Who Does the Better Job of Removing Snow?

The 2009-2010 winter season in the U.S. has produced some huge snowfalls in places that typically don’t get very much snow. Consequently, snow has been a big NEWS STORY in cities like Washington, DC (56 inches), Philadelphia (73 inches), Baltimore (80 inches) and a host of other areas that normally receive relatively lighter snowfall in winter. Indeed, the U.S. government closed federal offices in the Washington, DC area for four consecutive days during a recent sequence of storms that dropped more than two feet of snow in some places.

In last week’s question, we mentioned studies that confirm the thesis that tolled facilities generally have a better safety record than non-tolled facilities. Do tolled facilities also have a better record in their ability to remove snow? Who gets down to the pavement faster? The maintenance crew of a toll agency or the comparable crew of a city or state department of transportation? And, if toll agencies have an advantage, what is the reason for this advantage? Please share your experiences and, if you have it, data.

What Can We Do to Improve Road Safety?

In January, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced new distracted driving restrictions on commercial truck and bus drivers. Every Transportation Secretary puts safety at the top of his or her agenda, and the distracted driving initiative seems to be the latest version of that tendency. Yet, no matter what people say or do, the number of fatalities on American highways stays about the same every year.

Recent studies demonstrate that the toll industry has a better record for safety and fatalities than non-tolled facilities. (See: "Toll vs. Non Toll: Toll Facilities are Safer.") While this may be comforting to some, it is still not sufficient cause for rejoicing when we know that more than 40,000 people die on U.S. highways every year and a comparable number die each year on roads in the European Union.

What can we do to significantly improve safety and reduce fatalities on highways around the world? What strategies and techniques will help us continue to eek out incremental improvements? And what changes (in mindset, psychology, operator behavior, roadway design, vehicle design, communications, etc.) will help us make one giant leap for humankind?

What Improvements Would You Like to See in Access to Capital?

One of the more salient features of the current economic crisis is access to capital. For many toll agencies and concessionaires, access to capital is a huge challenge, punctuated by the dramatic weakening or collapse of some of the largest lenders, insurers, brokers, and related financial institutions in the world. Aggravating the situation in the U.S. is a shift in policy affecting some governmental lending programs, such as the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) and other credit enhancement programs.

Another aggravating factor is the way in which the toll industry may be perceived by capital markets today. Before 2008, many lenders saw the tolling sector as a safe haven because traffic seemed to grow regularly and at a higher rate than GDP. Now, lenders may perceive traffic forecasts as less reliable than before and tolling may appear to be as volatile as other sectors of the economy. Lenders are comparing the tolling business to other sectors, and parameters such as return on investment (ROI) and long-term stability will drive their choices.

What improvements would you like to see in access to capital? What changes should the federal government make to TIFIA and the Build America Bond programs that would help toll agencies have better access to capital? Looking internally, what changes should tolling agencies make to their own business models and practices to become more attractive to lenders? What other changes, external or internal to tolling, would make the capital markets more responsive to toll agencies?

How Are You Coping and Responding to the Economic Crisis?

In the last three weeks of this blog, we have focused on the issues of interoperability of electronic toll collection and vehicle miles traveled charging. This week, we take a broader look at the world economic situation, its effects on individual companies and transportation agencies, and what you have done to respond in the face of crisis.

It has been nearly 18 months since the onset of the global financial crisis. Many businesses have had to dramatically reduce expenses, layoff employees, cut back on plans for major capital improvements or expansion, and abolish whole departments and business lines. Many toll agencies have seen declines in VMT and toll revenues. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (“stimulus”) and similar interventions in other countries around the world have brought some measure of relief to individuals and companies hard hit by the global recession. But much remains to be done before large parts of our world experience the hoped-for recovery.

Since the onset of the crisis, what has happened in your organization and your business? How are you coping? What new approaches and strategies have you embraced that seem to be working? What are the lessons learned? What is the silver lining in the dark clouds? What are your hopes and plans for the future?

What Does VMT Charging Mean for Tolling?

One of the major currents in the river of last week’s discussion on interoperability is the subject of vehicle miles traveled charging, or VMT for short. The interoperability forum report suggests that establishing an overarching structure for nationwide interoperability could become the foundation to support a nationwide VMT charging program. However, not everyone agrees with this sentiment.

Both of the commissions that Congress established under SAFETEA-LU -- the Policy Commission and the Financing Commission -- recommended a short-term increase in the fuel tax and a long-term transition to VMT to fund America’s future highway needs. Both commissions said the fuel tax is unsustainable as a long-term mechanism to support highways because you’re taxing a commodity whose use you’re trying to discourage. The Bipartisan Policy Center, which issued its report in June 2009, also endorsed the concept that users and direct beneficiaries should bear the full costs of their use of the transportation system to the greatest extent possible, implying that VMT could be the way to go.

However, in the responses to last week’s blog question on interoperability, there was disagreement on the value of engaging in discussions of VMT. Marty Stone asked, “When did the toll industry become the spokesman for national VMT? And, why is national VMT one of the focuses of our interoperability development - especially when there is no guarantee that national VMT will ever overcome a laundry list of very challenging political hurdles?” João Bento said “interoperability does not imply VMT but the reverse does.” Dan Faust said, “We should not be the spokespersons for VMT, nor should we equate VMT with true, customer-focused interoperability.” In addition, in the interoperability forum report, Larry Yermack said, “the issue of VMT alone provides the greatest threat to the toll industry that it has seen in decades.”

What is the significance to the toll industry of the emergence of VMT charging as a concept and a reality? What if anything should the toll industry do to respond to this possibility?

What Should Be Done About Interoperability of Electronic Tolling in North America?

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On October 29, 2009, in Washington, DC, IBTTA assembled a group of experts from different stakeholder organizations, all of whom have a keen interest in the future of mobility and interoperability in North America, to focus on this question: “What is IBTTA’s role in advancing universal tolling interoperability?”
The Full Report of this meeting – linked here – presents the highlights of the discussion that took place during the forum. This report represents the beginning of a discussion on this important issue. Through the discussions at the forum and subsequent conversations in other venues, we hope to give the IBTTA board, elected officials, regulatory officials, and other stakeholders a clear grasp of the technical, institutional, legal, regulatory, financial, and logistical challenges that must be addressed to achieve interoperability at regional, national, and, possibly, even international levels. As the proceedings from this meeting show, achieving universal tolling interoperability is not a simple matter of flipping a switch. It will involve flipping a hundred switches and changing the way thousands or millions of people go about their daily routine.

What Should Be Done About Interoperability of Electronic Tolling in North America?

Blog Action Day 2009: Tolling = Sustainability

For those of you who don’t know, today is Blog Action Day. Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15th where bloggers across the world unite to write about a single issue on a single day. The goal is to spark conversation on an issue of importance across the web.This year’s topic is climate change. So far, more than 8,000 bloggers from 144 countries are participating. Blog Action Day 2009 could be the largest social change event on the web and a demonstration of global concern about the climate crisis. Here are five things you can do right now to raise your awareness about climate change.

Take a walk. Every day millions of us hop in our cars and drive to the grocery store or pharmacy to pick up a small item and return home. Instead of doing that, what if we walked to the store to complete those little errands? Assuming the store is a mile from home, if every driver in America substituted a walk for a drive once a week for a year, we could save ONE BILLION GALLONS of fuel. That’s a lot less carbon and other pollutants going into the air. And that’s just one country. What if the whole world did it?

Get inspired. Getting inspired by others always makes me more conscious of my influence on the world. One of the most inspiring things I’ve read recently is Paul Hawken’s commencement address to the class of 2009 at the University of Portland. If you haven’t read this yet, you should read it. Click here.

Read the paper. Here’s a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times by U.S. Senators John Kerry and Lindsey Graham titled “Yes We Can (Pass Climate Change Legislation).” Also, here’s a link to former Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore’s book An Inconvenient Truth. Both pieces have compelling things to say about climate change and what we can do about it.

Get the facts. The Pew Center on Global Climate Change has a very interesting website with many facts and figures on climate change. You can learn more by clicking here.

Tell others what tolling is doing to be sustainable. Earlier this month, IBTTA collaborated with ITS America to host our first conference on Sustainability, Social Responsibility, Energy Conservation and Roadway Maintenance in St. Louis. It was an extraordinary meeting filled with high quality presentations and discussions on the ways tolling is striving to be more sustainable through technology, maintenance, administration, and public policy. You can learn more about the substance of this conference and view the presentations on our website.

Now you’ve read my ideas. Tell us what you think. What are you doing to be sustainable? What can you do to promote awareness of climate change? Please contribute to this discussion using the comment form below. Thanks.

-Pat Jones

The Digital Road To Recovery

Rob Atkinson of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation gave a fascinating talk about the importance of investing in digital infrastructure during the IBTTA Annual Meeting in Chicago. He spoke about the kind of dramatic impact that significant investments in IT and the Smart Power Grid could have on our country, comparing it to the secondary impact of the Interstate highway system on the U.S. in the 1960s.

Fast Company expert blogger and leadership visionary Seth Kahan has written an excellent summary of Atkinson's remarks here. You can also watch Atkinson's full presentation on IBTTA's website.

-- Pat Jones

Is VMT the Holy Grail?

They don’t make theater any better than this. During IBTTA’s Annual Meeting in Chicago, President Kary Witt moderated a session on Monday afternoon literally called “Is VMT the Holy Grail?” Consider the cast of characters: Dan Baxter, Karen Hedlund, Marcelle Jones, Mike Krusee, Mark Muriello, Jack Opiola, Ed Regan, and Joshua Schank all on one stage. Once they finished their theological and etymological definitions of “Holy Grail” and what that means for transportation, then the real fireworks began. You have to see this stuff. If you were not able to come to Chicago, click here to watch the archived webcast of this remarkable session.

--Pat Jones

Chicago: An Experience You Can’t Get from the Web

I distinctly remember the first time I ever went to Chicago as a 23-year-old research associate working for the American Public Transportation Association in October 1981 where I attended my first APTA annual meeting. For a young man who had grown up in small town New England with very little travel experience, Chicago was THE BIG CITY. I still remember the taxi ride to the hotel after arriving on an evening flight into O’Hare Airport. The City of the Big Shoulders was flexing its muscles that night. Everything was HUGE to me: the road network, the skyscrapers, the city lights, and the ‘L,’ Chicago’s rail rapid transit system.

The APTA event was a combination educational meeting and worldwide exhibition of transit technology and equipment. The educational sessions took place in a major downtown hotel while the world’s largest transit exhibition packed the halls of McCormick Place a short bus ride away. More than 1,000 delegates attended the APTA annual meeting and I wanted to learn something from everyone. My mind was a sponge, seeing new technology, hearing different voices, soaking up industry intelligence, and making new friends. The small town boy I had been could not begin to comprehend the staggering array of ideas, people, and experiences that Chicago represented for me.

Now, nearly three decades later, another lifetime removed from my APTA days, I get the chance to experience Chicago anew during IBTTA’s 77th Annual Meeting and Exhibition, September 13-16, 2009. This time, visiting THE BIG CITY holds even greater promise and anticipation for me than it did a generation ago. This time I have the privilege of serving a different industry. And the tolling industry I serve today is radically different from the tolling industry that existed three decades ago!

Thirty years ago tolling was seen as a barrier to mobility because nobody wanted to stop and wait to pay a toll. Today, with widespread use of electronic toll collection (ETC) and the steady transition to all electronic open road tolling – where the literal barriers no longer exist – tolling has ceased to be a barrier to mobility. Indeed, the real barrier to mobility today is continued reliance on the fuel tax in the face of the public’s diminishing trust in government and unwillingness to support higher taxes of any kind. Continued reliance on fuel taxes as the primary means to support highway improvements may now be the biggest barrier to mobility. Tolling, road pricing, and the advances made possible by ETC break that barrier.

Just as our methods of collecting tolls have changed these last three decades, so have our primary means of communication. The Internet, wireless telephony, email, text messaging, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Google and a host of Web 2.0 tools have revolutionized business, not just in tolling and transportation, but throughout the world economy. In 1981, the primary means for sharing ideas among a large group of people included holding a big meeting or convention, publishing a newspaper, or broadcasting a show on television. Today, anyone can communicate instantly with millions of people around the world using an inexpensive handheld device (a phone!) and a connection to the Web. These tools are cheap, powerful, and effective.

As powerful as these relatively new technologies are, they have not replaced the need or the desire of humans to assemble in close physical proximity to one another. Nor will they. We want to sit around the hearth and tell our common story. We yearn for the chance to hoist a glass to salute the success of friends, colleagues, and associates who have traveled a great distance to be with us. We know that the information gained from face-to-face contact with other professionals is far more valuable than all the PowerPoint presentations and speeches that come to us in Web pages that are stripped of context and feeling.

This is why you must come to Chicago to attend IBTTA’s 77th Annual Meeting and Exhibition. This is YOUR annual meeting. This is the family reunion for your industry, your profession, your community of practice.

I respect the budget crises confronting many states, agencies, concessionaires, and companies. And I realize some organizations have restrictions and outright bans on travel to events of any kind, including IBTTA’s annual meeting. But, we also don’t want short-term savings to stand in the way of long-term investment in the success of your organization.

(Here’s a personal thought that you can do with what you will: to those whose official travel is restricted, I say, mid September in Chicago is a terrific time of year to take a vacation from your day job to nurture the valuable friendships and professional contacts you’ve made over the course of a lifetime of service to this great industry.)

To make a long story short…Come to Chicago! You won’t regret it! I went to Chicago for the first time back in 1981 and my mind was a sponge. This time, my sponge is a thousand times bigger than it was back then. I can’t wait to go to Chicago to soak up all the life, energy, ideas, opportunities, and solutions that are waiting for me. I feel like a kid again. Won’t you join me in Chicago? THE BIG CITY is calling all of us!

-- Pat Jones

The Important “How” of Transportation Funding

Editor’s Note: I pitched this essay as an op-ed piece to the Washington Post and they politely declined. Perhaps you can use this 800-words-or-less op-ed in your community.
-- Pat Jones

President Bill Clinton gave an important speech on July 27 before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s inaugural conference on obesity. A highlight of the conference was the release of a report stating that obesity costs the US $147 billion a year in direct health care costs.

Less reported but equally important was the miniature sermon Mr. Clinton dropped into the very middle of his speech. He said, “Most of the debates in Washington debate two questions. What are you going to do and how much money are you going to spend on it? There is relatively little time spent on the third question: however much money you’ve got to spend on whatever it is you’re going to do, how do you propose to turn your good intentions into positive changes? The how question, in the end, matters more than the how much question. Not because money doesn’t matter but because if you answer the how question you can get more money for what you’re trying to do.”

Earlier this year the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank, issued a report called “Performance Driven: A New Vision for U.S. Transportation Policy.” This report tries to address all three of the questions President Clinton mentioned. But, refreshingly, it takes special aim at the question of how.

The Bipartisan Policy Center report raises the fundamental concern “that existing revenue mechanisms fail to take advantage of the fact that the performance of the transportation system can be directly influenced by how users pay for it.” That’s a fancy way of saying what the Washington Post’s lead editorial on July 29 stated so clearly: Virginia’s system of paying for and maintaining roads has collapsed because it relies on a funding mechanism – taxes on the sale of cars and gasoline – that is unsustainable.

The average Virginia motorist has little idea how he pays for roads. He’s upset that urban congestion is growing worse with each passing day. He’s frustrated because the state legislature keeps getting wrapped up in endless, futile debates on whether to raise the gas tax or where to spend the scarce transportation dollars. He doesn’t understand why we can’t seem to solve this problem.

A major part of the problem is how we pay for transportation. In much of the country, we pay for roads with taxes on gasoline and diesel. The federal government collects 18.4 cents on every gallon of gasoline sold in America. That money goes to Washington where it is then redistributed to the 50 states using elaborate formulas to determine how much each state should receive. Each state levies its own tax on gasoline and diesel, which varies from state to state, and has its own arcane (usually political) system to determine where it will spend gas taxes. In some states, there is no requirement that gas taxes be spent on transportation. Some states spend gas taxes on non-transportation purposes such as education and general government.

Money from the federal gas tax has been declining in recent years because fuel economy standards are rising and inflation is stripping away the purchasing power of the tax, which hasn’t been increased since 1993. Many experts believe the gas tax is an ineffective way to pay for transportation. Two congressionally chartered commissions have issued reports in the last two years that focus on transportation funding. Both commissions urge Congress to move away from the gas tax and towards a mileage based user fee that more accurately reflects the miles people actually drive on the highway. Road tolls are one example of these types of fees and they are currently used successfully in 35 states, including Virginia.

Congestion charging or road pricing is another mechanism that allows motorists to gain access to uncongested highways by paying a fee. The fee goes up or down depending on the level of congestion and is set to achieve a specific performance level, such as the ability to drive 55 mph without delays. The high occupancy toll or HOT lanes that will soon be operating on Washington’s Capital Beltway (I-495) in Virginia are one example of this type of mileage-based user fee that both raises money for transportation and fights congestion.

Tolls and congestion charges are very effective ways to pay for transportation. These fees address the very important question President Bill Clinton raised in his recent speech on obesity: how do you propose to turn your good intentions into positive changes? Tolling and congestion charging are already bringing about positive changes in transportation. Experience around the world suggests that tolling and pricing benefit all income groups. Tolls are helping Americans make more conscious choices about how and when to travel and what they expect to receive in return for the payments they make to support our transportation system.

-- Pat Jones

The Leadership Moment

On Tuesday, we concluded the IBTTA workshop on Incident Management, Safety and Security in Denver. There were so many excellent speakers and moderators and so many wonderful exchanges in the question and answer sessions, it’s impossible to summarize the entire meeting in a small space. Instead, I offer a few of the observations I shared with the assembled delegates at the conclusion of the meeting. Here goes…

On a blisteringly hot day in southern California, a team of professional firefighters struggled to contain a blaze in a forested area that had burned out of control for several days. In the process of scouting the best routes of attack and escape, several members of the team became separated from their comrades. One small group consisted of the team leader and two or three less experienced firefighters. All at once, they realized that they would soon be engulfed in flames if they did not take immediate action. The less experienced firefighters wanted to retreat; their leader urged them to stay with him. A moment later, the less experienced fighters fled on foot to seek safety. Their leader took the bold and unconventional step of entering the flames in order to save himself. Striking a match, he threw it into the underbrush where it started to burn very rapidly. Within seconds, a small circle of grass had burned completely and the leader immediately jumped into the circle. Having removed the fuel from the path of the larger, oncoming blaze, the leader fell to the ground and protected himself as best he could.

In the end, the quickly advancing blaze leapt over the spot where the leader lay and he survived; all of his companions who departed perished in a wall of flames a short distance away.

This story and eight others appear in a fascinating book called The Leadership Moment: Nine True Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All by Michael Useem.

The story about the firefighters could be considered both a disaster and a triumph. It was certainly a disaster because several team members perished in the fire. We learn in the story that this particular leader and team had not worked together for very long. The leader was also somewhat reticent about sharing his plans and thoughts with his subordinates. This lack of experience working together, the less than adequate communication skills, and the failure to develop a trusting relationship all contributed to the death of the other firefighters.

On the other hand, you might consider the actions taken by the leader to be something of a triumph. In a moment of grave crisis, he kept calm and invented a new way to escape a quickly advancing wall of flame. His very elegant solution was literally to enter the blaze before the deadly flames reached him. He drew upon years of experience fighting fires to invent a completely novel solution, a solution that was both bold and untested but also completely appropriate for the circumstances. He entered the fire to escape it.

I hope that none of us ever has to confront an advancing wall of flame and be forced to make a split-second decision about survival. But, on a daily basis, all of us do face difficult choices and make decisions, well grounded in experience and intuition, that lead to the survival or perhaps even the triumph of our organizations and the people we serve. This is what the leadership moment is about. It’s about tapping into the wellspring of experiences that reside in us and using experience, intuition and trained initiative to create novel solutions to the incidents, challenges and crises we had never faced before.

If there is one major takeaway that I draw from all of the presentations and tabletop exercises during this meeting, it is the importance of collaboration, rehearsal and TRUST. We heard about the importance of these attributes again and again.

Over the last two and a half days, we have together looked at many different tools, techniques, strategies, and technologies to confront and solve incident management, safety, and security challenges. The most effective of these tools seems to be TRUST.

It’s a simple tool to use once you own it, but usually it takes time to acquire it. It demands time, patience, testing, and continual investments of goodwill and open-mindedness. It’s not something that you can turn on at a moment’s notice. It is something that requires the building up of strong relationships over time, relationships that are nurtured by honesty, mutual respect, and deference to the needs and interests of others. It’s hard. It’s hard to create trust, but it is probably one of the most important investments of time and energy we can make to prepare to deal with the incidents we face on our facilities.

-- Pat Jones

More Engagement Leads to Better Meetings

In this essay, I am suggesting that the speakers at IBTTA meetings consider abandoning the use of PowerPoint presentations. I don’t have any objection to the use of PowerPoint per se. The rare presenter can use PowerPoint in an exceptionally effective way to deliver a powerful message. However, I believe the way speakers commonly use PowerPoint is often a barrier to the principal goal of speaking to an audience: helping people understand something by leading them through an experience.

Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge the amazing time, talent, energy and sacrifice that every speaker invests in an IBTTA meeting. A 15-minute presentation may involve hours, days, or weeks of research and preparation, planning, thinking, and rehearsal. Add to this the time, expense, and indignity of airline travel, staying in a hotel in a strange city, making your way to the right place at the right time, and you can see that every presenter deserves our admiration and respect. What I’m suggesting here is a way to make the whole meeting experience better for the audience and more rewarding for the presenters.

I begin with the assumption that the goal of an IBTTA meeting is to enhance “engagement” among the participants. The more we’re engaged, the more knowledge is shared, which results in a better meeting. Our meetings are as much about the experience that people have as they are about knowledge transfer. Having a good, engaging experience enhances the knowledge transfer and vice versa.

Speakers who spend time developing, manipulating, perfecting, and presenting PowerPoint slides often don’t have as strong a connection to the audience as speakers who go without PowerPoint. Reliance on PowerPoint can be a crutch, a surrogate for real connection, interaction, and knowledge transfer.

One of the most effective sessions I’ve observed recently in which audience connection was especially strong happened in the final session of our summit on ORT and Interoperability in Tampa. In this session, PowerPoint was nearly absent. Why was the connection with audience in this session so good? The first reason is that all four presenters are bright, articulate people who have something important to say.

The second reason is that they crafted their ideas with great care and translated those ideas into skillfully prepared talking points. They emphasized language and ideas over the “slide deck.” They imbued their words with extraordinary intellectual content. They each told a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. They realized that the only tools they could use to communicate meaning are their minds, words, bodies, and the collective experience of the audience. There was no intermediary, no technological crutch. It was just them and the audience. Unplugged. A community. Finally, knowing the limits of their tools, they employed those tools as effectively as possible, much as the conductor of a middle school band elicits an inspired performance from the green musicians in her care.

So, should we stop using PowerPoint at IBTTA meetings? Instead of answering that question with a definitive yes or no, I would ask each speaker to ponder these questions when preparing to give a presentation: What have I been asked to do? What main message am I trying to convey? What experience and expertise do I have to advance that message? What words should I use to communicate that message? How can I engage the audience in a conversation about my presentation topic? Keeping in mind the principles of adult learning, how can I lead the audience through an experience that will help them better understand the message I’m trying to deliver? How can I best be of service to this audience and this meeting?

Once you have asked and answered the seven questions above, then ask yourself “should I use PowerPoint?” In many cases I think you’ll discover the answer is “no.”

-- Pat Jones

Who Cares About Transportation?

I know that every member of IBTTA cares deeply about transportation and so do I. I’m concerned, however, that achieving major reform of transportation policy and funding in the US will continue to be a long, uphill battle. This impression was reinforced this week by the lack of hard news reporting on an important policy discussion on transportation.

In the June 27 edition of Innovation NewsBriefs, Ken Orski presents a comprehensive analysis of the events surrounding this week’s release of the Surface Transportation Authorization Act of 2009 (STAA 2009).

In an essay called “The Week that Changed the Game Plan,” Ken looks at the jockeying that’s going on between the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the Senate, and the Obama administration over the merits of having an 18-month extension of the current transportation law versus working to enact a new law by September 30, 2009. Many other media outlets looked at the same issues. And that is a good thing!

Now for the bad news. Also in the latest Innovation NewsBriefs, Ken reports on a June 24 National Press Club event featuring the Building America’s Future coalition, a joint initiative founded by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In Ken’s words, the coalition “mounted an impressive day-long show of advocacy and public education focused on creative ways to solve the infrastructure deficit problem.”

From my perspective, this is one of the most critical issues facing America. Certainly, the speakers who participated in the event think it's important on a mammoth scale. Unfortunately, the media did not think it was very important. More on that later.

Major speakers in the morning session of the event included Governor Rendell, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), sponsor of the bill to create a National Infrastructure Development Bank (H.R. 2521) and Bernard Schwartz, a long-time proponent of the national infrastructure bank. Other presenters included two of the bill’s co-sponsors, Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN).

According the Ken, “the afternoon discussion turned to the more general question of how to advance a new national vision for infrastructure investment. A panel consisting of Governor Ed Rendell, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt held the audience’s attention for over an hour.” He described the question and answer session as “a truly extraordinary display of eloquence, passion and intellectual bravura.”

The DC Streets Blog also had a short article about the event.

With such a star-studded cast of presenters – Gov. Rendell, Mayor Bloomberg, Former Speaker Gingrich, and Former Leader Gephardt – I would have thought this event would draw strong media attention. Unfortunately, no other media outlets covered the event. If they did, they haven't published their dispatches on the worldwide web. So, the issue that is so important to us in the tolling industry is a very weak draw not only for national media but also the transportation trade press.

So, to repeat, in the absence of media attention and strong grassroots interest in these issues, achieving major reform of transportation policy and funding in the US will continue to be a long, uphill battle.

-- Pat Jones

Connection, Not Control (Part 2)

In today’s Washington Post, Sally Jenkins waxes poetic about Tiger Woods’ struggle for control in golf’s rain-soaked US Open at Bethpage Black in New York.

“That Woods hates disarray has always been obvious from his preppy-perfect appearance,” she says. “You can see it in the neatness of his vests and slacks. He is a self-admitted control freak who even irons his new shirts, fresh out of the bag, so they crease just right. Woods wins major championships with the same meticulousness; he is a fanatic for preparation and predictability, a man who likes to know the answers in advance. He sets his mind on a specific number that is most likely to win, and shoots it. The mud upsets his calculations. He doesn't like guesswork.”

After describing a dozen instances in which Tiger Woods remarked on the unpredictable influence of mud during various golf events, she considers the effect of mud on the course of world history.

“Woods is hardly the first titan to struggle in the mire” Jenkins writes. “Perhaps he could take some lessons from the past. According to Mud: A Military History by C.E. Wood, mud has been a decisive factor in world history. Napoleon postponed his attack at Waterloo to allow the mud to dry, and got beat by Wellington. In November 1942, Russian mud stymied the Germans, who could not advance until the temperature dropped low enough to freeze the mud. Then again, those results are hardly encouraging for a man seeking world domination. Maybe the best way for Woods to play the mud ball is to quit worrying about it so much. Simply ignore it. Like the rest of us.”

Woods may be struggling to control the mud. But this is a temporary phenomenon. After all, Tiger has a greater knack for connecting with the ball than perhaps any person in the history of golf. That connection will likely help him earn many more victories.

-- Pat Jones

Safety is Not One Big Thing…

Wear steel tipped boots with rubberized soles. Lift with your legs and not your back or arms. Wear a reflective safety vest when working beside traffic. Look both ways before crossing the street. Wear a helmet. Don’t step out of a moving vehicle. Keep three points of contact when climbing a ladder. Don’t leave tools lying around; put them away.

Safety is not one big thing…it’s a lot of little things. They all add up. In many cases, it’s simple common sense. Things we learned when we were children.

When it comes to operating and maintaining major modern highway, bridge and tunnel facilities, safety is a LOT of little things – hundreds, even thousands of little things – that add up to many BIG things. This is what IBTTA’s summit on Incident Management, Safety and Security July 19-21 in Denver is all about.

More than twenty years ago, I listened to a radio program in which the host was interviewing U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski. This was during the age of arbitrage, leveraged buyouts, and corporate takeovers. When it was fashionable to flip an ailing company into a quick pile of cash. The radio host asked calmly, “What’s going on? Why are all of these takeovers happening now?” I will never forget Senator Mikulski’s response: “We have lost the ability to do the ordinary with enthusiasm,” she said. “Everyone wants to buy an airline, but nobody wants to maintain the planes. Everyone wants to cut the big deal, but nobody wants to do the hard work that follows.”

Doing the ordinary with enthusiasm is what incident management, safety and security are all about. Doing the ordinary with enthusiasm saves lives. Doing the ordinary with enthusiasm can help turn a potentially tragic situation – like a washed out bridge or downed power line – into a minor inconvenience that simply costs time but not lives.

On July 19-21, 2009, transportation experts from all over the world will come together to share their experiences on what it means to do the ordinary with enthusiasm. A recent comprehensive study demonstrates that toll facilities in the United States have a much lower fatality rate than do U.S. roads overall and lower fatality rates than both urban and rural interstate highways. The experts in Denver will share with you the practices they use to make toll facilities the safest roads around. Don’t miss it. Learn more about Denver 2009 here.

-- Pat Jones

Facing Reality on the Highway Trust Fund

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has written a cogent analysis of the current crisis in transportation funding in the June 18 posting to his official blog. Here’s an excerpt:

“Highways are built, repaired, and maintained with payments from the Highway Trust Fund. The Fund is replenished by revenue collected from motor fuel taxes when Americans buy gas. When Fund spending in a given period is more than the gas tax collected in the same period, the Fund declines. When the decline persists over months or years, the Fund runs out of money and limits the ability of the Federal government to help states.”

You cannot help but be impressed by the clarity of the Secretary’s words: the Highway Trust Fund is broke and the Federal government cannot help the states. Simple, stark, real. With this analysis from the highest level of the Department, one wonders why the Federal government does not get out of the way of states’ efforts to help themselves. Furthermore, it appears that Congress and the administration are unlikely to reach consensus or agreement on a national solution to this problem in the near term. What to do?

In its newly released report called Performance Driven: A New Vision for U.S. Transportation Policy, the Bipartisan Policy Center argues that “Federal policies and funding should assist states and local governments in developing sustainable funding sources including eliminating federal restrictions on road pricing, supporting efforts by states to implement direct user charges and expanding TIFIA credit support.” We agree.

The Bipartisan Policy Center report and those of the two congressional commissions that preceded it – the 2008 Policy and Revenue and Study Commission report and the 2009 Infrastructure Financing Commission report – are sounding a steady drumbeat of calls to reform the current system of funding surface transportation in the United States.

We cannot support a 21st century transportation system using 19th century techniques, mindsets, and policies. Toll operators around the world right now are successfully linking payment for the transportation system with use of the system, sending highly accurate price signals to users that encourage more efficient transportation use decisions. Technologies such as electronic toll collection and open road tolling allow these price signals to be sent in real time without stopping, without waiting, and without barriers. We strongly urge the United States Congress to heed the steady cadence of recommendations aimed at reforming the current system and removing the barriers that stand in the way of funding mechanisms that focus on performance and connect the use of the system with payment for that use.

-- Pat Jones

Connection, Not Control

In my wrap up remarks to the Summit on “The Future of Tolling: ORT and the Path to Interoperability” in Tampa, I identified “control” as one of the underlying themes. Many speakers and conference attendees expressed concern about how much (or how little) control they would have over their own future.

Here are just a few of the many control-oriented questions I heard during the Tampa conference. “If charging on the basis of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) becomes pervasive, what will happen to my toll agency? Will there even be a toll industry? The world seems to be moving rapidly to VMT charging; therefore, IBTTA needs to own this issue. What happens to my agency if the industry moves to a new standard for ETC equipment and systems? Will we still be able to use the equipment we have now, or will we be forced to move to a new platform? At my agency, will we continue to own the customer accounts? Or will someone else like the banks or the credit card companies gain control? Who controls the Alliance for Toll Interoperability (ATI)? What is IBTTA’s role in that?”

I mentioned the commencement address delivered by Paul Hawken to the class of 2009 at the University of Portland in which he urged his listeners to focus less on control and more on connection. He said to the graduates:

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force.

So, when I sat in our conference in Tampa and listened to people talk about control and ownership and force, what I heard was fear. Fear of change, fear of the unfamiliar, fear of being swept away by an idea or practice that was “not invented here.” In other words, if somebody else thought of it, I don’t want any part of it.

This revulsion to the unfamiliar is perhaps an evolutionary development. It was (and perhaps still is) a survival mechanism. If I don’t know you, I stay away from you (and your ideas) because you could be a danger to me and my survival. I think what Paul Hawken suggests, however, is that our survival depends on connection. Our survival and our prosperity depend on connecting and combining a diverse set of people, ideas, practices, and beliefs for the betterment of humanity. I think we in the toll industry can profit from Hawken’s ideas in our quest to promote the concept of tolling AND find the path to interoperability.

While all of this was swimming in my head today, I heard on the radio a commentary by Daniel Schorr in which he described how the Internet is helping to advance freedom in Iran. Here’s a brief excerpt:

The "Twitter Revolution," some call it. In Iran, tyranny has run afoul of technology in the form of the Internet, turning a protest into a movement. Iran has now become the latest arena in the struggle for control in cyberspace. The Internet has effectively defeated the regime's efforts to isolate marchers from each other and from the outside world. The Internet has become a veritable underground social network. A dedicated Twitter account for supporters of challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi claims to have more than 11,000 followers. The Twitter company in San Francisco expresses pride that it is playing an important part in Iran as a communications tool.

So, all over the world we see that connection, not control, is the wave of the future. Connection, not control is the way in which humanity is continuing to evolve and strive for freedom. Just as our small experiment in Twitter at the Tampa meeting helped to connect attendees in four separate breakout sessions in real time, so Twitter is nurturing the aspirations for connectedness among the people in Iran. I hope that our own efforts at connection (not control) will help us find the promised land of interoperability in the toll industry.

-- Pat Jones

How Can Smart Technology Drive Performance?

National Journal’s expert blog this week posed the question, How Can Smart Technology Drive Performance? The more detailed question is this: “There is a growing consensus among experts that our transportation system must put far greater emphasis on performance and results (and far less on funding equity and earmarks) to regain the public's trust and willingness to pay for it. What role can technology play in measuring and improving the system's performance, and how can the federal government best encourage the adoption of effective technological solutions to the country's transportation problems? What role should the private sector play?”

I began my response by suggesting that if we think of “technology” in the broadest sense to include not simply devices and electronic systems that can be manufactured, but also processes and human behaviors that will be encouraged through better policies, then a very powerful technology we should implement is road pricing and tolling.

You can read my response and those of other experts here.

-- Pat Jones

"Missing the Boat"

The whispered sentiment in hallways and backrooms at the ORT/Interoperability Summit in Tampa this week is that IBTTA has missed the boat on interoperability since 1990...or before.

Indeed, the notion that we missed the boat is perhaps the most relentlessly whispered sentiment at any IBTTA meeting I have ever attended. To paraphrase the bible, "where two or three toll professionals are gathered, there is regret among them."

Hmm. If we "missed the boat," how could IBTTA have "gotten on the boat" back in 1990 or in any year since then? Would getting on the boat have meant assembling all of the smartest minds in the toll industry in one room to come up with THE SOLUTION for interoperability once and for all? Should the industry have selected the one and only technology solution that everyone would use so that we would never struggle with having different jurisdictions embracing different, incompatible technologies? Should we have forced everyone to adopt the technology and systems of VENDOR A (at the expense of VENDORS B, C, D, E...) so that we could enjoy the benefits of interoperable all electronic tolling and multilane free flow everywhere in North America...or dare I say, the world?

Should we have forced the entire industry to embrace the next generation electronic toll collection performance specification that was developed by a working group of IBTTA in the early 2000s, and which was acknowledged, supported, and approved by the IBTTA Board of Directors as the smart way to go, but which individual agencies turned away from because (fill in the blank -- each agency had a different reason)?

It's an interesting mental exercise to consider what could have, should have, or might have been. However, the most important thing we can do is consider WHAT IS, here and now, and what we can do NOW to make the world (including interoperability) a better place. We cannot change the past. I repeat: we cannot change the past. We cannot change the decisions, actions, or lack of actions that IBTTA, the toll industry, all of its vendors and agencies made or didn't make in the past. We live here, today, on June 15, 2009. We think and live in the present. We can learn from the past. But we should not burden ourselves with it.

Let's embrace the possibility that a new day brings. Let's embrace the possibility that we can learn from the past and make even better decisions today than we made in the past. Let's embrace the possibility that our future will be more orderly and less chaotic than what the past, in our mind's eye, appears to have been.

-- Pat Jones