View the October 18 2017 seminar recording
Jennifer Symoun
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you to the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Jennifer Symoun and I will moderate today’s seminar. Today’s topic is Best Practices in Permitting Oversize and Overweight Vehicles.
Before I go any further, I do want to let those of you who are calling into the teleconference for the audio know that you need to mute your computer speakers or else you will be hearing your audio over the computer as well.
Today we’ll have three presentations, given by:
Today’s seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the chat area. Please make sure you send your question to “Everyone” and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. If we run out of time and are unable to address all questions we will attempt to get written responses from the presenters to the unanswered questions.
The PowerPoint presentations used during the seminar are available for download from the file download box in the lower right corner of your screen. The presentations will also be available online within the next few weeks, along with a recording and a transcript. I will notify all attendees once these materials are posted online.
Talking Freight seminars are eligible for 1.5 certification maintenance credits for AICP members. In order to obtain credit for today’s seminar, you must have logged in with your first and last name or if you are attending with a group of people you must type your first and last name into the chat box.
PDH certificates are now available for Talking Freight seminars as well. To receive 1.5 PDH credits, you will need to fill out a form. Please see the link in the chat box. Certificates will be emailed one week after the seminar. A seminar agenda has been included in the file download box for those who need to submit an agenda to their licensing agency.
Finally, I encourage everyone to please also download the evaluation form from the file share box and submit this form to me after you have filled it out.
Our first presentation will be given by John Berg from FHWA’s Office of Freight Management and Operations. He is the Truck Size and Weight Policy Specialist with FHWA. John will just be giving a brief introduction and does not have any slides.
John Berg
Thanks. Good morning or afternoon to everyone. Again my name is John Berg and I work for the Federal Highway Administration Headquarters Freight Office. I work on truck size and weight policy. I have been with the Federal Highway Administration for 26 years and in the Freight Office for the last four years. I work on the freight program delivery team which is led by Crystal Jones of Federal Highway Administration and Caitlin Hughes Rayman is the Director of the Freight Office. Both Crystal and Caitlin have great interest in this topic area and have actually molded the report that we will discuss shortly here. I would like to set the stage for this topic and upcoming presenters. Before we get started a bit of history trivia. Jennifer if you could bring up a poll here.
About 100 years ago back in 1918, highway officials and motor vehicle manufacturers held a conference in Chicago and concluded that heavy trucks had become critical to the design of highways. They reached an agreement on voluntary restrictions on weight of the vehicles in order to give highway officials maximum weight to vehicle use and design the manufacturers agreed to a limit of capacity of the truck so the gross vehicle weight would be what? What do you think back in 1918 they decided the gross vehicle weight should be on the highways? If you could fill out the poll here, I will give you a minute here.
Okay. Thank you for participating. In the correct answer is A. They agreed to 28,000 pounds. So you can see in the last 100 years where we are today and we are we are going to go we are not sure. One of the things that will involve is permitting. We'll talk a little bit more about that. So I am the contracting officer representative for a project that our office is sponsoring on oversize and overweight permitting best practices. The report is in final editing. We don't have that to share with you today. It should be done relatively shortly. Two to four weeks perhaps. When that report is done we will send the report out to the people on the webinar today.
So why are we doing this. Back in May 2013, a truck carrying an oversized load crashed into an interstate bridge in Washington State causing its collapse. This crash raised issues about oversize vehicle and public safety. Back in the 2014 Appropriations Act, Congress required that GAO review the role of federal and state agencies overseeing oversize vehicles. They did a report and it discussed how USDOT regulates policies and provides oversight on oversize vehicles and how the states regulate these regulate these oversize vehicles.
In the GAO report they recommended that the USDOT conduct a study on the states’ oversight of overweight permitting practices, including automated vehicle routing and escort driver certification to identify the areas of best practices. As a matter of background, the Federal Highway Administration has limited involvement in individual states per many processes and requirements. As such the states are responsible for setting the requirements and administering these permitting programs; however, the Federal Highway Administration provides a facilitation and technical assistance role in these types of matters that affect the overall safety and protection of infrastructure.
So our next presentation coming up is by Ron Schaefer and Steven Todd and it will reflect the preliminary findings on overweight permitting. In my opinion, Ron and Steven have done an outstanding job documenting the best practices and putting together this report in a very readable format and I would also like to express my gratitude to Geno Koehler of Illinois DOT for volunteering to share recent experience in permitting.
A couple of disclaimers. This report and presentation is going to be distributed under the sponsorship of the US Department of Transportation in the interest of information exchange. As such, we do not assume the liability for the use of information contained in the report or presentation, and the report and presentation does not constitute a standard specification or regulation. Also the U.S. Government does not endorse products of the manufacturers. Trademarks and manufacturers’ names that appear in this report and presentation are only here because they were considered essential for the document. Finally, I want to thank the state permitting offices that provided information for this report. We all found that the states were very willing to share their experiences and share best practices and I believe we have a lot of states doing great work to improve customer service to the industry and to help the state DOT's protect their infrastructure. So thank you for your attention here and I will now turn this over to Jennifer.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you John. We will now move onto the presentation given jointly by Ron Schaefer of Leidos and Steven Todd of the Specialized Carriers and Rigging Association. Ron Schaefer is a Program Manager at Leidos with over 35 years of experience developing and managing transportation IT research and deployment projects for customers including TSA, DOT, DoD, DOJ, and the private sector. He is skilled in advanced IT, program management, supply chain logistics, and business unit leadership and development. Prior to joining SAIC/Leidos Ron worked over twenty-five years at Union Pacific Railroad in several IT management positions. Steven Todd is Vice President of the Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association. He was previously the permit chief for the Illinois Department of Transportation.
Ron Schaefer
Thank you Jennifer. Thank you John for the nice introduction. I appreciate that. As Jennifer mentioned, Steven and I will be tag teaming this presentation so we will be bouncing back and forth a little bit.
I will get started. John mentioned this earlier but as noted on my first slide, we are presenting our preliminary findings whereas the final report is not complete yet. It is being reviewed by USDOT now. Once it is final, then this information being presented will be available to everyone. John was the contracting officer representative, so if you have any questions please direct them to John. And he also covered why we are doing this project. The project itself started in September 2016. There were three phases. The first was research and everything we could find out through a literature scan on what states were doing regarding permitting. Through multiple interviews we created an inventory of states’ oversize overweight permitting practices and the end result is the best practices report. Like I said, it will be done very soon. The third phase of the project is to share the results through webinars. This is our first one today and the second one is scheduled with the SC&RA group on November 1.
The first phase was the research of best practice to develop criteria for oversight/overweight permitting, so this means we took a look at all the information we could out there from literature reviews to environmental scans. We reviewed what the states were doing through individual interviews.
We took a look at the vendors in this space again. We identified a few of them that were providing permitting systems and also we incorporated the results of the pilot car training and certification program that actually ended in March of this year. All of this work was included in phase 1. In Phase 2 what we did was we used the research we collected to develop an inventory of what all the states were doing. We identified the best practices using the key criteria of safety and efficiency. We then cross-referenced that information to summarize all the state practices to come up with the end result which is this research product, the oversize overweight best practices report.
Phase 3 is simply sharing the information. At the end of these webinars the questions we are being asked may cause us to make modifications to the report but we will document the overall webinar result as well.
In the next few slides Steven will be talking about what's going on throughout the states and you will see the term auto issue used multiple times. So you know what it means it's when automated vehicle routing is done through an automating permitting process. It's a lot easier to say auto issue than automated vehicle routing process.
So with that I will turn it over to Steven.
Steven Todd
Thank you I want to begin by thanking you Ron and Leidos for giving us an opportunity to participate to this also heartfelt thank you to the Federal Department of Transportation from the specialized carrier industry. Both FHWA and FMCSA, and I'm not supposed to name names but these and other officials are folks that have gone above and be on as most of the folks know on the line. The Federal Department of Transportation has little or no jurisdiction with regards to permitting of oversize and overweight loads. Despite the request from GAO, in most cases USDOT doesn't have a great deal of incentive for delving into this small niche of the trucking industry, but because of the dedication of those I mentioned, we truly appreciate each of those folks recognizing the need for harmonization both in the interest of safety and efficiency in commerce for the country. So thank you for that.
The next couple of maps that we will show here for the most part summarize a great deal of our work. This first map simply shows those states with automated permit systems and I would add one more definition to Ron's definition and that is, for the purpose of our maps, these created by the FC NRA is these automated permit systems are defined as those systems that to some degree issue a single trip permit. Not quarterly or annual permit. But for the purpose of these maps in this study and automated system issues one or more single trip permits without any as I call it human intervention. This all occurs 24 seven in a real-time. This map in the green or blue depending on your computer screen shows approximately 30 states that meet that industry definition of issuing some single permit 24/7. You can say we made a great deal of progress at the heartland and made West and mid-East and in the South. More work to be done particularly on the West Coast and in the north east. Those depicted in red. Those are states that to our knowledge at this point in time have no plans in place to issue RP's.
RFI's or anything else of that degree. It is our hope, the industries hope as a result of the study, that those states in conjunction with the federal deity will be incentivize either monetarily or otherwise to pursue automated permitting systems.
I want to put in a quick plug for the federal emergency route working groups. This is a group that was formed in the last year or so and primarily is asked to provide recommendations to Secretary Chao to consider best practices for the movement of oversize and overweight loads and legal loads in an out of bed early and perhaps other declared state emergency areas. Although that report is not final yet, it is my hope and I believe will be the case that among the recommendations will be to ask each and every state to consider automated permitting systems if for no other reason during times of emergency should all 50 states be fully automated to certain thresholds which will discuss in a moment, that to a large degree will eliminate any problems we have seen in recent years and decades with the movement of oversize and overweight loads in points of emergency.
Finally in yellow is auto issue pending simply means the state is in some fort or fashion of moving toward automation. It might simply be that a contract is signed and the state plans on implementing or going live soon. Or on the other end of the spectrum it could simply mean an RFP has been issued but of course no guarantee of an eventual contract or going live although that is certainly our hope.
This next slide John issued a few disclaimers earlier and I would reiterate particularly in the case of this slide are these dimensions that you see up top which I will explain in a moment, are completely driven by industry. That being the specialized transportation industry. About a year and a half ago Essie NRA and its members and partners attempted to arrive at what we believe to be a reasonable threshold that states with automated systems can reach in terms of what they can auto issue without any human intervention. We also selected thresholds both dimension and gross weight that we believe that would cover a majority of oversize overweight permit loads that move throughout the country. As we all know on this call, loads are getting bigger and bigger and will continue to. But at this time I would conservatively estimate that at least 50 percent and probably closer to 75 or 80 percent of all loads permit loads issued across the country would fall within these thresholds. So the hope being that someday if we have unanimous participation by all states and all states are meeting these thresholds that is auto issuing permits up to at least 14 wide 14 feet six is high, 110 feet long and 150,000 gross pounds and when we say gross pounds that is the tractor-trailer combination and the load. Should we reach this point someday I think our country and our nation and in particular the manufacturers based within this country will see at least a moderate economic boom in terms of reducing transportation costs and being even more competitive globally.
Those states again the trend here is we see not quite the same progress as the first map but again we see throughout the Midwest particularly in the South many of these states are already meeting or exceeding these thresholds. I entitle this slide when I present I moan as get your money's worth. In other words states invest a great deal money in some cases one or $2 million or more per two or 300 dollar maintenance fees and such as Lucy on the next slide the number of states certainly have proved that by investing in this particular system they can get their money's worth by increasing the thresholds by which they sought a safety auto issue. Ron.
For the purpose of this study, those of you that peruse it later, you will see all 50 states represented in a Excel spreadsheet for the purpose of this visual display we just listed one that being Illinois given our guest speaker who will be on in just a moment. We also selected Illinois because they are in the industry viewpoint a perfect example of how automation can be once fully tested and vetted and once the data is all safe and sound and I know Geno and other state officials listing on the line that is no small feat, once all those things are accomplished and it can take years Illinois along with a growing number of states including Montana and others are demonstrating as you can see these automated systems can far exceed industry recommended thresholds.
Now issuing 16 licensing high 200 feet length and nearly 200,000 gross pounds. The third -- 300,000 pounds. Okay Geno. It keeps going up. We love it. The second to last column you will see lists of the vendor. Each of those states and then the final column is future plans. Illinois and I will leave this to Geno later considering among other things faced three local permitting option.
So through our initial research looking at what the states are doing we came up with nine states we felt we needed to do a detailed interview on to really find out specifically what they were doing in this area. We couldn't go through all the states through this presentation but Steven will talk about the overall summary of what we learned from each of those interviews.
For the sake of time I would just summarize a few at a time. There is a reason the first five here on this first slide all deal with local permitting. That is because the practice of local permitting, that is nonstate government jurisdictions, cities municipalities and counties townships -- that process for better for worse depending on who you talk to, is exploding now across the country by the dozens. Almost on a weekly basis we are hearing more and more cities and counties getting into the local permitting business. Unfortunately most of those local cities and counties getting into the permitting business are doing so by hand as you might acknowledge or be well aware of. That is going back to what we previously experienced decades ago in most states that is phoning in your application, faxing in the application, oftentimes attempts to reach the right local permitting official may take hours, days or weeks. No offense against local government but it seems to have panned out that at least in some cases local governments perhaps are not quite ready to at least as well as the states to, fully and efficiently issue local permits.
So getting back to the top five issues there. Certainly best practices amongst those state as we interviewed included mapping systems that certainly listed all jurisdiction roads within the state. Certainly a best practice number four includes a link that connects to local permitting portals. Geno may get into that little later.
Here is a link that provides contact information for local agencies. At this point in time it is our hope that most states will at least some were either on their system or their website, list those local contacts but as in the case with a couple of states use best practices again which genome might allude to. The idea of one stop shop in some cases where you by or the user or carrier permit service goes on the state website as able to derive their state jurisdictions portion of their permit and then either have estate then also be responsible for issuing a local permit which we fully acknowledge in the industry as politically nearly impossible in most states. Although it is being done in a few.
Best practice as far as this report is concerned is that the one stop shop would consist of once the user obtain the state portion of their permit, they would then be afforded the opportunity to hyperlink or connect to those local governments who would be noted on the state permit side and obtain their local permits then hyperlink back to the stateside and finish out the permitting process.
Why do we in industry and others advocate this? Certainly for efficiency sake. Guilty as charged there. But more importantly from a safety standpoint. If nothing else I hope this reports bottom line will show over and over again both anecdotally and otherwise that through automation, safety on the roadway increases both at the state and local level and we will cover that a little later in the summary.
Number six briefly. And ably carries to generate route maps. That's huge for the carriers in terms of bidding product projects six months out. Number nine is an option for the carriers requesting state system to select the route. Again huge. States in some cases best practices can now route segments to avoid certain troublesome areas.
Ron Schaefer
I want to mention the numbering scheme on the left-hand side there that Steven has been going through it looks like it got messed up in the pdf conversion and there are actually nine individual items there. Sorry about that.
Steven Todd
Additional best practices getting into the dimensions when it comes to height. It would seem to be a no-brainer but believe it or not there are at least a couple of cases of some states that currently do not, I repeat, the systems do not check the height that is applied for against the states vertical clearance information. So although it seems rather over simplistic to state, a key best practice that we discovered in the interviews of the states was that a majority of the states do indeed check permits a four height. I think we can all acknowledge the safety ramifications from that. With regards to weight, it is determined that because a majority of states now auto issue permits up to and in some cases exceeding 46,000 pounds on a tandem, 60,000 on a try and yes a slight majority of states up to 80,000 pounds on a quad. We have determined to miss this as a best practice. With regards to. Although we didn't get into the weeds here, I will simply mention to the audience that I'm aware of some states including Illinois who now through their automated systems account for what Illinois terms anyway as a SAG curve that is the elevation level changing before and after an overpass. I know of some states that actually implement within their automated systems certain turns, 90 degree terms turns in municipalities and otherwise that are off-limits for certain carriers and with regards to railroads. We are aware of some best practices in some states that account for those very close by intersections that pop up before and after railroad crossings. When we see loads of 150 feet or greater I think we have all unfortunately come across some tragic stories of instances involving oversize loads at reward. Finally with yes -- you have that on the slide. State system automatically writing carries on rats approved for state with thresholds. Again getting into the weeds just a bit. What we are finding is best practices within some states that it is becoming a very automated smooth process whereby once the construction is completed and in some cases a minimum of six weeks or more advanced time occurs between the time the construction office notifies the permit office of the new 10 foot wide or 12 foot wide restriction.
Then finally, not finally but second to last best practice summary page. Certainly number one fair reduces errors. The auto check function. Best practice. We are seeing here is thankfully a growing number of states and their vendor systems having auto requirements. Just to give you one example. Where you are asked to data entry your individual axle weights and spacings, the best practice automated systems if everything doesn't add up correctly it kicks it back to the user. Whereas most users that are not automated or don't have that best practice, that can literally be hours or days of back and forth unnecessary wasted time back and forth between the users and the state employees getting those applications right. And then number to the library function best practice, what we are looking at there is a growing number of states who have automated systems are giving the user the ability to enter each and every one of their tractor and trailer configurations and then at time of application being able to match tractor and trailer that have already preloaded the configurations and such. So those of you online who are not as familiar with the permitting process as others, this might seem like small potatoes but when you think of terms of those permit services as national carries are making applications in some cases dozens and hundreds per day, this is an incredible time savings and worthy of best practice notation.
Number one there the electronic payment options. I won't cover that for sake of time. I think that is self- explanatory. Number two I would mention is huge other than they reduced permit turnaround time, which is really essentially the greatest result of automated systems reducing permanent issue times from days or weeks down to seconds or minutes. This item listed here on number two on Ron's slide is the greatest single benefit best practice certainly from a safety standpoint. What's happening here is a growing number of states now when a permit is live so to speak, and most are live now for five days. Should a restriction should a construction project pop up that the construction folks within the DOT did not notify the permit office and we all know unfortunate that still happens for too often. This best practice now in some states and I believe including Illinois will auto issue an email in some cases to every life permit whose route is crossing that new construction restriction. Imagine if you will the number of loads that this is saving contractors, state police, DOT officials from having to run out to construction zones and either take the unnecessary time to remove barriers or in some cases to back the load up miles and miles to the next nearest exit and imagine to the countless lives that we believe will be saved by this by a greatly reduced number of over with loads and in some cases I'm sorry to say ramming through construction zones. That they are not meant to be in.
Here I will just touch briefly on number three and four. Three a vendor system has the ability to issue local permits including local as well as state roads. Again I'll certainly the best case scenario would be the truest of one-stop shop, we recognize that the realistic best practice here is that the user ultimately can simply go to one state site, obtain their state permit then hyperlink and do business with the local permitting justice in and hyperlink back and get one-stop shop. Number four vendor system has the ability notify local governments of state permit loads traveling through their local jurisdiction. While that is probably not necessarily a best practice for my industry, certainly we can acknowledge it from the state government and law enforcement standpoint the ability for local governments to have a clear understanding of the loads soon to be and in recent past having gone through their areas certainly I think we can all acknowledge the benefits to government officials both DOT and law enforcement.
So I mentioned early on through the environmental scan review we also looked at a few vendors. There are more out there. We just focused on these three. And again back to the disclaimers at the beginning, these are only two of several vendors who currently have products that state and Providence in Canada have employed because of the lack of time we would invite Allstate duty officials on the line to contact these three vendors. On your own if you'd like more information or wait for the more detailed report. A couple of nice lights here that demonstrate in the Bentley system the easy to use ability and user-friendly.
Got permits is a unique Bentley system whereby multiple systems on the Bentley system can obtain one stop shop permits of all of several state permits. Let me catch up with you Ron. You can go under ProMiles. All of this information I assume Jennifer is available on slide form for folks later. The ProMiles system again another of vendors number of states employed. They generate maps showing all state and local roads using GIS data that is pretty standard now throughout the system. They have an upgrade plan there that we are excited to see onboard navigation system with voice directions to the driver. Not to get too off subject there but with regards to technology, industry is very excited I know Texas is talking about it, Geno in Illinois has had meetings about it, why shouldn't we expect truck drivers to one day on permitted loads have the same voice activated onboard route by route voice instructions that the rest of us enjoy as passenger motorists. It makes a lot of sense from a safety standpoint.
Again a quick display there of the easy to use friendly displays. Oxcart is a vendor that we selected because their system primarily is tuned or is exclusively tuned at this point to providing local governments, the counties, the cities, the townships with a near automated experience. In terms of one stop shop. A great deal of activity is occurring in the Chicago area which Geno may touch on soon. In which we are now seeing permits that would have taken weeks because of local permitting delays in the past, now taking hours or even minutes in some cases thanks to products such as this.
Ron Schaefer
So just to summarize the best practices document here. We believe these bullet points and more makeup more than the sound reasoning for one day hopefully 100 percent compliance by all states and local governments with automated routing. We believe it to be a fact that the average permit turnaround time dramatically decreases with automation. Many of the states have reported an increased number of total permit applications and issued applications with proportional revenue increase. I think we all see both on industry side and state side of things a win-win there. Also a fact we believe based on reports back from state officials such as Mr. Taylor a dramatic improvement in the accuracy and I don't have this worded here but consistency of permits and process and issued. And finally a higher percentage of carriers we have determined have ordered obtain and traveled on state issued permits. The win-win is simply this. More carriers finding the incentive to legally obtain permits because they can obtain them in a more efficient manner. This obviously result in more revenue for states. The result in more oversized overweight loads running on the nation's highways with a proper permit signed off on by the state agency and running legally.
I think I got ahead of myself but number one we covered but number two the integrity of the infrastructure. Again very obvious the direction from our point of view. The more carriers obtaining more legal permits certainly will result in improvement of the integrity of infrastructure. Certainly resulting in pure bridges and fewer bridges and overhead structures being struck. Cost savings realized as Geno may touch on. Dramatic decrease in headcount so to speak within permit offices although industry would certainly caution states not to let go of the human staff to the degree where there would not be anyone left to troubleshoot some of the more complex issues.
So what is next for the oversized overweight vehicle permitting? Essentially you are looking at technology. You saw some of the vendor slides there. Some of the great things going on there. With the advancement of technologies, it just increases a great possibilities for our industry. Specialized transportation will be able to benefit by more accurate GPS data. Geo sensing an overall software integration strategies. The good news is that we all know technology gets cheaper as it goes along so when the cost continue to decrease then state and local authorities will have more options for carriers. Really good news going forward.
The next area we want to cover is the pilot car certification and training program. This is a project completed back in March of this year. The overall purpose of the project is to update existing and develop new pilot cars and training materials with a goal of harmonization of state certification of drivers and companies.
Steven Todd
This particular task will probably not get the notoriety as the automated best practices report. I hope I will get some notoriety because progress is being made in the area of pilot car training and certification programs. Thanks in large part to the Federal Highway Administration recent release of best practices. I would simply say the bullet points listed here. The one we are hopeful will be the greatest take away and actually refers back to the sky get bridge incident for those of you who are familiar with the details. The second bullet point the pre-trip safety meeting. I'm sorry to admit that far too often because of many many variables, that pre-trip safety meeting between the carrier and the pilot cars are not taking place to some degree. If such a meeting does occur and if the proper issues are covered within that particular meeting, that alone would result in a great increase in safety throughout the nation. I would just invite everyone to continue to monitor this. More and more states are showing some interest thanks to the FHWA best practices in creating pilot certification classes and training within their own state. I would invite folks to contact John Berg. They are welcome to contact Ron and myself too and we can point them in the right direction. That concludes my report.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you Ron and Steven. Our final presentation will be given by Geno Koehler of the Illinois Department of Transportation. Geno has been the Permit Unit Chief for the Illinois Department of Transportation for the last 5 years. He is in charge of facilitating oversized/overweight movement in Illinois. In that capacity he is also in charge of maintaining and improving the Illinois Transportation Automated Permit system (ITAP) and representing Illinois’ position on laws, regulations and policies pertaining to truck freight movement. He is also the AASHTO Sub-committee on Highway Transports MAASTO Regional Chair.
Geno Koehler
Good afternoon everybody. This is Geno Koehler from the Department of Transportation for the great state of Illinois. And the home of a lot of Abraham Lincoln historic facts and figures. What you are looking at in front of you is not an automated issued permit. But because of automation and reduction of responsibilities of staff, we can give loads like this a very one-on-one look and make sure it is done right the first time and every time.
As Jennifer said, I’m the IDOT Permit Unit Chief. I’m also the MAASTO SCOHT Chair but I want to make sure this is very clear because there is an important secretary that’s actually the MAASTO chair. I am the MAASTO Sub Committee on Highway Transportation Chair. That's the one that I'm actually on and that is the Midwestern permit officials. We actually have a group that is underneath our motor carrier committee and I sit on that committee and then I also sit on the Illinois State Freight Advisory Council. A couple things you might want to Google after we get done with today's event: one is you can just go to Illinois Truck Permitting (just go ahead and Google that) or another webpage that would be very beneficial to you is the MAASTO SCOHT website. I am going to be referring to a lot of reports today that are actually on that website and that is through our MAASTO SCOHT Committee. All the Midwestern states just recently had a meeting in Kansas City, and we all get together and share what we are doing about every six months. We go to a Special Security Association and we also host our own event. We share what's working and what's not working in our own state, and the key thing we are doing right now is trying to harmonize the Midwestern states so that it is a little more freight-friendly from borderline to borderline.
This just happens to be 360 feet long. Again, we had a staff that had the time to give some special direction. I like to throw a couple of these slides in to break up the monotony of PowerPoint.
We will get into the state report. This is what I was referring to with the Mid-America Association of State Transportation Subcommittee on Highway Transport. This is something that all our Midwestern states do before every meeting - we fill one of these out and you can see the results of what each and every state is doing. This past year, Illinois processed 242,317 permits and that was a revenue income of about $23 million. For the number staff issuing permits, Steve was talking about automation and savings of taxpayer’s dollars. The first year we automated, we reduced that from approximately 30 down dramatically and we saved over three quarters of a million dollars just in the first year of staff. It's just incredible how much money an automated system can actually save a state. We asked all our Midwestern states, “Does your state offer online requests?” and obviously I answered yes. The next number is pretty amazing. When we first started automation, we just went with the practical maximums and talked to our bridge staff and said okay what would you feel is a healthy number poundage-wise as far as a truck going across your structure without anybody having to review it. They said if the bridge didn't have any issues, we feel good at 120,000 pounds. So we started with GIS and mapping and allowing to go across without being analyzed up to 120,000 pounds. That in itself automated our group to around 70 percent. So then we got a little more detail and we started a relationship with Bentley, and we went up to 249,999 pounds. Our automated system analyzes every single load, every single time, including axle spacings, weight, height, length, width, everything that Steven mentioned earlier. We have all the data already in our GIS mapping system. So then we send it up to 11 different servers to be processed, one of them goes down to Bentley, and Bentley actually does a bridge analysis for up to the minute bridge health by any bridge that is out there and it analyzes that load. Through our GIS mapping system, we actually provide the route, well, the customer actually provides the route. They enter the point of origin and the destination and then we actually provide them the route. They can pick to go on all state routes or to utilize local roads. They can pick whether or not they want to entirely avoid any type of bridge conflicts. It's entirely up to the customer what they want. By adding all those options in there, we are now at 99.2 percent auto-issued by the customer. This has just been an incredible accomplishment. There is an award out there called the Bentley Innovation Award. It is an international award and we have been nominated as the top three recipients in the world for automation of our permitting system.
If you look down, these are some of the things we have done here recently. There are some rumors out there as far as different types of legislation that will happen or be brought before the General Assembly this next year. One of them is requiring law enforcement to enter violations for void of permits to comply with auditing standards. In our ITAP automated system, we have an ad hoc report in the back where when a police officer or law enforcement officer writes a citation or something, he goes into the ITAP system and enters it; therefore, if the hauler is pulled over later on the day, it is in there and then they don't get beat up too bad - he has already been stopped once. Later on, it goes in front of a judge. They can search/go back in there and bring it up and say if there’s a conviction or not. One thing we do in Illinois by law is if there's three convictions or more, we can actually stop and block their permitting privileges in Illinois. So that's an ad hoc report we have off to the side.
Another thing, as you can see on there, there's a couple associations out there that are flirting with legislation requiring IDOT to issue all permits for all roads. This would be like in five years from now or something like that. That's how it has been explained to me. As Steven said earlier, this will be very difficult. We got over 7,000 forms of government in the state of Illinois and everybody wants to be the powerhouse of their own roads and everybody wants to receive the money for their own roads. So that will be a challenge for everybody to accomplish. As you go down, you see on that page, it says “permitting system updates.” What we have done lately to try to save money and time: we increased it from 249,000 up to 999,999 pounds. Great accomplishment. Saved our bridge office from manually analyzing about 600 trips. That basically saved us about an employee and a half, which was actually being done by a consultant, so that was a great thing to happen. We had to prove ourselves with 249,000 before we could jump up to 299,000.
One thing we added on the Getting Around Illinois map and our permit routing map is we've added a jurisdiction display and this benefits whoever is getting the permit to actually know whose road it is. If you are getting off a state system, then whose road am I getting onto? We’ve have actually added, if you hover your mouse over the top of the local road, it will show you a phone number and it might show you if they take online permitting. It will show you a name or maybe even a link to Oxcart or maybe one of the other providers.
One of the other things we have done this last year is we have permitted night travel for over-dimension loads less than or equal to 10’ wide, less than 200’ long, and legal height. One reason we do that is, and I'm sure there's other areas in the nation that have the same concerns I got, I got congestion. When you are going around that Chicagoland area and you’re going from Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and going over Iowa: I’ve got congestion problems. So we worry about pedestrian traffic and we worry about automobile traffic. So we’re actually liking this whole movement of cargo and shipments at night but we do have those restrictions. I would expect that number might get increased to 12 foot wide. So far so good: we have not had any incidents. If nothing happens between now and April we are forecasting to jump that up to 12 foot wide. We had some issues with loaded and towed permits inside our system so we have improved the software data on that and the actual application portion of that makes it easier for the users. We have added internal security features inside the system and what that does is if a load goes across a set of scales in northern Illinois, we actually check the permit and it's actually logged at that particular scale that they just crossed. Therefore if it's a single trip permit they can only use it one time. There are some dirty birds out there and you can only use one permit one time and when you start going across scales and using them more and once, it gets you in trouble. We have added things behind the scenes, even up to the second, law enforcement can see -- as quick as our system is you can get a permit in the parking lot or even on the side of the road as they are sitting there. We have added up to the second. So a cop pulls a load over, he can see what time the new permit was actually issued.
We have improved the base map and the geo-coders for our mapping systems. Jennifer if you go to the next page you will see a couple more of my highlighted points and we will move on to some of the other slides after that. In Illinois we have tollways and some of those structures are actually on state routes that go over the top of the tollway. The tollway actually owns those, so we made a deal with the Illinois state toll highway authorities that said that we will analyze and issue them, which saved them about 6,000 permits a year by DOT actually taking responsibility for those structures or issuance of permits on the structures. It made it beneficial for the hauler so they didn't have to go to two different locations to get permits.
In Illinois we have got a reduction of staff with law enforcement so we were having a lot of one-time components being moved through the state and actually being constructed in the state of Illinois and that’s been a hardship on our state police. We made an agreement that said if there's one-time component that was just traveling on interstates only, they did not need an ISP escort. That makes life a lot easier so we figured all that out and how to do that and all those permits, I mean thousands and thousands per year, are automatically issued and they do not need to go in front of a human and they don't need to go to ISP for coordination of an ISP escort. There are some options inside the system. I think I mentioned earlier about avoiding late conflicts, avoiding no other truck restrictions, and avoiding reduced speed restrictions on the routing page. You can select these or select not to participate. It will add additional miles to your permit but it might not add very much, but that is something the individual can select themselves.
Some things I'm working on here in the future is I'm replacing Silverlight. It's a software owned by Microsoft and that's what my system is based on. Microsoft has quit maintaining that particular software so I am in a bit of a frenzy to try to get that system replaced. It should be completed hopefully by February. “Add interface for third-party permitting applications to get permit information from ITAP.” ITAP is our Illinois Transportation Automated Permit system and I'm referring to it as ITAP. Third-party permitting will basically mean you get a permit from us, and I give you an entire route. Some of it might include local road permitting. When you are done I will have my magic button down there at the bottom that says “do you want to share this with local road entities?” At that point the customer clicks on that, it will go up to the cloud and come down to the participating community, county or whatever. And the permit would have its route on it and everything else and it will be there for the locals to actually process. It's not the perfect way to do one-stop shop permitting but it helps solve that stop. Instead of DOT actually issuing a permit for all roads in the whole state, this gives the option of going up, making it easier on the haulers. I am adding smart phone functionality and turn by turn directions with the permit. We are actually working on that a little bit this week. Inside that, we also talk about the geofences. So if there's an emergency bridge situation like Steven said, we have the capability now inside my system that as soon as the bridge gets downgraded I can go in, find out how many permits, who the companies are traveling across that permit, spit out a report, and send an email to all those users right then and there. That is a big safety feature and it helps out so much.
One thing I'll add is the barcode security for physical permit. There are dirty birds out there that have learned some tricks and so we are trying to restrict them a little bit. We are checking all combinations more closely here in the federal bridge formula. We found a couple of typos between the federal bridge formula and the state of Illinois vehicle code, so we’re cleaning that up. Our customers really want and need a credit card receipt so we are adding all kinds of stuff between number six and seven there, “generate a receipt for credit card purchases” and “rework accounting backend database” -- it will be more of a live load instead of three days from now or in the end of month report.
One thing that will be nice is right now there are loads that need to go to the bridge office for review. It comes from a human being and then basically all they are doing is pushing it in an email up to our bridge office, so we figured out a way to make that automated so it will be even quicker. It doesn’t have to be pushed in an email, it can automatically go up to the bridge office and start manual analysis for those loads like over 299,000 pounds.
Procedural changes or new things that I've tried to start in Illinois: we are starting just next week and we are at least reviewing possible pilot car class and the whole concept in Illinois. This is new to us and we are probably behind the curve from some states but at least we will entertain the thought and review to see what it's about.
New and unique communication efforts: I mentioned earlier if the bridge gets denigrated we need to immediately go out and I can pull the report and send it directly to them. I have an email list of 7000 customers around the country. I send those out on a regular basis and I send out restriction lists and everything else, notifications, etc. I will send an email out and I will also put it out on our ITAP webpage with flashing light and say that a bridge went down or whatever and please pay attention if this is your route.
I host three different customer meetings a year where we actually meet and greet face to face and they have been well attended, 100-150 people at some of these events and they are awesome. As you can see I utilize all staff now to take phone calls. So I don't just have designated people to just answer the phone and answer questions. Because we are so efficient with the automated permitting, everybody can give one-on-one attention and we are giving great customer service. Just last week we were at an event and everybody says you guys are just super accessible and I said the only reason we can do that and get that kind of service is because we have so much automation. So there's a lot of good things happening because of automation behind the scenes that have benefited from automation.
We have a way to communicate with permit writers through your application. We have some cool moves on Facebook and we tweet some cool moves out there. We are right there on scene. I do this presentation and give several presentations at conferences and sit on some of the different freight committees around the country and try to share our best practices with those groups as well.
Special challenges: I got the civil right issue. I am working with the Illinois state trade advisory council trying to figure out the night moves more. It may be designated oversize overweight truck routes. What’s nice about it is, with ITAP and the automation behind it, I can find out how many bridges have failed for certain size loads. So if I have a bridge that is getting weaker and weaker and weaker and I keep rejecting the permit, I can go to a district and say that I have had 400 loads get rejected going across this bridge and you need to bring it up to standards because what I'm doing is I am going out on local roads and going around this and adding additional miles. So I can use the reports inside my system now to help ask for more money or ask a district to repair a bridge. So I am a big believer in this. I guess that's probably why they asked me to speak today but I am behind it 100 percent. So far successes we’ve had last year: we got our phase 3 bridge analysis increased up to 299,000 through Bentley, the GIS solutions group (Bing & ESRI) has increased that data on that system, my local road routing adjustments, and also that local jurisdiction information. So that’s the majority of my presentation.
That's a load that was a cool move. They actually had two homes moved and 8 horses brought it to then edge pavement where they hooked it to a semi.
All right here are the advantages to automation: safety, consistency, cost savings, and time savings. The thing about safety is, in my automated system I have given them the route. I have all the restrictions. I have the height clearances, the width clearances, and side curves that Steven mentioned. If I got a tight turn I don't allow anything over a certain distance to go around that corner and that all comes into that safety aspect. I even have low clearance for long loads going across railroad tracks that might have a sag issue on the bottom side of it. So we got sag curves up and down both directions. Consistency is amazing and how that has taken a lot of special phone calls or complaint phone calls away from me because they say “you gave me this route last week why didn’t you give it to me this week?” Because of the automation that is gone. That whole problem is gone when it comes to consistency.
Cost savings: there are so many different ways you can consider cost savings: staffing, payroll, overtime, add-ons, etc. And that is just on the state government side. That's not counting the industry side which is accessible 24/7. This thing is on all the time. Time-saving: we can issue a permit in literally under 10 seconds or a person can do it themselves. So the advantages of automation are incredible.
This is what our ITAP system looks like real quick. If you go to the webpage and you are not logged in as a customer there's a lot of things you can actually do down there. On the top left-hand side, you can see you have got the IDOT homepage, permit homepage, the Getting Around Illinois maps (which is beneficial all seasons of the year), snow maps, construction maps, restrictions, basic trucker information, and a button that opens up Office so you can directly communicate with us that way as well.
This slide shows what it looks like when you are logged in and all the different things you can see and look at. On the right-hand side underneath Announcements, you see some of the information. When this particular picture was taken, there was flooding information, bridge restriction listings, and all different types of things. We utilize that a lot, especially during hurricane responses. Down south we had special rules up there that helped the haulers out and explained things about what types of permits were available to them this year.
In our ITAP system, if you utilize the local road it has a snail trail that moves along and shows the entire route. It has different colors and if it is green you are utilizing a local road. If you have certain points you want to stop at, our system has the capability of adding a waypoint to make you go a certain direction. So that is very beneficial and customers really like it.
This is an example of an automated permit. As you can see it came in at 94,000 pounds. It was 8-6 wide, 44 long, 13-6 high. This is a very easy one. Just goes in and the customer enters it and it is issued. This is what it kind of looks like. You can see how the axle weights and spacings are designated down at the bottom. That's the information that actually goes into the Bentley system and they analyze it when it comes back to us when it goes back and forth with the route and then the route is actually issued.
Any customer when they start an application is given a reference number in the top left hand corner. This is the second page of the actual permit. Next page (3 of 6). This is the start of the actual permit as far as the written way of the route. You can see it includes state roads and local roads - they are identified on each. We allow them to get a permit or a revision to the permit for five bucks if maybe a local does not work out for them or they cannot get permission or there might be a special event or they just don't want to travel that day - we actually issue revisions.
One thing we do in Illinois, we only issue permission and we charge for it only on the roads they travel on that are state owned. As they go through the process you can see this is the list of routes for which local commission required and during the process they acknowledge they are utilizing local roads and they will get local road permission. So that has been requested to be added several times into the system by our state attorneys because when the haulers don't get local road permission then they get a very large ticket. That documentation helps the courts administer the penalties.
This is the last half of the permit (5 of 6). You can see at the bottom it has some reduced speeds, no other trucks, and certain structures. Steven mentioned that we are working right now with geo-fencing and permit and verbal (like Siri) turn-by-turn directions because you don't want to be looking at a piece of paper or at your iPad or your phone. You want to keep your eyes up on the pavement. So we are really moving toward audible turn-by-turn directions as I speak. They were working on it as a left this morning.
This is the last one for the actual permit (6 of 6) and it has some descriptions in there as far as some of the other restrictions that showed up on that permit.
You see a picture of the Capital with a windfarm component. We literally had thousands of these come into Illinois so it is definitely up front and center on our plate of attention.
This is the first page of three when it comes to our 993 Form which is required by law to carry with your permit. Both our permits and provisions are allowed to be carried electronically. They have to be in a format that both the driver and law enforcement agent can actually read. This basically is the nitty-gritty of the support that goes with alternates. One of the key lines is the first one. We ask every driver to read the permit before starting their move.
You can see in there, there are conditions in inclement weather. If you go to our mapping page that I referred to earlier, you might have a red or yellow line out there when the state police doesn't necessarily want you traveling with a permitted load during those bad conditions. Any time a situation like that comes up give me a call and I'll be more than glad to figure out a new route for you and get that taken care of.
You will see the last page of the special provisions (3 of 3). It is a summary of automation. You will see by automation we have increased safety, increased consistency, cost savings, and time savings.
Compassion, civility, and compromise: I can say with the Illinois state police and with my staff, we have been very compassionate about trying to get this to the best it can possibly can be. Through that we have been very civil with industry and with the different associations to see what works and what the reasonable thing to do is. And that is all about compromise. Do we do it now or do we do it later? So those are three things I try to bring into my office and into the ITAP system. If anybody has any questions I will be more than glad to help out or answer.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright, thank you Geno. We will start off with questions now. We have a few questions for Ron and Steven, but in the meantime, if you have questions for Geno or any additional questions for Ron and Steven, please continue to type those in.
Questions for Ron and Steven: will the information shared with SC&RA members be different than what is given to this group?
Steven Todd
I'm not quite sure I completely understand the question. But, certainly if we are talking about the information that was just shared here, yes. As some of you on the line know, the SC&RA industry meets frequently with state officials. In fact, in preparation for the completion of this study, we have displayed this automation information via the maps and Excel spreadsheets numerous times amongst the state officials in hopes of coming up with as accurate data as possible. As Geno mentioned, there is a great deal of collaboration between industry and government officials in this respect - kind of unique I think and something both sides should be proud of. So from that standpoint, I'm not aware of any information that is shared with one side and not the other. We are pretty much open books with each other. Wouldn't you agree Geno?
Geno Koehler
Definitely. I'm sharing that report with everybody. Everything is shared amongst at least the Midwestern states. And that is part of it - you got to be honest with everybody and say here's where we are at and here's why we are doing things. Normally, like I said in those last three slides, there is compromise and you have to be civil and compassionate about it. I think everybody here lately has been working together great so all the information shared is factual. Especially for the MAASTO states, you can go to our website and see all the things we are working on. It's a pretty incredible site and I have to give Debbie Bradshaw and her staff down in Missouri kudos for how well that actually compares.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. Ron and Steven, on your maps you didn’t have Oregon shaded as an "auto issue" state and a participant said that Oregon does offer “auto issue” of single-trip permits and they provided a link. I just wanted to give you a chance to provide clarification there.
Steven Todd
I have no clarification to provide and will certainly follow up with that. That is the purpose of this webinar and the interactions that we have with state officials, so we will follow up with Oregon and make sure that is correct.
Jennifer Symoun
Thanks. Another question for you two: can the military have access to this program for their convoys?
Geno Koehler
I can talk about ITAP. We have had that scenario several times and it is good that they do have access. Yes. I want them to have access and the reason is I don't want them to drive heavy trucks on a bad bridge or a restricted area. So I do everything I possibly can to work with any of the military and anything like that. We had some super secret loads come through not very long ago and we had to show some personal attention to it but we still go back to our automated system to figure out the best route for them that that will fit and won't hurt anything.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright, thank you. Geno, the 99.2% is out of how many permits requested/issued annually?
Geno Koehler
That is everything. There are annual permits, biannual permits, and quarterly permits included in that number. But if they are an annual or seasonal permit, they are still required by that seasonal permit to go to our website and to look every day for an approved route. In other words, just because you have an annual permit, that doesn't give you blessings to drive anywhere in the state of Illinois, especially if we got a bad bridge or restriction that came up overnight. So that's why we have it printed on the annual and seasonal permits that they are still required to go to our webpage and to check for an adequate route.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. A question for all presenters: what kind of products transported are most likely to require oversize or overweight hauling permits?
Steven Todd
There are literally hundreds or thousands of types of products. I think the most common one would be boiled down to construction equipment, much of which is used to transport loads to and from State Department of Transportation sites. But certainly there is a wide variety. There are hospitals and others sometimes in need of emergency generators that are oversized and overweight, factories whose employees are down and not working for a day or two in need of an oversized overweight vessel of some kind to make the factory run again, and transformers running to and from utility sites to make sure power is restored and running for all the citizens in a particular community. Probably construction equipment would be predominant.
Geno Koehler
I would say construction equipment. Like I said earlier, we have a lot of one-time components, construction equipment, and intermodal containers. That's a hot topic. That's a big number.
Jennifer Symoun
Crystal Jones also mentioned loads that are non-divisible as another answer to that.
Steven Todd
Which unfortunately, Jennifer, is open to interpretation from state to state, but that is for another day.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright. How do you coordinate emergency moves?
Geno Koehler
In Illinois, basically we have to have your weight. I had a train derailment a couple weeks ago and we say that you got to at least start in the ITAP automated system. That way we can figure out what you are weighing and everything else. We will get you the route, which is what I mentioned earlier. We have to know that you can fit even in the middle the night as you're responding to big disaster such as a train derailment. One thing we do during after-hours situations like that is to send out a notice to all law enforcement agencies across the whole state that we have given you special permission to move after the hours of darkness with all the little exemptions you need to respond to that emergency.
Steven Todd
I would add kudos to AASHTO, in particular Caitlin Dwyer, as we recently saw with the hurricanes in Texas and Florida. I say “we” meaning the carrier industry and the state DOTs and I'm sure Geno saw them too. AASHTO is working overtime in terms of getting each state-by-state, in some cases unique, emergency OSOW movement waivers information and such out there in real-time to anyone and everyone. So, certainly a combination of AASHTO, FEMA, federal DOT, and state DOT officials all working together. We have come a long way since Katrina, for example, in terms of emergency coordination.
Geno Koehler
You're absolutely right Steven. There is a lot of topics: our service, parking facilities, whole fleets going through that are identical, etc. In Illinois, we ask at our scales to at least pull in with the lead vehicle and everybody else can go past. Show your paperwork, show your emergency declaration, and everybody is continuing on. We try to make it as convenient as we could in Illinois. With the federal divisible load scenario, we sat there and we issued a permit and it took us a few hours to design up an emergency response permit. So again having that automated system and staff around with those skills is incredible. It is pretty awesome what you can design and release in a hurry.
Steven Todd
One more point on that. I think those that joined me on Ms. Jones’s emergency route working group task force would agree that perhaps the greatest barrier and challenge that we have discussed has to do with not with the state or the contiguous states where the emergency is happening, but the states three, four or five states removed in terms of both moving both legal and over-dimensional critical loads for the utility industry and otherwise. Getting buy-in from states three or four or five states removed to get on the same page with regards to the labors that Geno mentioned - that probably remains our greatest challenge.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright thank you. We are about out of time. I don't see any additional questions. If anyone has any last minute questions please feel free to type it in and I will get back to it.
I do want to thank all of our presenters for presenting at today's seminar and thank you everyone for attending today’s seminar. The recording will be available within the next few weeks on the Talking Freight website and I’ll send out a notice when that’s available. I do have a slide on the screen right now about obtaining your AICP credits and your PDH credits. AICP is on the website right now so you can get those now if you want them.
Information will be sent soon about the November Talking Freight seminar and the Freight Planning LISTSERV is the primary means for sharing the information.
Chip Millard
The November webinar tentatively is going to be highlighted presentations from the INOV conference, which is focused on urban freight and is going on this week or next week, so look forward to that.
Jennifer Symoun
Once registration is available I will send a notice out to the Freight Planning LISTSERV. If you have not already joined the LISTSERV, I encourage you to do so, and the link at which you can sign up is showing on the slide.
So with that, I think we will end for the day. Thank you everybody and enjoy the rest of your day.
