cent of employees in some cities like Montreal consider change in their single-occupancy commutes. Since “communication or marketing” was only a fraction of one part of the consultant’s six-point plan and my research, which had now spread from SUSTRAN pilots in the UK, to German and Australian TravelSmart programs, indicated fairly clearly that how, and how long, whatever alternatives were marketed was more important than the specific alternatives themselves, I tried to contact the consultant. Finally, I heard a response from UVA’s Office of the Architect, who I had tried through a dozen emails and a half-dozen phone calls to reach for over a year. I was told that I had no right to contact their consultant. So it goes in the car culture.

Unhealthy debate

In the meantime, I’d approached a local hospital who is planning a move from Charlottesville’s downtown urban area, less than a mile away as the crow flies and across the Rivanna River, to a new county location because parking had become a huge issue at their town location. Understanding that when the hospital makes this move in 2012 congestion on the sole, nearby highway bridge across the river would climb dramatically, I also approached area politicians and tried to convince the local regional planning organization that a footbridge could provide wonderful transportation benefits to offset the projected doubling of car traffic. After getting a positive response by the hospital’s environmental director, he was told by his boss that “It’s not our job to tell our 1,500 employees how to get to work” and, therefore, I wrote hand-written letters to members of the hospital’s board of directors. One of them eventually set me up with the executive who was in charge of planning the move. That executive also found my ideas would work to best control what the hospital called “the P-word” and informed me that the hospital was choking on the projected US$29m cost of building an adequate parking deck. With his support, I set out to find research funding to pay for the TDM program because producing academic research illustrating which externality of driving would cause what demographic of consumer to begin the Seven Step Ladder of Behavioral Change is research that planners and researchers around the world are hugely interested in. The Center for Disease Control, indeed, specifically has asked for projects which combined transportation and health and the Virginia Department of Rails and Public Transportation and The Robert Woods Johnson Foundation indicated financial support for this kind of research. However, I was moved to the back-burner when I sought answers to the very simple, and general, questions that funders ask of research locations. That was a year ago. My political efforts also drew praise but kept getting placed on the back burner because very few officials care to add new projects to their workloads. Worried about becoming a “gadfly,” only rarely today do I show up to address area planning commissions in their threeminute-limit public comments section.

“A PhD economist delivered the crushing blow, saying that he’d never consider cycling to work and neither would anyone else”

24

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

Sustain and release

Meanwhile, having learned primarily of the great success Western Australia had in changing transportation behavior through governmental efforts and having met Australian sustainability guru Dr. Peter Newman - who also said that my project best approached behavioral change in a car culture - I went to Perth to study Werner Brog’s TravelSmart concept. Everything I found out was incredibly positive - from the decrease in miles driven www.h3bmedia.com

Peak Oil across the 418,000 people individually marketed - to the fact that the concept is working so well that Perth is adopting it to increase recycling and decrease energy and water consumption. Luckily, I stumbled upon Brog himself who was in Perth to check on his operation and listened as he explained to 25 local TDM planners why his simple and effective idea of showing people who wanted to be part of the solution how to be part of the solution had succeeded in over 300 projects on four continents, including North America. Never has a TravelSmart project shown less than 8 per cent reduction in car miles over a year, Brog’s research indicated, and a transportation economist I spoke with said that when one began to include healthcare savings and decreases in pollution and C02 emissions, the benefit-cost of TravelSmart approached 70:1.

Meanwhile, back at home...

Returning to the US, now with hard information about how and why behavioral change worked in a car culture, I thought again that American media would want to publish the best solution to our global warming, pollution, health, congestion and foreign policy crises. Wouldn’t everyone want to know that there is a way out, I thought. Again, I generally received “great concept and writing” but “not for us.” The Washington Post Outlook section said “this is a piece for our Sunday magazine” and the Sunday magazine said “this is a wonderful idea for Outlook.” Especially discouraging was Planning Magazine - the journal of the association of American planners -- which did allow me to publish a short piece which highlighted one unstudied effect of individualized marketing, the public relations benefit for building commuter rail - but keeps putting me off about a full-fledged piece which brings together all the trees into the forest of why and how to market behavioral change in a car culture. Every single tree, I’ve discovered in my countless conversations with planners, policy-makers, and other SUV drivers, can and will face argument but when the time is taken to understand the overall forest - the big picture people see why the concept benefits them individually and us collectively. For example, building the footbridge across the Rivanna, in concert with a social and individualized marketing plan at the hospital and a public information campaign promoting that bridge as transportation, would provide political cover for politicians who will face angry “soccer moms in SUVs” when the sole present highway bridge gets overwhelmed in a few years. Local politicians and planners, however, today see Global Warming and Peak Oil as national or international issues which have little to do with solving congestion on a local highway bridge while departmentalizing the Rivanna footbridge as recreational, therefore forgetting that there are federal dollars specifically set-aside for alternative transportation plans far in excess of money available for recreational projects. With that “logical” message, and Dr. Newman, who came to UVA for a seminar, I kept approaching local politicians and planners. Eventually, helped by the www.h3bmedia.com

“Politicians and planners see Global Warming and Peak Oil as national or international issues which have little to do with solving local congestion”

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

25

Peak Oil piece Thinking Highways published on TravelSmart in April, the executive director of our area planning district became a “champion” for this kind of thinking in the spring of 2008. A month later, he announced that he was leaving for a new job in North Carolina. So it goes in the car culture.

Book smart

At the same time, along with Dr. Newman I began putting feelers out to book publishers, having learned that only by bringing together all the trees into a forest of knowledge could drivers - whether they be citizens or policymakers, local or national politicians, planners or advocates - discover the mitigation to so many of our personal, local and national problems. The book proposal has died at three publishers because editors can’t imagine a market for it unless I provide, according to one , a“solution that targets big oil” which “is much more palatable to most people than having to significantly change their own behavior.” Most drivers - and yes, I am one - never consider the full cost of our driving, and only focus on the cost of gasoline, even while insurance companies offer discounts for not-driving to work and federal public policy since Bush, the dad, rewarded non-driving commuters with US$115 a month in tax credits. The American “love affair with the automobile” is so pervasive that it takes multiple meetings, and mountains of time and consistency, almost on a one-on-one basis to get policy-makers to believe that change is even possible. The world no longer has that time. Even if the Intergovernmental Panel on

26

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

Climate Change is wrong and we won’t lose a quarter of all plant and animal species in less than a decade if we don’t stabilize CO2 emissions, there’s still Peak Oil. With China and India expected to increase oil consumption before the Nano begins production - 115 per cent by the end of the 21st Century’s first decade, oil producers are saying that there is an absolute production limit of 102m barrels a day and we’re on the verge of reaching it. American driving, where between 60 and 70 per cent of US oil consumption is used, must change and every person who studies society knows it, businessmen included. However, with some Ford dealers trying to save their sales quotas by offering to pay for all gasoline consumed in new SUVs for a year and GM trying to stave off bankruptcy with similar programs for its Hummer, our politicians complete the pander to our “love affair” with the gasoline tax holiday. Political leadership in America’s democracy is best defined as “seeing which way the parade is going and getting in front.” But the parade truly can’t form, as the gas tax holiday plan exposes, until media begins discussing the true cost of America’s oil addiction. Most American media, often dependent upon automobile advertising, and always worried about offending potential readers and viewers, fails to connect the dozen dots which could be seen as, but really aren’t, anti-car. Connecting these dots is truly about using automobiles intelligently, rather than habitually. I hope, of course, that my hospital project, and a local TravelSmart project eventually come to pass, and I hope America finally addresses the true cost of driv-

www.h3bmedia.com

Peak Oil ing our 226 million vehicles 2.9 trillion miles annually but the idea that Mr McCain sees a political future in promoting cheaper gasoline while allegedly claiming to attack global warming is horribly depressing (in the interests of balance, Hillary Clinton was also dining out on this particular meal ticket).

19th century examples

The Federalist Papers, 200 years ago, argued that leaders in the American democracy might not be able to govern in a situation where they are dependent upon the votes of self-involved citizens without the time or desire to study issues in enough depth to understand them. The resulting policies might be, the writers suggested, too short term when solutions demanded longterm thinking. My experience indicates how prophetic the writers of The Federalist Papers were. My nation has put itself, in spite of hundreds of pieces of data over at least 30 years since the first Arab Oil Embargo, in a classic Catch 22 situation. Today, to get elected our politicians must pander to people who do not have the time or inclination to understand the issues and, therefore, the “solutions” continue to make those issues worse. Our businessmen must stay in business by providing the people with what they want. They, therefore, through advertising and programs like “free” gasoline help convince the public to want what the business already has to sell. Raised on 30-second commercial and 30-minute TV programming our people today don’t have the inclination to understand the bigger picture caused by our daily activities. Having dumbed down the educational curriculum to match the TV generation, our culture now craves simplicity thinking at a time when political, social and economic issues are incredibly complex. Consequently mainstream news media, worried over the loss of advertising, downgrade multi-dimensional and complex stories to attract consumers attuned to bumper sticker ideas. Meanwhile, the American film and Internet media have successfully convinced us that there is always a “bad guy,” allowing us to put ourselves in such amazing denial that we drive hundreds of miles to go to a concert to “Stop Global Warming.” Indeed, we think of our cars as “freedom,” though we often suffer “road rage” because we spend 4.2 billion hours - and US$78 billion - annually stuck in congestion. Individuals, even ones considering addressing this massive conspiracy of being, don’t have the time or desire to take on a cultural monster which will

www.h3bmedia.com

likely add unfruitful work to their plates and produce a probable outcome of putting those caring individuals on psychologists’ couches for depression. Economists and editorialists, and to be honest, some politicians and businessmen, have said for over 20 years that America desperately needs to tax auto fuels heavily and use that income to build alternatives - as the Europeans have done since the first Arab oil embargo. But the sales job for overcoming the drive-first habit is so complex in our car culture that even in the midst of galloping worldwide oil prices and massive global warming publicity, our presidential candidates pander to the American “love affair.” In years past, here are some who’ve tried politically and economically to connect these dots into a rational auto fuel tax policy: from the political left, Jerry Brown; from the right, H. Ross Perot; from the middle, Paul Tsongas; from the auto industry, William Ford IV; from the oil industry, Royal Dutch Shell. The one thing they have in common is that they have all failed, to the point that even Al Gore didn’t mention the personal automobile in his Nobel acceptance speech and barely mentions it in An Inconvenient Truth. John McCain and Hillary Clinton simply chose the road more traveled. So it goes in the car culture. TH [email protected]

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

27

International Road Transport

Stunted growth Thinking Highways’ financial analyst MARGARET PETTIT looks at the European Territorial Cooperation Programme and finds that like with any other major programme, it’s a matter of priorities

Back on the map

According to Wikipedia, the Silk Road is a series of trade and cultural transmission routes that were central to cultural interaction through regions of Asia, connecting East and West Asia by linking traders, merchants, pilgrims, monks, soldiers, nomads and urban dwellers from China to the Mediterranean. MICHAEL NIELSEN heralds its revival 28

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

www.h3bmedia.com

Climate Change International Road Transport Jiaohe, China, on the ancient Silk Road When DAVID SCHONBRUNN read the April/May issue of Thinking Highways he felt compelled to write an article offering his own views on transportation’s impacts onm and solutions for, climate change

In 1996, the road transport industry, under the leadership of the International Road Transport Union (IRU) and as called for in Agenda 21 and the UN Millennium Development Goals, signed into affect the “IRU Charter for Sustainable Development”. As a formal commitment to the goal of achieving sustainable development, the charter highlights the IRU’s 3 “i” strategy, based on innovation, incentives and infrastructure.

Road transport, a vital production tool

The first truck was patented by Karl Friedrich Benz in 1897. The new automobile era’s contributions are undisputed in terms of driving trade, tourism, prosperity and social development. In today’s globalised economy, having a cup of coffee at a café in Geneva at the current market price requires the collaborative efforts of 29 companies from 18 countries. If 29 companies are needed to produce a simple cup of coffee, one can easily imagine that it takes some 10,000 suppliers to make an affordable motor car. Road transport, no longer a simple transport mode, www.h3bmedia.com

has become a vital production tool interconnecting all businesses in all countries and regions to every world market. Road transport in a globalised economy links people and ensures a better distribution of wealth worldwide. This in turn drives peace and prosperity. In most countries of the world, 90-95 per cent of all road transport operations are domestic. International transport accounts for around 5-10 per cent. This means that road transport has a role to play in ensuring the mobility of people and goods from local to global markets.

Road transport tonnage distances

Indeed, globalisation does not necessarily mean transport over long distances. Globalisation is, more properly, undertaking all activities at the best place, producing the best products and trading under the best possible economic, social and fiscal conditions. This is done by linking all businesses, communities and regions of the world. In 1991, India, through significant economic reforms, transformed itself into one of the fastest-growing Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

29

International Road Transport

Contrast and compare: sea containers in ports in 1971 (left) and 2008 (below)

economies in the world. However, India’s global trade today is dependent on maritime transport. In 2001, the unprecedented development of China led this country to become a member of the World Trade Organisation. Due to its major investment in the production sector and successful development, China today is the world’s factory and has become a major hub of sea container traffic in the global transport system. This is not good news since ports used today for shipping goods are increasingly saturated. With the concentration of 80 per cent of world trade in only a few ports, the desertification of the port hinterlands as well as bottlenecks, congestion, delays and above all additional costs, are becoming increasingly prominent. For the past 15 years, the IRU has been working on reopening the Silk Road to offer alternative options and compensate for these problems. The challenges are numerous, however, so are the new opportunities brought about by facilitating relations among trading partners and integrating the various economies along the route to those of other regions.

aries of the Silk Road, that have so far been excluded from the benefits of globalisation. While these common goals are within reach they can only be achieved if political priority is given to removing the numerous barriers to road transport. International road transport along the Silk Road does not need new infrastructure. In 2005, the IRU sent the first truck caravan from Beijing to Brussels (www.bbb-irucaravan.org) that confirmed this. However, it was also made clear that adequate procedures where needed, in particular through the implementation of the appropriate multilateral instruments to facilitate trade and road transport, It should never be forgotten that any penalty on road transport is an even greater penalty on economic development. Rather, in the name of economic development, governments should ratify and strictly implement the abundant multilateral trade and road transport facilitation instruments, including the introduction of multientry annual visas for professional truck drivers. This would lay down the basis for a true multilateral harmonisation of legal, social, technical, infrastructural and procedural conditions, thus ensuring that progress can be driven along the entire Silk Road.

“Road transport in a globalised economy links people and ensures a better distribution of wealth worldwide”

Reviving the great silk road

The Eurasian landmass represents a huge potential of both human and natural resources. Two thirds of the world’s population lives there and works, produces, trades and transports between one another and with the rest of the world. Opening the ancient Silk Road will not only offer an alternative for the transport of goods from Asia to Europe and visa versa, but, above all, it will stymie the current drying up of trade in too many countries, resulting from the concentration of the bulk of world trade in only a few major ports. Furthermore, it will ensure economic and social development, political stability and, ultimately, prosperity and peace. This is not only true for a handful of ports and port hinterlands, but will also be the case for all regions along the 12,000-50,000 kilometres of the various itiner-

30

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

The way forward

The IRU held its 4th Euro-Asian Road Transport Conference in Warsaw on 14 and 15 June 2007. Transport ministers from 26 Euro-Asian countries gathered at the event and signed a declaration underlining their agreement www.h3bmedia.com

%
3'$
1$#
+(&'3
/'.3.$-%.1"$,$-3 2.+43(.-
(-
7.41
"(37
(2-93
 32. 7.41
".-5("3(.-
"1$#(!(+(37
' 2
,.1$
'.+$2
(-
(3 3' -

/($"$
.%
"'$$2$


8
-#
3' 3
)423
23(-*2

 32.

&$3
3'$
6'.+$
/("341$ 
 32.
2.+43(.-
(-
7.41
231$$32
&(5$2
7.4
.41
4-241/ 22$#

7$ 1
'(23.17
.%
(--.5 3(.-
-#
".,/+( -"$
6(3'
(-3$1- 3(.- +
/'.3.$-%.1"$,$-3
23 -# 1#2
1.,
5(.+ 3(.-
3.
"(3 3(.-
.41
$-#3.$-#
2$15("$
"1$ 3$2

3 ,/$1/1..%
:
6+$22
$5(#$-"$
"' (-
-#

6(--(-&
1$".1#
(-
".413
41
3$"'-.+.&7
-#
'(23.17
#$+(5$1
"1$#(!(+(37
-#
"$13 (-37
+(*$
-.
.3'$1
".,/ -7
" -
/1.5(#$ 







.1
3'$
4-04$23(.- !+$
2.+43(.-
!1(-&
 32.

(-3.
7.41
".,,4-(37 
    




$, (+
422 +$2 & 32.".,


666& 32.42 "., USA

International Road Transport

to enhance joint actions aiming at “accession to, development and implementation of the UN conventions on international road transport; adoption of the WTO rules in respect of the freedom of transit, simplification of documents, rationalisation of charges and taxes and construction of missing road connections along the Silk Road, including bypasses in urban areas.” Further facilitation of trade and road transport between countries and regions along the Silk Road should find favour in this important political statement. Road transport from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean is often seen as uncompetitive. However, shippers are increasingly consigning their shipments to air transport to compensate for the undercapacity of sea terminals. It is important to note that reopening the Silk Road does not imply 15,000 km journeys for a single truck. The purpose is to interconnect all businesses involved in one production chain by road, on short distances. Finally, sustainable development is not restricted to environmental concerns: it is the long-term policy goal of balancing economic, social and environmental priorities as defined in Agenda 21, to which the IRU is strongly committed. One single aspect of sustainable development should not prevail above all others. The renaissance of the Silk Road is in line with the UN millen-

nium development goals, namely: economic and social development, political stability and, ultimately, prosperity and peace. In the name of competitiveness, it is already possible to ship Chinese containers by road with shorter delivery times and competitive transport costs, without spending one additional penny on infrastructure, to all the main major markets of the world, according to a feasibility study conducted by the US Chamber of Commerce entitled“Land transport options between Europe and Asia”. The study also confirms that any new road transport activities may still be significantly enhanced by clearing the numerous existing obstacles along the Silk Road. These continue to result from inappropriate procedures rather than, as is commonly believed, a lack of infrastructure. The reopening of the ancient Silk Road to the modern trucking industry has become a reality capable of providing benefits to all who want to drive development, progress and peace in their country and region. TH

“China is the world’s factory and has become a major hub of sea container traffic in the global transport system”

32

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

Michael Nielsen is the International Road Transport Union’s General Delegate based in Brussels. For more information contact [email protected]

TRMI designs integrated software, hardware and network solutions for the future of All Electronic Tolling (AET). From FasTrak® to E-Z Pass®, we provide custom engineering, programming, and manufacturing for niche and enterprise solutions. And our open-design software opens your future to a choice of vendors for expansion or enhancements. Grow forward. Contact TRMI today.

www.trmi.com 845.626.8655

 
    
        ,#.(%'!"#$%! $*%%#+#*,+ !3$!!) &"*+! (&&0#4-&!) &* (%$*"*% *0 5!(&"!00!%(&!) ($$#)!,&+ 0!+-%&#,1 #, "-,)0!)+ *6 6(&(%#&#!+ (,) ( %*++ *6 4#%%#*,+ *6 )*%%(0+ (,,-(%%27
!"#$%! $&#'(&!) *()+#)! ,#&
-&*,*.*-+ /!0(&#*,
,&!%%#1!,& !$",*%*12

    

 
             




  

     

      ! " #$% "%
"$ !
& ' $%
( 
 www.h3bmedia.com

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

33

Food Miles

Stunted growth Thinking Highways’ financial analyst MARGARET PETTIT looks at the European Territorial Cooperation Programme and finds that like with any other major programme, it’s a matter of priorities

In the second and concluding part of her article, Texas DOT’s GRETCHEN STOELTJE examines the inextricably linked stories of the distance your food travels and the damage it causes to the road 34

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

www.h3bmedia.com

Climate Change Food Miles When DAVID SCHONBRUNN read the April/May issue of Thinking Highways he felt compelled to write an article offering his own views on transportation’s impacts onm and solutions for, climate change

Eating up the road (part two)

So, how much did that burger you have just finished actually cost? It may be safe to assume that you haven’t really given it much thought ... wouldn’t it? We pay for cheap food in the form of economic loss to our local agricultural economy. “Get the Farmer Out of the Mud” was the slogan of the early nation-wide push to get farm goods to market, known in Texas as the Farm to Market Road system. In the early 20th century, rural Texas roads were often little more than deep, rutted trenches. Congress authorized the repair and upgrade of rural routes in 1912 enabling farmers to more easily transport and sell the fruits of their labor. Today’s food transport system begs this question, though: What farmers, and what markets? Economist John Ikerd estimates that American farmers, on average, make only about 20 cents of each food dollar spent; the remaining 80 cents going to pay for www.h3bmedia.com

processing, transportation, packing and other marketing costs. “Farmers who sell direct to local customers, on the other hand receive the full retail value, a dollar for each food dollar spent.” And for every dollar a food shopper spends on local food, the local food economy gains about three. States have begun to plug the leaks in their agricultural economies. In August of 2007, the Illinois legislature enacted The Illinois Food, Farms and Jobs Act. The law provides for support of local and organic Illinois farming efforts in the hopes of keeping food dollars within the State, thereby revitalizing the Illinois state economy. Among the findings that support the bill are the facts that food consumed in Illinois traveled 1,500 miles to the state’s consumers, but that only 0.2 per cent of Illinois farm sales comprised food sold directly for in state human consumption. Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

35

Food Miles Numbers that don’t add up

In Texas, the Department of Agriculture’s Go Texan Program already promotes Texas grown-and-raised products, proudly announcing that Texas is the third largest agricultural commodities exporter in the nation. While Texas sells live animals and red meat, wheat and feeds and fodder to out of state buyers, though, as of Fall 2007, only 11 per cent of food available in Central Texas was grown locally. Furthermore, while Texas is the second largest agricultural state in the nation, it surpasses all of the other states in prime farmland loss and is therefore less and less able to feed its own population. What would an increase in direct sales of locally grown food do for the Texas farmer and rancher? For the Texas economy?

Bad air

Measuring the effects of food miles on air quality has been a tricky and often-challenged proposition. The reason is that, in some cases, it actually creates less air pollution overall to produce food sustainably in a remote part of the world and transport it to its point of consumption than it does to grow it locally. Sometimes growing that same food locally requires more energy. For example, one study found that growing a tomato in chilly Britain, out of season and under glass, requires more energy than growing it in sunny Spain and shipping it, by water, to Britain. Therefore, it can be an oversimplification to say that importing or sourcing food from long distances is bad for air quality or for the environment in general. Nevertheless, what can be said about the polluting emissions from conventional, roadway food transport is that reducing food miles would reduce the emissions of food-hauling trucks. Measuring those miles would show the potential amount of that reduction, as it has in previous studies. UK food miles studies showed that food transport produced 19 million tonnes (metric) of carbon dioxide in 2002. Canadian researchers in Waterloo estimate that locally sourcing the foods they studied would result in an annual reduction of 49,485 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions (metric). In Iowa, researchers at the Leopold Center found that locally sourcing just 10 per cent more produce than the state currently does would result in a reduction of Iowa CO2 emissions of 6.7 to 7.9 million pounds. Iowa’s potential reduction, estimated from only a 10 per cent projected shift to local food production, accounts for .13 per cent of total US CO2 emissions from energy and industry for 2006 (6,045 million metric tons.). If other states reduced conventional food transport by 10 per cent or more, that number could increase significantly.

Congestion

What causes congestion? Well, you do.While reducing congestion is the primary focus of state departments of transportation everywhere, actually changing this situation requires a movement that only travelers and freight consumers can truly launch, for they are its first cause. According to the most recent findings from the Texas Transportation Institute, “The 2007 Urban Mobility

36

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

www.h3bmedia.com

JWchedÊi:kjo#Ced_jeh_d]JhW\\_YIW\[jo#JWchedJ[b[f^ejeLWh_#<eYWbB[diI[h_[iZ[b_l[hi^_]^#fh[Y_i_edced_jeh_d]

J[ b [ f ^ e j e  LW h _ # < e Y W b  B [ d i  I [ h _ [ i

\3 +#+&cc<%'$* \3 '&#*&cc<%'$* \3 (&#'&&cc<%'$, JWchedÊi ^_]^#h[iebkj_ed j[b[f^eje b[di i[h_[i e\\[hi W b_d[kf Yel[h_d]WXheWZhWd][e\l_[mi\hecWm_Z[+ccjeWdkbjhW#j[b[# f^eje'&&cc$7bbceZ[bi\[Wjkh[JWchedÊiWif^[h_YWbZ[i_]dm_j^ WZlWdY[Z_cW][gkWb_joXk_bjedJWchedÊio[Whie\[nf[h_[dY[WdZ f[h\ehcWdY[ _d j^[ Z[l[befc[dj WdZ cWdk\WYjkh[ e\ LWh_#<eYWb b[di[i$OekYWdh[boedJWchedÊiWZlWdY[Zefj_YWbj[Y^debe]o$ CeZ[bb_d[kf0')L=++&7I?? \3+#+&cc"'(L='&*&7I?H\3'&#*&cc"')L=(&'&&7I\3(&#'&&cc

\3+#+&cc<%'$*

\3(&#'&&cc<%'$, \3'&#*&cc<%'$*

JWched;khef[=cX> HeX[hj#8eiY^#Ijh$/ +&,-,Abd =[hcWdo

J[b0!*/#(('#/-&)(+#& <Wn0!*/#(('#/-&)(+#*

www.tamron-europe.com

[email protected]

real vision

Inspiring reality Can you see it ?

ÒSmartÓ highways steering drivers to better, safer routes ... tolls adjusting to trafÞc demand ... transit systems integrating seamlessly into the community ... innovations that push the industry forward? By applying our experience and creativity to todayÕs difÞcult mobility problems, and by building partnerships based on respect and trust, PBS&J is helping transportation agencies bring visions like these to reality every day.

Visualize the future. Then call PBS&J. OfÞces throughout the US pbsj.com ¥ 800.477.7275 www.h3bmedia.com

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

37

Xxxxx

I T S C O N N E C T I O N S : S AVING TIME. S AVING LIVES.

E X P E R I E N C E T H E U LT I M AT E I T S E V E N T K`]Û~‚l`ÛNgjd\Û:gf_j]kkÛgfÛ@KJÛYf\Û@KJÛ 8e]ja[Y¿kÛ‡‡…Û8ffmYdÛD]]laf_Û`Yn]Û Z]]fÛ[geZaf]\ÛlgÛ[j]Yl]Ûl`]ÛdYj_]kl•ÛegklÛ \qfYea[Û]n]flÛafÛl`]Ûogjd\Û§ÛYlljY[laf_Û ~‡•‡‡‡Û@KJÛhjg^]kkagfYdkÛo`gÛk]lÛl`]Û klYf\Yj\kÛ^gjÛ^mlmj]Û@KJÛ\]n]dghe]flk

MAKE PLANS TO ATTEND THE 15TH WORLD CONGRESS ON ITS!

¸ Dgj]Ûl`YfÛ‡‡Ûk]kkagfkÛ^]Ylmjaf_Û egj]Ûl`Yfۄ‚‡Ûaf\mkljqÛ]ph]jlkÛYf\Û ogjd\Ûj]fgof]\Ûkh]Yc]jkÛ[gn]jaf_Û YÛZjgY\ÛjYf_]Ûg^Û@KJÛakkm]kÛl`YlÛYj]Û aehgjlYflÛlgÛqgm

¸ M@@ÛKD:Ûg^Ûl`]Û=mlmj]ÛaddmkljYlaf_ÛYÛ transportation management system afÛl`]Ûq]YjÛ‡‡

¸ 8Û_jYf\¤k[Yd]Û]p`aZalagfÛ`YddÛoal`Û ‡‡•‡‡‡ÛkimYj]Û^]]lÛg^Û]p`aZalkÛ ^]Ylmjaf_Ûl`]ÛdYl]klÛl][`fgdg_a]k•Û hjg\m[lkÛYf\Ûk]jna[]k

¸ Lfhj][]\]fl]\Ûl][`fa[YdÛlgmjkÛlgÛ@KJÛ ^Y[adala]kÛafÛYf\ÛYjgmf\ÛE]oÛPgjcÛ:alq

¸ Can]Û\]egfkljYlagfkÛg^ÛY[lan]Û

¸ Caeald]kkÛf]logjcaf_Ûghhgjlmfala]kÛ

M@@¤ZYk]\ÛkY^]lqÛkqkl]ekÛYf\Ûgl`]jÛ \qfYea[Û@KJÛYhhda[YlagfkÛYdgf_Ûl`]Û klj]]lkÛYf\Û`a_`oYqkÛg^ÛE]oÛPgjc

oal`ÛYfÛafl]jfYlagfYdÛYm\a]f[]ÛafÛ YÛogjd\¤[dYkkÛ[alqÛg^ÛZ]Ymlq•Û[mdlmj]Û Yf\Û^mf

EFM
WWW.ITSWORLDCONGRESS.ORG

Europe Tel: +32.2.626.11.32 Fax: +32.2.626.11.31 E-mail: [email protected]

United States, Canada, South America and Latin America Tel: +1.202.721.4223 Fax: +1.202.484.3483 E-mail: [email protected]

Asia-Pacific Tel: +81.3.5777.1013 Fax: +81.3.3434.1755 E-mail: [email protected]

Food Miles Report,” congestion is at an all time high and getting “worse in urban areas of all sizes.” In Texas, for instance, metropolitan Texans lose up to 58 hours of their time to congestion annually and waste as much as 42 gallons of fuel each year. Given these numbers, travelers and consumers should welcome any information that empowers them to change that situation. Commercial truck traffic makes up as much as 38% of traffic on Texas roadways. Reducing even a small percent of truck travel related to food could have an impact. Another reason to reduce truck traffic on regular roads is to improve safety. Roadway fatalities from crashes involving trucks reached 5,200 in 2005, and of those fatalities, only 803 were truck occupants. The other 4,400 were occupants of lighter vehicles. Reducing the number of trucks on regular roads could save thousands of lives.

Hop that train

Public interest in food sourcing has risen dramatically in recent years, and consumers are now more than ever shopping for local food. Farmer’s Markets, Community Supported Agriculture programs, Food Circles, and institutional food programs that source locally are on the rise. Inspired by authors James McKinnon and Alisa Smith who, for one year ate food sourced from within a 100 mile radius of their home in Vancouver, communities across the country are taking up the 100 Mile Diet Challenge. Restaurants everywhere feature menus that pull from the local food shed, and grocery stores not only sell, but label, locally sourced food. The food magazine franchise Edible Communities now serves 40 North American communities, publishing a seasonal, quarterly magazine named for the community it serves (for example, Edible Austin), and devoted entirely to that area’s local food sources. So prevalent is the phenomenon that the New Oxford American Dictionary declared locavore, or one who eats locally sourced food, the 2007 word of the year. The issue even hit the cover of Time magazine in March of 2007, making it a trend, a craze, even a fashion. But first it is a demand.

much greenhouse gas as a conventional supply chain; 69 per cent “somewhat” or “strongly” agreed that local food is healthier to eat than food that has traveled across the country; and 85 per cent of respondents believed that local food is safe or somewhat safe, while only 12 per cent could say the same for the global food system. Accurate or not, consumer perceptions drive choice and demand. With enough momentum, demands like this have brought about policy changes in ways that governmental regulation cannot. The organic food revolution, with its radical changes in food growing and consuming practices, is one such example. In his 2006 bestseller, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan describes how pesticide-free farming, food co-ops, and a counterculture cuisine based on organic ingredients combined to create an informed consumer base that eventually demanded organic food. The result is an US$11 billion organic marketplace, the product of “consumers and farmers working informally together outside the system, with exactly no help from the government.” Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser credits McDonald’s customers with driving important health and safety changes in the meat packing industry that would have taken Congress years to achieve. Competition for customers between the major fast food chains requires a quick responsiveness to consumer demand, and McDonald’s consumers were demanding healthier food. In response McDonald’s began pressuring their suppliers to deliver ground beef that was free of lethal pathogens. Suppliers increased investment in new equipment and microbial testing, and began producing a less toxic beef supply to all American consumers, not just McDonald’s customers. If consumers do wield the power to make change, state governments might want to consider riding this wave of consumer interest in food sourcing by measuring those food miles and naming the implications. Clearly, some of these food miles are necessary since not all regions can grow food in equal measure. However, at this point in the transportation story, it is worth investigating all possibly extraneous food miles traveled. If we measure food miles, calculate the costs, and publicize results, people might actually make different choices.

“Measuring the effects of food miles on air quality has been a tricky and often challenged proposition”

Agents for change

A September 2007 study conducted by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture surveyed 500 consumers on how and where food is sourced, and the corresponding environmental impacts. The study concluded that consumer concerns about food safety, food sourcing, and the environmental impact and cost of the current food system have grown so quickly that the issue warrants a multi-agency investigation into our food supply chains. The results are telling. Almost half of the respondents were willing to pay a 10 to 30 per cent premium for food produced in a food supply chain that emitted half as www.h3bmedia.com

Follow that French fry

A publicized study that evaluated and revealed the hidden costs of our current food transport system would enable consumers to weigh the external costs against the benefits and decide for themselves whether they want to pay those costs. A collaborative effort between Departments of Transportation, of Agriculture, of Health, of Economic Development, and of Environmental Quality could show that something as tangible and personal as food, and as abstract and impersonal as roads, are directly conThinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

39

Food Miles nected, at direct cost to the traveling and eating public. Following in Britain’s congestion-busting footsteps, states could then create an Annual Food Transport Indicator that would monitor food miles on a yearly basis. A yearly measurement could track changes and monitor progress between transportation infrastructure, vehicle technology, fuel efficiency, agricultural activity, and consumer behavior. And then what? Assuming a food miles study reveals opportunities for positive change, what sort of solutions should we pursue to implement these changes? A number of possible approaches come to mind, falling into one of two categories: those practices that cover the full costs of long distance food transport, and those that reduce the number of food-bearing trucks on the roads.

ers who buy those goods. Under such a user fee scheme, a coffee aficionado who favors a Kenyan bean would pay the shipping costs for that remotely sourced import, while a McDonald’s patron would pay the true costs of a Big Mac whose many ingredients traversed the country perhaps more than once. Neither would pay the transport costs of the other’s commodities, as they do today. On the other hand, some TOTs may be so efficient for trucks that at least some large trucking firms would be willing to pay tolls. A 2002 Reason Foundation policy study, estimated that self-financing Toll Truckways can be designed so specifically for longer combination vehicles (where a single driver carries several times the state-permitted payload) that even after paying tolls, companies can still turn a healthy profit.

Solutions that charge for the roads we use

Local Sourcing and Ecolabeling Labeling food with a Food Miles count could incentivize road-friendly consumer behavior. Food ecolabeling programs are gaining popularity in Europe and the US and can identify a food’s origin, environmental or social impact, or show miles traveled and transportation mode used. The 2002 Farm Bill included a Country of Origin Labeling requirement, and a Lawrence, Kansas supermarket, the Community Mercantile (the Merc) has begun its own labeling program called Miles to the Merc that labels the distances food travels to its shelves. Denmark has even been experimenting with a secondary bar code database that shows images of the farm where meat is raised, information on an animal’s genetics, feed, medication and slaughter date. Consumers who know how far food has traveled will know how many road miles their choices consume and can more easily choose food that travels shorter distances to reach them.

“More than ever before, Americans take for granted buying imported fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers at their local supermarkets; next-day delivery of goods purchased over the Internet; and tracking express packages online to know their whereabouts at any given time.” So says the United States Department of Transportation in its 2006 analysis of freight movement, “Freight in America: A New National Picture.” The same report notes that trucking is the shipping choice for many businesses and is increasing its market share. The anticipated increase in freight traffic, taken together with the shrinking transportation budgets of almost every state, suggests that one major response to measuring the external costs of food transport is to charge the full transportation costs of our food shipments by tolling the food miles used. Tolling is a user fee approach, as wildly unpopular a funding approach with most consumers as a gas tax increase. Tolling might become more appealing, however, when considered alongside the true costs of food transport. The Truck Only Toll lane (TOT) is one type of tolling scheme currently under consideration in the US by some State and Federal governments. TOTs come in a number of forms. They may be regular lanes on existing roadways converted into truck lanes and separated from other traffic by a barrier; lanes elevated above existing roadways; or new construction projects, dedicated to truck traffic alone. The idea in all cases is to separate truck traffic from other traffic and to design roads with the needs of trucks and truckers in mind. The trucking industry understandably might not want to absorb costs they would incur under a tolled scheme. Shippers exist not for their own sake, but to satisfy the appetites of consumers who purchase the goods trucks bear. So any costs imposed on shippers should be passed on to those who profit most from long-distance trucking: consumers. When goods are priced to include the actual shipping cost, prices will go up, but will only be paid by consum-

Solutions that reduce our appetite for roads

“The New Oxford American Dictionary declared locavore, one who eats locally sourced food, the 2007 Road-to-Rail Shift word of the year” Though rail played a leading role in the

40

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

nation’s early infrastructure development, by 2000 it moved only 16 per cent of the nation’s freight; 78 per cent went by truck. By 1996, 93 per cent of fresh produce transported between cities in the US traveled by truck. Perhaps it is time to relieve our roadways and revitalize our rail lines. Shifting food transport to rail shares the same advantages as shifting any freight to rail: trains emit significantly less pollution, cause far fewer fatalities, cause little highway congestion and consume far less fuel than trucks. Rail is not as timely as truck transport, so fresh food may spoil more easily traveling by rail. However, increasing local production of fresh food could reduce the need to transport fresh food over long distances. Transport Collaboration and Out of Hours Deliveries Transport collaboration is a collaboration between shippers to share the leg of a trip when neither has a full load. A 2007 UK study shows that by combining collaboration between vertical supply chain partners and horiwww.h3bmedia.com

Food Miles zontal collaboration between other logistics service providers, shippers can more easily comply with new, transport-friendly regulation, and can also reduce transport costs. Out of Hours Deliveries, specific to urban environments, help reduce urban congestion during business hours by shifting freight deliveries to nonbusiness hours. Food has always been a form of cultural exchange, a way to learn about people in other parts of the world. It is hard to argue with the educational benefits of eating a new dish and knowing its cultural origins, different from your own. Part of that education, however, is to discover what can actually be grown in one’s own backyard.What cannot be grown locally becomes a treat we pay for, rather than an everyday entitlement we expect.

One apple at a time

“The solutions to this problem will require commitment by the public, and by national, state and local officials to increase investment levels and identify projects,programs and policies that can achieve mobility goals.” As congestion experts Tim Lomax and David Shrank point out, the solution to our mobility problems will be a collaborative effort between the public and the government, applied to more than one area of change. Food transport is one of those areas, and government is beginning to play its part. Cities and counties have been declaring official local eating days and weeks and months for the last couple of years. Recently Humboldt County, California joined the ranks of official local eaters when the County Board of Supervisors announced in 2007 that September was Local Foods Month and Austin, Texas proclaimed 8-15 December Eat Local Week. In British Columbia, Vancouver is taking local eating to a whole new level. The City Council will soon consider a proposal to extend a pre-existing set of “urban agriculture” guidelines for high density developments to all new multifamily projects in Vancouver. Those guidelines include edible landscaping and food-producing gardens in shared garden plots, and on rooftops and balconies. If knowledge is power, why not further arm consumers with information about how their transportation dollars are supporting the food system, and let them decide whether and how they want to spend those dollars? In 2002 trucks bore 90 per cent of the dollar value of US freight and the nation’s freight tonnage is expected to increase nearly 70 per cent by 2020. Learning the true cost of food miles could trigger a reduction in the American consumer’s appetite for freight in general. For a nation facing a staggering transportation funding gap, measuring food miles might start to look like part of the solution. TH Gretchen Stoeltje works for Texas Department of Transportation’s Government and Public Affairs Division. She can be emailed at [email protected] For an exhaustive list of references for both parts of this article, please email [email protected] www.h3bmedia.com

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

41

Climate Change

A TIME FOR Stunted ACTION... growth

Experts from across North America convened to at the University of Massachusetts’ Amherst campus to address climate change and transportation and explored transport’s impact on the environment and climate change’s impact on transportation. AMY ZUCKERMAN reports Thinking Highways’ financial analyst MARGARET PETTIT looks at the Territorial For two days at the end of May globalEuropean experts from academia, government and industry explored one Cooperation Programme and finds that like with of the most urgent issues of our time - climate change any other major programme, it’s a matter of and transportation - as part of H3B Media’s Climate priorities Change Think Tank: Transportation’s Impacts & Solutions, held on May 29 and 30 at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Speakers focused on both the impact of transportrelated emissions on climate change and ways that severe weather – the by-product of climate change – could severely affect traffic infrastructure. Also presented were an array of solutions to reduce traffic congestion and idling, which create greenhouse gases. These range from deploying traffic management technology to developing alternative fuels, and promoting public policy changes to address everything from driving habits, to congestion pricing, smart growth and urban planning. Given that climate experts estimate that all forms of transportation contribute roughly 28 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions that are responsible for climate change, Thinking Highways plans ongoing coverage of this topic and expects to tap the think tank speakers and others for their knowledge and insights. The following is a synthesis of their warnings and recommendations.

Ray of hope?

Raymond S. Bradley, a professor in the Department of Geosciences at UMass Amherst and director of the Climate System Research Center, a campus-based facility that focuses on the climate system, climatic variability

42

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

and global change issues, is one of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists who recently shared the Nobel Prize with former vice president Al Gore for collected work on global warming. Bradley works hard to make the science behind climate change (or global warming to give its more populist name) intelligible to lay people and to point out the www.h3bmedia.com

Climate Change When DAVID SCHONBRUNN read the April/May issue of Thinking Highways he felt compelled to write an article offering his own views on transportation’s impacts onm and solutions for, climate change

Nobel Prize-winning Prof Ray Bradley holds court via video

Quixote Corp’s Tim O’Leary (above) Resource System Group’s Peter Plumeau (below)

RITA director Paul Brubaker

Joyce Wenger (Booz Allen Hamilton) and Mike Replogle (Environmental Defense)

www.h3bmedia.com

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

43

Climate Change

TRANSDEF’s David Schonbrunn: “I hope the people in that room realise that they can make a difference”

potential for its disastrous impact on the world’s transportation infrastructure as he says the world experiences more “extreme weather resulting from the heating of the tropical oceans.” Bradley predicts the rise in global temperature to continue “for the foreseeable future, even if carbon dioxide levels were to be dramatically stabilized. Transportation is closely involved in this matter, through the contributions that transportation makes to the ‘excess’ greenhouse gases and because more unusual climatic conditions in the future will affect transportation infrastructure. In particular,” he explained via a video recorded especially for the event, “episodes of heavier rainfall, more severe weather events, and increased coastal flooding (due to sea-level rise and more intense storms) will require long-term planning. In addition, strategic transportation investments can help to reduce the demand for fossil fuels, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and thus be a part of the overall solution to the problem of global warming.” “The program could not be more timely,” said John Collura, a key developer of the think tank program, and director of the University of Massachusetts Transportation Center. Nationally known for his work in transportation engineering and traffic management, as well as a UMass Amherst Professor of Environmental and Civil Engineering, Collura says that transportation planners, engineers and operators are “rethinking, and in some instances changing the methods they use to provide safe and efficient transportation services” in reaction to the serious information scientists are reporting on the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the world’s climate. However, despite the recent release of two key federal reports pointing to a “looming disaster” for highway

44

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

Congressman John Olver gave the thought-provoking keynote speech

and transportation infrastructures in the wake of new findings about climate change, Collura says there is a huge need to build awareness of climate change so that state departments of transportation, local departments of public works and civil engineers start factoring changing weather patterns into their maintenance programs. Echoing report findings, Collura is not currently finding many practitioners making the connection between climate change and their current missions to build and maintain infrastructure.

A hard rain’s going to fall...

Like Collura, David Ahlfeld, Ph.D, PE Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Umass, Amherst, is concerned to raise awareness with practitioners about transportation infrastructure’s vulnerability to extreme weather events. “From flooded road surfaces to collapsed bridges, transportation facilities can be interrupted and destroyed by extremes in precipitation intensity and depth,” he said. He warned that a changing climate “is altering the means and extremes of hydrologic flows, www.h3bmedia.com

Climate Change bringing into question the validity of the stationarity (25-year storm) assumption. More frequent extreme events will lead to more frequent failure of transportation systems.” Suggesting that these changes “may require innovative design procedures for new construction,” he said “in addition, substantial retrofitting of existing drainage infrastructure may be required.” Ahlfeld is concerned with the “vulnerability of transportation infrastructure to extreme events; recent trends and forecasts for future changes in the frequency of extreme events, and current thinking on how to incorporate these trends into infrastructure design.”

Overselling the idea

Mike Replogle in full flow

Speakers and delegates listened intently

Michael Replogle, Transportation Director for the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. is concerned to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through traffic management that’s coupled with smart growth and envisions a wide array of solutions. These range from building “greener, less polluting, more fuel efficient cars, trucks, locomotives, and ships” to the “promise for new technologies to cut the carbon content of fuels.” However, he warns that in the “near-term, such technology fixes will not deliver large reductions in greenhouse pollution. The auto industry faces financial challenges retooling and adapting to changing markets. Vehicles and fueling infrastructure, once sold, stay in use, often for decades. In many cases, the least expensive and most readily available way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to find ways to grow the world’s communities and economies while reducing the amount of driving” as “over-sold techno fixes like biofuels, electric vehicles, and hydrogen-fueled transportation, are at least a decade or two away from delivering major greenhouse gas reductions.” “Smarter traffic management,” said Replogle, “has potential to reduce the amount of driving and to boost the greenhouse gas efficiency of the remaining travel, curbing CO2 emissions. In addition, it can make cities and economies more economically efficient, healthy, and livable.”

State of the (sm)art

Prof John Collura was instrumental in the construction of the speaker program

www.h3bmedia.com

Another smart growth proponent, Joyce Wenger, principal at Booz Allen Hamilton, based in McLean,Va. often offers insights into linking traffic congestion solutions to climate change. Responsible for Booz Allen’s federal transportation business, Wenger considers congestion mitigation and transportation funding “two of the big issues being addressed today.This is generating numerous ideas for solutions that include new policies, processes, and technologies. I suggest that climate change (and other environmental issues that relate to climate change) should be addressed at the same time so that solutions can be balanced across all needs.” Among the policies she advocates are congestion pricing to reduce urban traffic congestion; PPP (public private partnership) agreements on the environment an climate change, and the technologies that support them. Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

45

Climate Change She is concerned to bring together multiple sectors to address these issues. Another advocate of reducing driving while promoting alternative transportation is David Schonbrunn, president of Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Funds (TRANSDEF) in San Rafael, Calif. Like Wenger, he would employ congestion pricing in urban areas as a means of reducing traffic congestion. Schonbrunn argues that reducing emissions from vehicles “will require multiple strategies: increasing the fuel efficiency of vehicles; transitioning to electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles; and building renewable energy power generating facilities to power those vehicles.” He recognizes that his proposals would amount to a “giant U-turn for transportation policy” and force Americans to re-assess auto ownership as a sign of wealth. “Reducing emissions requires an entirely different set of values and expectations,” Schonbrunn said. Calling for a convergence of transportation and land-use planning to create more walkable communities in the future, Schonbrunn also supports locating a stable new source of transportation funding (to replace shrinking gas tax revenues).“

The best laid plans....

Peter Plumeau, director of Policy & Strategy Practice at Resource Systems Group, Inc. in Burlington, Vermont, says for a myriad of reasons climate change is posing “a daunting challenge” for metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs). Even urban areas where there is “strong awareness of climate change” are conflicted about how to address climate change most effectively he said. Plumeau notes that over 30 states have developed statewide climate action plans with specific targets for transportation and other sectors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, many of which “assume very aggressive land use and transportation strategies.” But questions remain about how MPOS and partner agencies will be able to plan for the future while protecting current transport infrastructure, particularly in a mood of budget cuts that force agencies “to do more with less . . .” He advocates rethinking the role of MPOs in regional growth management and land use, and creating “options for how a more integrated regional planning approach might be achieved in various geographic and political settings.” Curbing idling, which reduces emissions, is at the core of Lee Armstrong’s work developing the WAVE (wireless access in vehicular environments) standard. Principal of Armstrong consulting in Southampton, Mass., Armstrong has been a driving force in developing WAVE, which is expected to pave the way for embedded transponders in vehicles that will allow for even more efficient pass-through toll collection and less highway congestion, along with alternative means for drivers to receive traffic information while en route. Tim O’Leary, president of the Intersection Control Group at event sponsor Quixote Corporation, based in Palmetto, Fla , believes that “solving the global climate change crisis requires industry to work on two critical fronts: reducing the green house gases and preparing

46

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

the traveling public for severe weather conditions. . . In order to reduce our dependency on the automobile, efficient methods of mass transportation must be made available.” But he also advocates the use of the “many creative and innovative approaches [that] have been developed to reduce green house gas emissions, including transit signal priority, offering buses and mass transit vehicles priority through crowded urban areas – a proven way of producing more rapid commuting and less idling. O’Leary is also concerned with the need to protect current traffic management infrastructure under severe weather conditions, as well as providing alternate power supplies during outages so traffic technology can function and keep traffic flowing.

Strah poll

With trucks contributing about 8 per cent of that 28 per cent of emissions from vehicles - cars, light trucks and SUVS contributing about 20 per cent - Thomas M Strah, Editor of TT Magazines, publications affiliated with the American Trucking Association (ATA) in Arlington, Va., notes that today’s “new diesel truck engines produce 90 per cent less smog-inducing nitrogen oxides and healththreatening soot than the models of just five years ago.” However, Strah says “this extraordinary clean-air achievement has come at a price . . .a worrisome loss of fuel efficiency. As a result, modern trucks cost more to buy and operate, and they consume as much as 10 per cent more diesel to deliver the same amount of freight.” As public attention is focused on reducing greenhouse

Mike Replogle, Congressman Olver and Diane Doherty of the Western Massachusetts Small Business Development Center

www.h3bmedia.com

(Photo by Lewis Randolph, all other photos by Amy Zuckerman and Kevin Borras)

‘Virtual colleagues’ , H3B Media’s Kevin Borras and Amy Zuckerman with TT Magazines’ Tom Strah actually meet

gases, Strah predicts governments will start addressing regulation of carbon dioxide from diesel truck engines. In fact, he says leaders of the U.S. trucking industry, including top executives of the largest, most influential fleets, recently “decided they would join in, rather than oppose, developing regulations that address CO2 emissions. Further, many are embracing ‘green’ trucking, spurred by customer demands (such as Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble),” Strah explained. But with oil prices surging and alternative fuels and “other power sources for heavy vehicles are barely in their infancy,” Strah noted that shorter-term solutions are needed “that address both oil dependency and greenhouse emissions.” Hard at work developing alternative fuels, John Faber,

co-founder of SunEthanol Inc. based in Hadley, Mass., is commercializing “an exciting new technology for converting a wide array of waste biomass directly into ethanol. This fuel, known as cellulosic ethanol, can be substituted for gasoline, gallon for gallon. But it burns much cleaner than gasoline, which helps to reduce air pollution. It can also be produced domestically from cheap and readily available waste biomass, which ... reduces emissions and helping to combat global warming,” he explained. Joining Faber in discussing the potential for alternative fuels, Al Gullon, principal, Automobiles+Concepts +Environments based in Ottawa, Canada, argues that it’s possible to both save fuel, save lives and crops. “To understand how saving lives can save fuel you must understand that a fairly consistent empirical relationship has been established between the numbers of (accidents) ... and energy-wasting, braking applications by drivers not involved in the original incident ... I am proposing inexpensive solutions which would cut the fatality rate dramatically and thus hugely reduce the fuel consumption of the motor vehicle fleet.” At the same time, Gullon is promoting awareness of Iogen Corporation in Ottawa, Ontario, which is building a commercial-scale plant to create cellulose-based ethanol fuel. This process utilizes agricultural waste to create both transportation fuel and electric power, he explained.

Really virtual, not virtually real

And this author, along with Collura and John Mullin, UMass Graduate Dean and an economic development expert, explored how the rise of the virtual work force – where people work from homes or rental offices near their residences – could have a major impact on both traffic patterns and fuel consumption as the Internet and communication technology make it possible to work anywhere. “If I was a transportation planner I’d make sure that officials in my agency recognized that people are changing how they travel. Fixed routes and fixed schedule like bus services won’t meet their needs like they did 50 years ago, because what’s inherent in the virtual world is there are no predictable schedules,” Collura said. TH www.h3bmedia.com www.h3bmedia.com

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

47

Cover Story

Stunted growth Thinking Highways’ financial analyst MARGARET PETTIT looks at the European Territorial Cooperation Programme and finds that like with any other major programme, it’s a matter of priorities

"
CHEEDQDMS
JHMC
NE
B@Q
BQ@RG
@KSNFDSGDQ 48

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

www.h3bmedia.com

Climate Change Cover Story When DAVID SCHONBRUNN read the April/May issue of Thinking Highways he felt compelled to write an article offering his own views on transportation’s impacts onm and solutions for, climate change

www.h3bmedia.com

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

49

Cover Story Microsoft® has been working with the automotive industry since 1995 to move its software technology from the office and the home into our automobiles. In the fall of 2002, they announced “Windows® Automotive” and the introduction of Microsoft.Net-connect, which is directed towards interconnecting in-vehicle electronic devices. Most of the major vehicle manufacturers have accepted Microsoft as the “software of choice” to support the deployment of their advancements in vehicular technology. The initial focus of Microsoft software in vehicles relates to in-vehicle entertainment, vehicle navigation and both internal and external vehicle communications. This includes management of cell phones in vehicles to May-day reporting of accidents upon the detection of the air bag activation signal. Siemens has teamed with Microsoft to provide the invehicle processing infrastructure to support Microsoft embedded software. Thus we are nearing the era where we can “relax because Microsoft Windows-like software will be taking care of us while we drive.” This of course should give us a good feeling - but does it?

Windows of opportunity

Most of us have had years of experience with Microsoft software in our computers from Windows to Windows95 to Windows-Millennium to Windows-XP to WindowsVista. Many of us are still struggling in an effort to transition from Windows-XP to Vista and some of us are purchasing XP to replace Vista that came with our new dual core computer. We have all experienced the“unusual software events” in our PCs (and Macs of course) with the pop-up, “send Microsoft a Report”. Many of us have experienced the

Do we really want Microsoft Windows running our cars? BRUCE ABERNETHY and HAROLD KEELER examine what could happen if the operating system hangs when you’re doing 65 mph on the freeway

50

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

“holes” in the Microsoft software that allow viruses, Trojans, worms, spy-ware of all sorts and who knows what else to get into our computers. The injection of these damaging, foreign bodies through the holes in Microsoft software causes chaos, grief to the user and to the IT service technician and results in a significant cost.

Speaking from experience

Recently we experienced a metamorphic virus that continued to change its characteristics and replicate. None of the conventional virus protection software tools that we had would find and destroy this virus. We were running a recent version of Norton®; however, it is a never- ending game between the generators of malware and generators of protection software. The point to be made is that from years of experience using Microsoft software, perhaps many of us are not comfortable with it managing critical functions of our vehicle while we are driving or it looking after emergency response if we have an accident. When telematics is linked to Windows Automotive software, especially through digital cellular links, then an Internet pathway is established. While VII )Vehicle Infrastructure Integration) communications links are certainly more “trusted” than digital cellular, they still will be linked to computer systems that have linkages into Internet for distribution of traveler information distribution and can be compromised, even with the deployment of firewalls. Like PC security software, there is a continual challenge by malicious people to create new versions of malware that can overcome and defeat firewalls.

Has anyone else thought of this?

So, based on most of our experiences with Microsoft software, possibly we should be concerned with Microsoft in our vehicles as follows: • Software “lock up”: Pull over and press “ctrl+alt+del”. If this does not fix the problem, turn off your engine and “re-start” • What is the software initializations time? Is it like Vista and how long do I have to wait to leave during an emergency? • Do I have to wait for downloads before my car shuts down or do I eat a cold dinner? • Will the virus scan inhibit the emergency messaging from VII and VVI ? • Where is the Operating System’s (OS) “service station”? • Will the Trojan send my driving records to my insurance company? • Have the police embedded a Trojan in my vehicle software to report traffic violation? (Boy, will the Civil Liberties Union have fun with this one!) • How about the police using a “magic packet” to “turn off” my vehicle or gracefully shut it down? • Will the CO/CO2 detector in conjunction with the vehicle software shut the engine down when high levels are detected (even if the sensors are in error)? • Will intrusion detection software “lock me in” upon detection of an intrusion event? www.h3bmedia.com

Cover Story • What do I do when I get the “Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)” fatal error? • Does my Microsoft license come with my vehicle?

Cars for concern

Obviously these are slightly tongue-in-cheek questions that arise out of a person’s typical experience with Microsoft software in office and home computers, but they are all founded in serious concerns. The point to be made is that there are many challenges, especially when transitioning to VII and VVI (vehicle to vehicle). Software reliability is critical and it is still very questionable if instant changes in a human driver’s emergency action can result in confusion to a platoon of vehicles. It is also questionable related to action delay times as software processes messages and reads and processes in-vehicle sensor information. Those that are familiar with video codec understand the several hundred millisecond delays comparing digital video to analog video (all caused by the compression/decompression processing time).

“Who is responsible for corrupted software in a vehicle that causes an accident?” While one would not argue that a dual-core and quadcore computer certainly has more processing power compared with a single core processor, there is operating system overhead to manage task assignments to multiple processors and to exchange information between processors. Certainly Vista is a much larger software program compared with XP®, but XP initializes much faster in a single core processor compared with Vista® in a multi-core processor. Real-time management and control of a vehicle is much different than executing office software in a general purpose computer. Real-time computing requires time critical execution. Overhead processing delays can not be tolerated. The control software must be protected from changes caused by hardware malfunctions, electromagnetic interference, data transmission errors and malware injected from external sources. Who is responsible for corrupted software in a vehicle that causes an accident? Most likely “trial lawyers” will line up to represent an injured person should vulnerabilities be identified in in-vehicle software responsible for the operational safety of the vehicle. I await Mr Gates’s response to that with baited breath! TH Bruce Abernethy is principal of Arcadis. Harold Keeler, a certified Microsoft software engineer,is the firm’s project intelligent systems specialist. Based in Allen, Texas, they are contactable via email at [email protected] www.h3bmedia.com

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

51

Border Security

Stunted growth Thinking Highways’ financial analyst MARGARET PETTIT looks at the European Territorial Cooperation Programme and finds that like with any other major programme, it’s a matter of priorities

52

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

www.h3bmedia.com

Climate Change Border Security

No going back...

When DAVID SCHONBRUNN read the April/May issue of Thinking Highways he felt compelled to write an article offering his own views on transportation’s impacts onm and solutions for, climate change

LEE J NELSON on the US’s revamped border security program designed to protect the country and its citizens. A combination of technology, personnel, infrastructure and co-operation is needed...

Last November, the US Government Accountability Office (Washington, DC) published its Border Security Report to Congressional Requesters. The authors made the principal observation that: “US Customs and Border Protection (CBP; Washington, DC) faces a much greater challenge to identify and screen individuals at land ports-of-entry, in part because of the lack of advance traveler information and the high volume of traffic at many locations. Unlike travelers who enter the country at airports, travelers entering through land ports-of-entry can arrive at virtually any time and may present thousands of different forms of documentation, ranging from oral declarations of US or Canadian citizenship, driver’s licenses, birth certificates, passports, visas, permanent resident cards or US military identity cards.”

A new declaration

On the heels of that advisory, CBP pronounced that US and Canadian citizens no longer would be able to establish identity and nationality exclusively by oral declaration. Instead, each traveler over 19 years of age entering the US via a land-based port-of-entry must present an approved document. Anyone unable to comply could be delayed by CBP officers as they attempt to verify the person and his/her citizenship. To strengthen US border security while facilitating entry for citizens and legitimate visitors, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 created the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI). By requiring standardized documentation for everyone entering the US,WHTI aids the Department of Homeland Security (DHS; Washington, DC) and CBP in identifying travelers more quickly and reliably. www.h3bmedia.com

The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative

Areas which fall under WHTI are the US, Canada, Mexico and 17 Caribbean locales (Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, the Bahamas, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, the Netherlands Antilles, St Kitts and Nevis, Santa Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Turks and Caicos Islands). Surprisingly, what constitutes WHTI-compliant proof surpasses just a passport and - as we go to press - also includes: • A Trusted Traveler Card (NEXUS, SENTRI or FAST) • An Enhanced Driver’s License (when available) • A Native American Tribal Photo-IDCard • An Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) Card • An Enhanced Tribal Card • Form I-872 American Indian Card • US Military Identification with Military Travel Orders • US Merchant Mariner Document (Z-Card) • A US Passport Card. Incidentally, US citizens directly traveling to or returning from a US territory (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, Swains Island and the US Virgin Islands) are considered never to have left the US and, at least for the time being, are not governed by WHTI. Established in 2002 as part of the Shared Border Accord, NEXUS is a partnership between CBP and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA; Ottawa, Ontario) that promotes legitimate trade and travel, vital to both economies. The program allows pre-screened, low-risk travelers to be processed with minimal delay at Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

53

Border Security

designated high volume border-crossing highway lanes, at special kiosks, at Canadian Preclearance International Airports and at certain maritime locations. Approved applicants are issued a photo-identification/ proximity card. The Secure Electronic Network for Travelers Rapid Inspection (SENTRI) border management process, instituted in 1995, accelerates examinations and expedites entry for certain pre-enrolled visitors. Identifying persons who pose little security risk, the system confirms their low-threat status and re-screens those accepted participants and their vehicles, each and every time they enter the US. When an approved international traveler approaches the border in a dedicated SENTRI lane, the automobile automatically is recognized (by a license plate reader) and passengers’ identities are verified. The latter is accomplished with records maintained in a SENTRI registration database (which contains digitized facial photographs), together with encoded magnetic stripe identification cards and officers’ visual authentications.

Hard and fast method

The Free and Secure Trade (FAST) Drive Program, an outgrowth of the Smart Border Declaration, is administered jointly by CBP and CBSA. Since inception in late2002, enrolled commercial motor vehicle operators receive an identification card, are authorized to use dedicated FAST lanes and typically enjoy accelerated customs and immigration processing when crossing US-Canadian and US-Mexican borders. A State or Provincially-issued Enhanced Driver’s License (EDL) can provide both proof of identity as well as citizenship. An EDL makes it quicker and easier to cross back into the US because it employs an embedded radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip and a machine-readable barcode, either of which facilitates access for CBP officials to biographic and biometric data stored in secure government databases. Several jurisdictions (Arizona, California, Michigan, New York,

54

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

Texas, Vermont and British Columbia) are pursuing development of EDLs. Farthest along are Washington State which issued its first EDL ON 22 January 2008 and British Columbia - in co-operation with CBSA and Citizenship and Immigration Canada (Ottawa, Ontario) which released an initial lot of five hundred earlier this year. By next Spring, British Columbia officials expect EDLs to become standard issue. A Native American Tribal Photo-Identification Card, an Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) Card and an Enhanced Tribal Card (with RFID tag, when available) - each with an affixed photograph - are considered WHTI-compliant. Additionally, members of the Kickapoo Band of Texas and the Tribe of Oklahoma may present an American Indian Card (Form I-872), issued by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (Washington, DC). A US Military Identification with Active Travel Orders and a US Merchant Mariner Document (Z-Card) round out the short list of acceptable credentials under current WHTI guidelines and replace more than 8000 documents which previously were permissible, according to DHS.

The Passport Card

The concept of Passport Cards came about in response to petitions from border community residents for a less expensive and more portable alternative to traditional passport books. US Passport Card applications presently are being accepted and, based on current projections, the Department of State (Washington, DC) expects the Cards to be in full production by summertime. Passport Cards only will be valid for land and sea travel between the US and Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda. Like EDLs, Passport Cards will employ passive vicinity RFID technology. Manual swiping through card readers will be unnecessary since the www.h3bmedia.com

Border Security chips can be interrogated, wirelessly, from distances up to 30 feet (9 meters). Ann Barrett, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Passport Services, said, “As people are approaching a port of inspection, they can show the Card to the reader and by the time they get to the inspector, all the information will have been verified and they can be waved on through”. Fears of privacy invasion notwithstanding, RFID technology has been in use for more than a decade in Canada and Mexico. And, the State Department affirms that security protection will be integral to the wallet-sized Cards. Cutting-edge anti-forgery and anti-counterfeiting also will be included.

What’s in store

© Digimarc Corporation

Phase-in of the above changes began in January. It marked the beginning of a transition period, intended to prepare the public for full-blown WHTI implementation, slated for 1 June 2009. At that time, travelers will be required to present a single WHTI-compliant document (denoting both citizenship and identity) when seeking entry into the US through a land or sea border. WHTI’s secure document requirement already is in place for persons arriving by air. RFID technology forms the core of EDLs, Enhanced Tribal Cards and Passport Cards. The Departments of State and Homeland Security recently allotted more than US$160m (€103m) for electronic identification using RFID to augment border crossing systems. The State Department awarded a five-year, US$99.3m (€63.8m) contract for Passport Cards to a team com-

prised of General Dynamics Information Technology (Fairfax, Virginia), L-1 Identity Solutions, Inc. (Stamford, Connecticut) and SI International, Inc. (Reston, Virginia). Those organizations are providing electronic chips, card stock, printers and software plus incorporating Passport Cards into the existing procedures used to generate US Passports. Intermec Technologies Corporation (Everett, Washington) is supplying RFID readers. And, as a sub-contractor to Boeing Integrated Defense Systems (Saint Louis, Missouri), Unisys Global Public Sector (Reston,Virginia) received a task order to deploy and manage the card reading system and furnish operations, maintenance and help desk services. That baseyear transaction is valued at US$37.2m (€24.1m) and could approach US$62m (€40.2m), if the Government exercises all options. Perceptics LLC’s (Knoxville, Tennessee) License Plate Reader automatically identifies, reads and records each entering vehicle’s license plate. That information is queried against a complex of domestic and international law enforcement databases (refer to Thinking Highways, November/December 2007) to aid in distinguishing high-risk travelers, generating accurate statistics and updating existing records. Those captured data are shared with other CBP systems and retained locally so future searches can be performed even more quickly and easily. CBP Commissioner W. Ralph Basham called technology deployment (see sidebar), a “tremendous step [toward] more efficient borders which will allow a more convenient crossing experience, as well as contributing

www.h3bmedia.com

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

55

Border Security to the overall security of our nation by knowing the identity and citizenship of every traveler.”

SBInet and the Secure Border Initiative

The Secure Border Initiative (SBI), established on 2 November 2005, is a multi-year plan to ensure legal entry and exit of people and goods, together with enforcement of immigration, customs and agriculture laws at US borders, within the country and abroad. A critical component of the strategy is SBInet, a comprehensive means for transforming border management. Fielding the most effective and proven technologies, infrastructure, staffing and response platforms - and integrating them into an all-inclusive security suite remain a key objective. By extending requisite resources and capabilities, the SBInet Program Management Office (Washington, DC) buttresses DHS’ mission to bring effective control to US borders. SBI’s seven-year strategic plan (through 2012) outlines how SBInet is to equip frontline agents and officers with the resources required to achieve exceptional border security. The system and services overseen and managed by Unisys represent “...a logical next step in the overall effort to secure the US borders. The SBInet program... is designed to help monitor and secure the border between official points-of-entry. WHTI will cover the entry points, themselves. Together, they create a high-tech, comprehensive system designed to enhance security at US borders,” opined Greg Baroni, Senior VP and President of Unisys’ Federal Systems.

On the horizon

President Bush’s fiscal year 2009 budget request for DHS - roughly US$50.5billion (€32.3billion) - is a 6.8 per cent increase over 2008 funding. The appeal targets areas which are deemed essential to preserving freedom and privacy, meeting future challenges and fulfilling the mission of securing America. Among the many emerging and evolving initiatives is US$140m (€90m) to support final rollout of WHTI. The President also asked for an extra US$442.4m (€283.1m) to hire, train and equip 2200 more Border Patrol Agents... an advancement toward achieving CBP’s stated goal of doubling its ranks (compared to January, 2001) by year’s end. In the past, the State Department admitted to being somewhat overwhelmed by new applications for US passports. Wait-times for US citizens to obtain a WHTIcompliant Electronic Passport (e-passport book) is on the order of four weeks. Readers planning to attend the October International ITS Conference & Expo in Shanghai, China, would do well submit their applications as soon as possible. TH Independent analyst and Thinking Highways’ Contributing Editor, Lee J. Nelson, is at the forefront of high-performance electronic imaging applications for the transportation industry. Contact him at: +1-703-8930744, [email protected] or www.garlic.com/biz

56

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

SIDEBAR The Department of Homeland Security, together with Customs and Border Protection, are employing personnel, technology, infrastructure and response capabilities to gain effective control of United States’ land and maritime borders. Established on 2 November, 2005, the Secure Border Initiative’s multi-year plan is well underway with installations at the 39 land-based ports-of-entry which process the largest annual volume of travelers.Those portals account for 95 percent of all cross-border traffic. In order of most-to-least busy, they are: • San Ysidro, California • El Paso,Texas • Brownsville,Texas • Hidalgo,Texas • Laredo,Texas • Buffalo/Niagara Falls, New York • Otay Mesa, California • Calexico, California • Detroit, Michigan • Nogales, Arizona • Eagle Pass,Texas • San Luis, Arizona • Calexico East, California • Blaine, Washington • Douglas, Arizona • Del Rio,Texas • Port Huron, Michigan • Champlain-Rouses Point, New York • Roma,Texas • Calais, Maine • Progresso,Texas • Rio Grande City,Texas • Tecate, California • Massena, New York • Point Roberts, Washington • Presidio,Texas • Sault Saint Marie, Michigan • Andrade, California • Alexandria Bay, New York • Sumas, Washington • Fabens,Texas • Naco, Arizona • Derby Line,Vermont • Lukeville, Arizona • Madawaska, Maine • International Falls, Minnesota • Columbus, New Mexico • Lynden, Washington • Highgate Springs,Vermont

;VbVhHnhiZb# I]ZcZlldgaYd[igV[ÒXXdcigda#

I=G:: HNHI:BH ;DG 6 8DBEA:I: 8DCIGDA HI6G*%% H^c\aZ"iZX]cdad\nVWdkZ" \gdjcYigV[ÒXXdcigdahnhiZb BV^c[jcXi^dch ™H^c\aZb^XgdlVkZiZX]cdad\n ™KZ]^XaZXaVhh^ÒXVi^dc^c. &XaVhhZh ™9ZiZXi^dcd[igV[ÒXXdcY^i^dch ™7^Y^gZXi^dcVakZ]^XaZbdc^idg^c\ ™=^\]YViVhidgV\ZXVeVX^in ™9ViVigVchb^hh^dck^V:I=:GC:I!  <EGHdgI:IG6 ™7j^ai"^cL:7HZgkZg

BE<*%%:KD LZVi]ZgXdcigda VcY^XZlVgc^c\hnhiZb BV^c[jcXi^dch ™<^kZhgZa^VWaZVcYegZX^hZ   ^c[dgbVi^dcdclZVi]ZgVcYgdVY  hjg[VXZXdcY^i^dch ™<^kZhVYkVcXZlVgc^c\d[ediZci^Vaan  ]VoVgYdjhXdcY^i^dch[dggdVYjhZgh ™ BV`Zh^iedhh^WaZidVXi^kViZadXVa  YVc\ZglVgc^c\h^\ch ™ :meVcYVWaZl^i]igV[ÒXbdc^idg^c\  [jcXi^dchVcYXVgYh ™;ZVijgZhhde]^hi^XViZYY^V\cdh^h  [jcXi^dchi]Vih^bea^[nVcYh]dgiZc  bV^ciZcVcXZdeZgVi^dch

E<J>9: 8VgeVg`\j^YVcXZhnhiZb BV^c[jcXi^dch ™ GZYjXi^dcd[ÆeVgVh^iZigV[ÒXÇaZVY^c\  idgZYjXi^dcd[cd^hZVcYV^gedaaji^dc ™BdgZZ[ÒX^ZcijhZd[VkV^aVWaZ  eVg`^c\heVXZh ™GZYjXi^dcd[igV[ÒX_VbhVcYfjZjZh ™GZYjXi^dc^ci]ZcjbWZgd[   VXX^YZcihXVjhZYWnVWhZci"b^cYZY  Yg^kZghadd`^c\[dgeVg`^c\heVXZh ™Edhh^W^a^inidegdk^YZVaagdVYjhZgh  l^i]Z[ÒX^ZciVcY^bbZY^ViZ   ^c[dgbVi^dcdcigV[ÒXVhlZaaVh  dcejWa^XZkZcih

H[cej[Z[l_Y[ioij[ci \ehj^[[dl_hedc[dj mmm$\WcWiioij[c$_j

www.h3bmedia.com

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

57

VII

Stunted growth How ready are we? Thinking Highways’ financial analyst MARGARET PETTIT looks at the European Territorial Cooperation Programme and finds that like with any other major programme, it’s a matter of priorities

Is the time when we no longer need roadside infrastructure fast approaching or is it still some way off? Who better to ask than members of the International Benefits, Evaluation and Costs Working Group.... It’s a concept that goes by many names “vehicle infrastructure information” or “VII” in the US, “co-operative vehicle infrastructure systems (CVIS)” or “vehicle infrastructure co-operation (VIC)” in Europe. Other synonyms are “car to infrastructure (C2I)” and “car to anything (C2X).” By any name, it is a cooperative effort among regional, Federal and local departments of transportation, and automobile and in-vehicle equipment manufacturers. With its vision of every vehicle and every piece of infrastructure collecting, transmitting, receiving, and

58

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

processing information, the potential impact of VII/VIC is enormous. Data transmitted from roadside to vehicle could warn a driver that it is not safe to enter an intersection. Vehicles could serve as data collectors and anonymously transmit traffic and road condition from every major road within the transportation network, finally achieving the long-elusive dream of universal instrumentation. A commercial vehicle driver could be informed that, based on his current speed and route, a truck parking space has been reserved for him at the location he will be when his hours-of-service for that day will expire. www.h3bmedia.com

Climate Change VII

But, in this new environment, will we even need roadside infrastructure at all? Recently, members of IBEC – the International Benefits, Evaluation and Costs (IBEC) Working Group, a group of over 350 ITS professionals from over 40 countries dedicated to information exchange on ITS evaluation methods and results – weighed in on this question. None of the IBEC members responding said that roadside infrastructure could be eliminated entirely, but many argued that much less of it would be needed in the future. About the closest anyone came to saying “No” was Glenn Havinoviski, Associate Vice President at HNTB Corporation: “I hope that public agencies are not master-planning dynamic message sign installations 20 years out in the future.” All other responders, and even Havinoviski himself, provided some variation on the answer “Yes, but…” Jack Opiola, Principal Consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton in the UK said:“The current set of overhead signage, lane signals, cameras, traffic signals and other sensors will still be needed both for unequipped vehicles and for legal purposes.” Several respondents mentioned the permanent need for roadside infrastructure to perform safety-critical functions which must be available to the drivers of all vehicles, both equipped and unequipped with in-vehicle systems. Said Tim McGuckin, Executive Director of OmniAir Consortium in the US: “Right now, I don’t see V2V [vehicle-to-vehicle] communications as being robust enough www.h3bmedia.com

When DAVID SCHONBRUNN to replace a CICAS [cooperative intersection collision avoidance system], for instance.” read the April/May issue of Several respondents also mentioned the rate of comThinking Highways plete turnover of the vehicle fleet, whichhe takesfelt about 15 tocompelled 20 years, as a factor the need an for roadside infratoin write article structure. Mark Cartwright, Director at Centaur Conoffering his own views on sulting in the U.K. noted: “Infrastructure will only begin transportation’s impacts to decline at the stage that it is already probably useless, i.e., adds no marginal benefit and is fully onm and solutionsaccepted for, by a substantial majority of people as adding no marginal climate change benefit.” Cartwright added: “This is a very long way off, I suspect.” Several respondents urged those debating this question not to forget about vulnerable populations. Paul Vorster, Executive Director of ITS South Africa extolled his colleagues to remember countries, such as his own, whose economies are in transition and that are just now trying to tackle a backlog created by years of road infrastructure neglect. Vorster predicted that South Africa will not be making the leap to all-wireless transport anytime soon. “We have a dichotomy. One part of our country is high-tech, state-of-the-art; other parts are less than low-tech.” Many respondents predicted that, while roadside infrastructure would still be needed in the future, we would need less of it and it would take a different form. Jacques Nouvier, Head of the Traffic and Telematics Unit at CERTU in France said:“Several devices, such as loops, will be progressively replaced by other, more sophisticated means (e.g., phones, license plate recognition, etc.)” IBEC members came to the conclusion that, yes, roadside infrastructure will still be needed in the future (in the next 20 years or so). But, we will need less of it and this infrastructure will be different than what is in the field currently. The roadside infrastructure will enable wireless communications and also serve as a foundation for safety-critical applications. This is in contrast to vehicle-based equipment that will inform the driver. IBEC is sponsoring a one-day workshop on VII/VIC in conjunction on the 2008 ITS World Congress to be held in New York City, New York, USA on Sunday, November 16, 2008 at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers. The workshop will look at what the U.S., Europe and Japan are doing in the area of VII/VIC, what are the VII/VIC deployment challenges and how can these challenges be overcome, what are the costs and benefits of VII/VIC, and how can the international ITS community work together to share information on evaluation results. The registration fee for the workshop is US$75 and participants can register online at the official 2008 ITS World Congress website www.itsworldcongress.org. The workshop agenda includes much time for interactive discussion so that participants can learn from each other as well as from the impressive slate of speakers that the workshop planning committee has assembled. IBEC has a six-year track record of sponsoring informative and thought-provoking events. Readers are encouraged to register today to continue this exciting discussion in New York City in November. TH www.ibec-its.org Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

59

Stunted growth Thinking Highways’ financial analyst MARGARET PETTIT looks at the European Territorial Cooperation Programme and finds that like with any other major programme, it’s a matter of priorities

Climate Change Australasia

Bruce Abernethy’s

When DAVID SCHONBRUNN read the April/May issue of Thinking Highways he felt compelled to write an article offering his own views on transportation’s impacts onm and solutions for, climate change

Postcards from Australia and New Zealand In our April/May 2007 issue, BRUCE ABERNETHY regailed us with his traffic-related observations from his vacation in China. One year later he was on his travels again, this time heading south west from his Texas base. An Antipodean travelog ensues...

Recently I visited six cities in New Zealand and three cities in Australia on a vacation. As usual, I was interested in transportation conditions and deployed technology supporting transportation management. Cities visited in New Zealand included Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Napier, Tauranga, and Wellington. In Australia, cities visited included Melbourne, Newcastle and Sydney (the photographs are from all of those cities). Cities in Australia were much more congested than the ones I visited in New Zealand. All the cities visited were seaports and their economies were based on both tourism and sea transport of raw materials, agricultural products and finished goods.

and dairy farms are prevalent in New Zealand as well as kiwi fruit farms. Sheep ranchers seem to be struggling economically with competition from China and a number are looking for alternative ways to obtain an income. Lumber is also a major export from New Zealand. Coal is exported from both New Zealand and Australia with Newcastle, Australia being a major port for the export of high grade coal. Both countries have environmental protection laws and are concerned about pollution, destruction of wildlife and of vegetation. I visited both countries at the start of their summer season. There was substantial rain and overcast. The sand flies in Melbourne were almost intolerable; however, the beauty of the city offset the discomfort of these pests buzzing around your face for what seemed like the majority of my time there. New Zealand has a natural beauty that is difficult to find in any other part of the world. Fortunately for tourists, New Zealand does not have a particularly large popula-

All photographs by Bruce Abernethy

“New Zealand has a natural beauty that is difficult to find in any other part of the world”

A grape time was had by all

Both New Zealand and Australia have many vineyards and produce some very good wine. I was able to visit a few vineyards and taste some of the products. Sheep www.h3bmedia.com

Thinking Highways Vol 3 No 2

61

tion (a little over 4m on two islands totalling 103, 738 sq miles, roughly the population of Kentucky in a state the size of Colorado) and traffic congestion seems to be minimal. The exceptions may be in the larger cities of Wellington and Christchurch; however, even there, traffic congestion was nowhere near that experienced in large cities of Europe and the USA. In all of the cities, tourism played a major economic role. Thus, most of the cities had good public transportation. In many of the cities public transportation was free for the “hop on-hop off” buses and trolleys. Usually public transportation was easy to access from sea port areas where large cruise liners dock. Tour and tourist information is readily available for visitors. In cities such as Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland, the dock area had many tourist attractions. In Sydney, the beautiful Opera House is adjacent to the dock and there are many tourist shops and restaurants that surround the harbor area. It is similar to the “walking Street” in Barcelona with musicians, mimes and other forms of entertainment offered to the tourist for a donation. You can even have your photo taken with a Native Australian accompanied by the atmospheric, indigenous sounds of a didjeridu (or didgeridoo, depending on your preference).

ing meters. The traveler inserts payment for parking, receive a ticket and put it in your car window. Hardly scientific but it doesn’t need to be. Incidentally, I did not observe any toll roads in New Zealand.

New Zealand Transportation, Traffic and ITS

I wrote this while on vacation...

One of the first observations is the terms used on street signs. Instead of “Yield” you will see “Give Way”. There are many roundabouts in New Zealand, as indeed there are in the UK. Another observation was that traffic signal heads are generally mounted on the side of the corridors and are generally relatively low compared to those in the USA. This was also true in Australia. In larger cities, traffic signals included red/yellow/green signals as well as red/ yellow/green turn arrows. Thus, six LED signal sights were deployed at an intersection. In the tourist areas, PEDS included audio as well as time remaining to cross. Attention has been given to accommodating pedestrians with disabilities in just about all of the cities visited. The City of Auckland had “SMART bus and Bus Stop” technology deployed. At a number of the key bus stops, dynamic message signs were deployed providing the traveler with information on the identity and sequence of incoming buses and estimated arrival time.The buses themselves include security cameras as well as traveler information.

Australia, likewise, only more so

Traffic signals, for the most part, were similar in construction as seen in New Zealand. I noticed a toll road in Sydney from the City to the Airport which included dynamic message signs and seemed to include modern tunnel monitoring and management technology. No open road toll collection was observed on this toll road. In Melbourne and Sydney, various forms of dynamic message signs were provided. Some included a combination of fixed messaging with an embedded dynamic message sign. They were utilized to identify congestion status as well as parking status. Freeways included DMS. It was obvious from messaging that freeways had congestion management sensors deployed. CCTV surveillance cameras were also deployed at some intersections and on freeways. Speed Enforcement Radar and Cameras were deployed along some of the major corridors. Of course these ITS devices are not appreciated by tourist who are driving rental cars. It should be noted that this article is only based on observations in the listed cities as a visitor. Other cities may have different deployments of ITS; however the cities visited included the largest in the countries. In general, Australia seems to be more progressive in deployment of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) devices. This can certainly be said of the seemingly greater populated Australian cities I visited. Both countries have very good public transportation. All cities visited support water transportation and “ferries and water taxies” provide transportation both for commuters as well as tourists. In Auckland, Melbourne, Newcastle and Sydney I utilized water transportation to visit sites of interest. Water transportation is well managed in both countries. No safety information was announced on any of the boats utilized for water transportation; however signs were posted related to locations of life vests. Both countries are certainly worth devoting a vacation time to. The foliage is absolutely beautiful and species of flowers that I have never seen before grow there. Transiting the Milford Sound provides scenic beauty of waterfalls that cascade from high up on mountains and flow serenely down to the sea. Maori history as related to New Zealand is interesting and visiting a Maori village outside Napier is well worth the tour. Without question, ITS is thriving in Australia and is emerging in the larger cities of New Zealand. TH Bruce Abernethy has recently been appointed as principal of Arcadis US, Inc, based in Allen, Texas. [email protected]

“At a number of the key bus stops DMS were deployed providing the traveler with the identity and sequence of incoming buses”

Where is everyone?

There was not significant traffic congestion in any of the New Zealand cities visited. Portable dynamic message signs (DMS) were observed for road work warning; however, no permanent DMS were observed. In both New Zealand and Australia, on-street parking fees were collected using a “pay station/ticket”, thus eliminating the need for numerous and un-sightly park-

62

Vol 3 No 2 Thinking Highways

www.h3bmedia.com

Advertisers Index Davin Optronics .....................................64 ESRI ...........................................................21 FAMAS ......................................................57 Gatsometer .............................................31 GE IFS .............................inside back cover Inex ............................................................57 ITS World Congress ...............................38 JAFA...........................................................33 Jupiter Systems ........................................02 OSI Laserscan .............. inside front cover PBS&J .........................................................37 Samaritania .................outside back cover Tamron......................................................37 Telegra.......................................................05 Transurban ...............................................07 TRMI..........................................................33

For more information on the advertisers in ths issue and to register (or re-register) for your FREE magazine, please go to www.h3bmedia.com

80

Vol 3 No 1 Thinking Highways

www.h3bmedia.com

Part of GE Security

Now, a single source for all your ITS Signal Communication Solutions. -Traffic Signalization -Traffic Monitoring -Toll Plaza Vehicle Enforcement -CCTV Surveillance

Turn to IFS products from GE as the single source solution for all your transmission challenges. - IFS Fiber Optic Audio Video and Data Transmission Products - Orion™ Fiber Optic Transmission Systems for Large Scale Applications - CopperLine™ Video over UTP and EtherNav™ Ethernet Switch Products • Broad range compatibility with all manufacturers • Free transmission requirement design assistance • Signal transmission products for any application • Lifetime Product Warranty • Legendary reliability and world class support

Communication Products

16 Commerce Road • Newtown, CT 06470 USA

E-mail: [email protected] • Design Center: 1-888-999-9IFS

For immediate information call: 800-824-5990, ext. 180

Or visit www.ifs.com and enter your request.

Tel: +1 203 426-1180 • Fax: +1 203 426-3326

With offices in US, Mexico, UK and Asia

CARE, COMPASSION AND CONCERN ON THE FREEWAY

Some of the differences between Samaritania Incorporated’s service patrol programs and others: 01 Our patrol vehicle operators have state and national public safety certifications. 02 We provide a complete turnkey program at not cost to motorists. 03 Provide Internet based Fleet Management Systems. 04 Provide public safety grade AVL/GPS incident recording/reporting systems. 05 Personnel, vehicles, equipment, AVL/GPS, patrol dispatch centers, and public relation programs. 06 The most experienced provider. Over 27 years providing service patrol programs throughout the U.S.

07 Provide the widest variety of quick clearance, motorist, and public safety assistance. 08 Provide a variety of different custom service patrol vehicles with and without tow capabilities. 09 Endorsed by Departments of Transportation and State Governments. 10 Endorsed by State Police, Fire/Rescue, and other public safety agencies. 11 National award winning programs. 12 Consistent media recognition. 13 Rural, remote area, and urban program applications.

Samaritania Incorporated, 10 Riverside Drive, Lakeville, MA 02347, USA Tel: +1-508-947-3700 Fax: +1-508-947-5544 www.freewayservicepatrol.com [email protected]

14 All program service costs included in single patrol hourly billing rate. 15 Operators adhere to detailed conduct policies 16 Standard Operation Procedure Development 17 Local office and project management 18 Provide Complete Indemnification and hold harmless agreements. 19 Provide audited financial resources. 20 Operators have perfect no-fault safety records. Zero fatalities. 21 Private Sector funding available to offset costs.