View the September 19, 2018 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 Using Benefit Cost Analysis and the TOPS-BC for Evaluating Freight and Transportation Systems Management and Operations Strategies.
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'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. We will also take questions over the phone if time allows, and I will provide instructions on how to do so once we get to that point.
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 also available for Talking Freight seminars. 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.
Today we'll have four presentations given by:
Our first presentation will be given by Jim Hunt, a Transportation Specialist on the Organizing and Planning for Operations Team in the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Operations. In this role, he develops guidance, delivers technical assistance, and leads research in Planning for Operations, Active Transportation and Demand Management, Benefit Cost Analysis, and organizational institutional capabilities for TSMO.
Jim Hunt
Thanks so much, and thanks to Chip Millard and the rest of the Talking Freight team for this opportunity. I'm with the Federal Highway Administration Office of Operations, and we have been sponsoring work over the last decade or so on the notion of how we better integrated and plan for Transportation Systems Management and Operations and integrate those strategies into the planning process. A few years ago, we put a particular focus on making an economic case for these investments and in particular Benefit-Cost Analysis. With support from our Leidos team, this is the second of two webinars we have done over the last three weeks or so. I'm happy to put a particular focus for this one on freight strategies. And, again, with a lot of help from our freight office as well. We were also able to upload our latest version of the Tool for Operations Benefit Cost Analysis we will be featuring, and Michael Lawrence will describe more about that later. It's a good time to talk about this topic.
Today we are going to get on the same page. A little background on what we mean by Benefit-Cost Analysis and some of the fundamentals. Then we're going to talk about how it is applied in transportation systems and management operations investments, where it might be applied, and some of the newer and emerging focus areas that are making it even more important these days. Two presentations – one from Florida and one from Kansas – Marie and Davonna. We will talk in particular about Truck Parking Systems and those applications, but we're also going to tease out in those presentations some of the components that would go into a Benefit-Cost Analysis, particularly on the cost side, but also on the benefit side. And Mike will tie that together with the demonstration and discussion of the TOPS-BC tool.
This is the lay of the land today. We hope to have about thirty minutes left over at the conclusion for questions and answers. We have a very broad team. I mentioned our freight office, and we've gotten support from for federal highway, from our resource center in terms of the operations side, freight and transportation performance management. And you see the names intended to give you the breadth of expertise we brought to the project. On the contractor side, Leidos is the prime, and Jack Faucett will be discussing the tool a little bit later. A year ago, we put additional strategies into TOPS-BC and road weather management. A lot of folks see value in Benefit-Cost Analysis for TSMO and freight.
In terms of TSMO, we were constantly trying to have operational strategies evaluated on par with traditional legacy capital growth, and road and bridge projects. We were given a boost in MAP-21 in at least getting a consistent definition of TSMO. It is instructive to think about, as we look at the definition of TSMO, how might some of the things we do for traditional Benefit-Cost Analysis for highway improvements, where would some of the changes or nuances need to be taken into consideration for highway improvements? For example, a greater focus on performance reliability, customer service, can we quantify and monetize those sorts of impacts? Oftentimes we are looking at system level impact and not site specific or project level impact. So, various new considerations when it comes to evaluating TSMO strategies.
A couple more thoughts on this slide that talks about what we do and TSMO. Again, if we're trying to manage things like demand and provide travel information and better respond to nonrecurring conditions, like traffic incidents and work zones and weather, that leads to different tools and different approaches and methods for evaluating operation strategies. And then the last bullet, this is our operations story in our office, emphasizing the needs of the freight community through all of this.
I think many of you have seen the congestion pie chart. This is more to reinforce the notion that evaluating and trying to make investment decisions, we really need to account for a large portion of the problems that occur. Both in terms of reflecting those in our analysis if most of the time we don't have ideal conditions, we have works zones and incidents or weather problems, how do we account for that in our evaluation problems? And, related to that is, when we look at implementing certain strategies, how do we assign some kind of benefit or impact from those strategies in terms of targeting those problems? These are some of the unique aspects and opportunities to better make the case for these investments.
So again TSMO, we are looking at a broad range of strategies. Every day we are adding to the list in our office as we look at things like shared mobility and apps to better manage traffic and multimodal considerations. And we're trying to keep up with that with the tool and the guidance. Like I said, today we are happy to have the newest version of TOPS-BC with support from our freight office and added some specific freight components which we will talk about. It is important to mention that many other operational strategies that also benefit freight, so we can estimate the proportion of the traffic on the network that would be affected by these strategies, and we would benefit from improved traffic incident management, the value of that freight, and the other dollar value of the drivers and other impacts. We can also capture benefits to freight.
Benefit-Cost Analysis, at the highest level, we are just trying to draw a line down the middle of the paper and on the left side put the results of the investments considered to be beneficial and on the right side everything to be a cost. The trick is deciding what goes into those columns, how to quantify and monetize them so the impacts are on as level a playing field as possible. And Mike will go over the fact that it is not always possible to quantify and monetize all those impacts, so we have to treat those a little differently.
Why is it important to consider Benefit-Cost Analysis? First of all, we are looking at very constrained budgets, and we make sure that what we invest in produces more value than the investment actually costs. So, we need to justify those investments. Operations oftentimes isn't still an afterthought in all cases, but certainly not one of the primary areas of focus for state DOTs. So, we're trying to find tools to make the case these investments are highly valuable. Beyond that, oftentimes agencies have a particular part of funding for an area – like traffic signal operations or traffic signal management or freight strategies. How do you, within that category, prioritize those investments? BCA can help you prioritize. We are trying to make the case that we may want to invest in operational strategies over traditional capacity improvement. So, how do we compare operations with non-operations projects for an even playing field? Finally, we are interested in the focus of today; to become more on the pre-implementation aspect of BCA. But it's important to go back after the fact and to see what the actual performance impacts have been and determine what the actual benefits were in the BCA.
We are seeing a bit of an uptick in interest and economic evaluations and Benefit-Cost Analysis. These are some of the new twists in a lot of cases. Focus areas at the national level and the notion of performance management and that leads to questions like, "How do you compare different priorities across disciplinaries?" For safety, for freight mobility, for general mobility, bridge conditions – these are all different types of assets and performance measures. And how could you credibly make decisions and trade-offs among those various categories? Well, Benefit-Cost Analysis is one way of equalizing things if you can quantify and monetize. As we look more and more at asset management and lifecycle costing, and certainly the importance of laying out your upfront costs as well as recurring O&M costs and maintenance costs, that is really one side of the Benefit-Cost equation. So that can be support asset management. Progress and achievement performance targets – so with the new federal performance measures, there are targets have to be set by the states. Well it may be the case that reaching a certain target could cost more than what you think it is worth, and that many may be better spent somewhere else. A benefit cost analysis can determine what the optimal investment level could be in target level should be for your program.
So, various sources of Benefit-cost information, some of this was driving fundamental data we used to populate the tool we will talk about. One source is the U.S. Department of Transportation ITS Benefit Cost Program Database. They keep track of the various results that have been reported back to us and update that periodically – and you see the link to the latest report on this slide. Separately, we have been doing in our office, the Office of Operations, have produced a number of guidance materials in addition to the tools, so these are the covers of more of the recent and relevant publications for operations. The first is kind of the base foundational reference for conducting benefit cost analysis for TSMO strategies. We have the TOPS-BC Manual and a couple of sample TSMO work problems as well, so people see what some of these applications of BCA would look like in various contexts in the operations. And the link to all of that is on this slide.
I mentioned what we have done in terms of tool development. We are certainly not in the software business, but we wanted to provide a framework methodology and that is kind of the focus of the TOPS-BC. We added four freight strategies, and Michael will work through those. One is on truck parking. I think that concludes the background. I'm going to turn it over to Marie to talk about the Florida State Truck Parking System.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Jim. Our next presentation will be given by Marie Tucker, the Commercial Vehicle Operations Manager with the Florida Department of Transportation. From 2003-2012 Marie worked for PBS&J/Atkins North America working on contracts with FDOT. In 2012 Marie joined the Department to continue working on commercial vehicle related issues. She is the project manager for the statewide deployment of the Truck Parking Availability System, as well as the Innovated Technology Deployment (ITD) program manager for Florida. Marie also serves as the backup chair for the Commercial Motor Vehicle Review Board in Florida.
Marie Tucker
Thanks, Jennifer. We are going to discuss Florida's Truck Parking Availability System, and the approach we took to develop the system and how we are going to implement it. Florida is a bit unique. We have a lot of ports, so we have a lot of trucks going to and coming from the ports. We needed truck parking and knew it was an issue, so, in 2011 we contracted with Florida International University to do a research study. This project was a two-part research project. The first part being supply and demand. We wanted to know where our balance was, where we had truck parking and where we did not have truck parking. We saw from the study we had full capacity down south closer to the ports and distribution centers, and less capacity and more availability in the northern panhandle part of the state.
The second part of this project looked at some technologies. We will discuss a little further on. So that technology helped us move forward. We knew what type of technology we wanted to use. We went with the inground sensors. We tested one vendor, but then we knew there were other technologies out there. We did not want to sole-source anything, so we reached out to our vendors and contracted with the University of Florida to do an evaluation of all available devices. We tested four different technologies and four different vendors. We picked a rest area and we had each vendor come install a small portion of the truck parking spaces. The University installed video cameras and we did get ground data, so we compared the video to what the vendor was telling us was out there. This helped us create a developmental specification. We were able to see the fields we were looking at and we were able to determine we needed these different percentages of accuracy. We want this information to be as accurate as possible when we are trying to disseminate this information to truck drivers. We have a 90-95% accuracy that has to be met for this. We did test four technologies, and three of those made it on our innovative products list – this is new technology the department is using – and eventually they will be transferred over to our approved products list.
We developed a three-stage approach for our Truck Parking Availability System. The first stage is the implementation of all our state facilities. The welcome centers, rest areas and way stations. The second stage is our predictive analysis. Once we have all of the state facilities instrumented, we will collect and store the data. Once we feel we have sufficient data, we will analyze this data using our project management software and be able to tell a driver that generally on this date and time, there is or is not much truck parking. Our third phase will be to incorporate private parking locations, such as your Flying J's and Pilots.
We are currently in the instrumentation phase for the statewide facilities. We have 45 rest areas, 20 weigh stations, and 3 welcome centers. You can see the numbers on the screen of how many spots we are monitoring. The weigh stations will be receiving the Microwave Vehicle Detection System, so they will count ins and outs. The rest areas and the welcome centers will be getting the in-ground pucks. The reason for this is the weight station generally has commercial vehicles come in, so we know it is going to be the same type of traffic. The rest areas have a mixed-use traffic. We wanted to make sure we had very accurate information for the rest areas because that is where we see the majority of our parking. Each spot will be instrumented with two or three pucks per spot, depending on the technology that was chosen. We did design and build so each district managed the projects and the construction. We were here to help them along with that. We do have some rest areas we look at for our Work Program Plan, and they were going to be reconstructed, so we did not even need to go ahead and deploy at those locations. But we are working with our counterparts throughout the state when those rest areas are being reconstructed. We're going to have it where the truck parking will automatically be installed.
The first phase is Stage 1. Like I said, we are instrumenting all of our public facilities. We have one of our districts down near Orlando that is complete. We do have data out there, and it is being shown on our 511 systems. The information will be displayed on roadside signs. Our rest areas are 40 to 50 miles apart, so we will only have one location per sign. We want to, like I said, give as much accurate information as possible so we don't what to tell you 40 miles before you get to a rest area because so much can change in those 40-50 miles. The information is integrated with our software which feeds into our 511 systems and is available via the web and our app. We also have a third-party data feed that any apps or onboard equipment providers can subscribe to and directly get our data feed on truck parking.
Stage 2 we don't talk a lot about, because there isn't a lot to show about the predictive analysis. We are planning on showing some predictive in the future. We will also be looking at storing data such as how long trucks are parked on each spot, to help our planning folks out for our freight corridors, so they know where the majority of these trucks are coming from and going to. Stage 3 is the incorporation of the private facilities. This is a little further down the road. We don't expect Stage 1 to be completed until 2019. Then we will collect our data for our Stage 2 predictive analysis. And then at that point we will reach out to the private side and start exploring the options we have with them.
Florida looks at this as helping our freight. You can see the maps on the screen. On the left is a couple of years old, but 2015 and the projections for 2040. We know specific corridors are more highly used than others, so we need to look at those so that we can determine by this map these projection areas we need to focus on. We think our parking Data will help us in the future know exactly where these trucks are going to and coming from, and where they are trying to stage at, so hopefully we can assist in the parking issue.
We have a lot of freight things going on in the state. But one we are working on is creating a Regional Freight Network. We are working on instrumenting our weigh stations with mainline weigh-in motions. We're conducting our weigh stations with fiber Statewide Interconnected Freight Network. This will provide us with tons of information. It can give us the volume on the truck, the delivery of the port, it can help with traffic incident management when it comes to freight. A lot of things we think this can do. It being on fiber is going to be a backbone for our freight in connecting everything together. I think that is all I have.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Marie. Again, I want to remind everyone if you have questions to type them into the chat box. Our next presentation will be given by Davonna Moore, the Assistant Bureau Chief of Transportation Planning at Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT). She has been with KDOT for 10 years and is the manager of the Multimodal Group, which carries out the project and program management activities of the Rail & Freight, Transportation Alternatives, Public Transit, and MPO Planning Units. She has over 15 years of experience in transportation planning.
Davonna Moore
Thank you very much, and hello everyone. Thank you for having me to talk about this project from the aspect of the Benefit-Cost Analysis. I have done a few presentations on this project, but never from the aspect of the Benefit-Cost Analysis. It is interesting for me, because a lot of this spins from the TIGER grant we submitted. There are a lot of requirements. I was not even at the table when that was going on and a lot of information was eye-opening, so I do appreciate the opportunity to get another aspect on this project and tell you a little bit about it. So, I'm going to start off with an overview of the project. We heard a lot of information on what is going on of Florida, and we have a lot of similar things going on, but I will give an overview of the project.
The TPIMS project is an innovative program for making freight movements on our major highways and corridors throughout the MAASTO region. The TPIMs project is a joint 8-state partner project within the MAASTO region. We were originally awarded $25 million in 2015. Our budget has increased, and we have received an additional $6 million, so we are at about $32 million right now.
At a glance, we are again focused on the Midwest freight corridors. We are looking at about 139 sites. To make sure this project was successful, the belief that the existing parking in important regional corridors can be officially more used because of freight areas, we thought it was important to develop a system that was region wide and would benefit the end user, which is the truck drivers. When fully operational, we hope the project will empower the trucking community to make better and more informed decisions about truck parking. When truck drivers are looking for truck parking, about 44% spend 30 to 60 minutes looking for a spot, and about 35% are looking for spaces for an hour. This can cut into their productivity time and increases cost for them and the consumers as well.
How does this project help? Based off the survey developed through theATRI group, we were able to determine the needs of truck driving and what the truckers wanted to see on the road. They wanted to see real-time information provided and have an accurate manner. The accuracy is important, so that was what we went through as well to determine the systems we use for that type of accuracy. Also, based on how each of the rest areas are configured, different types of configurations required different types of the technology you heard about before in Florida. The truck drivers wanted to get the information availability and still react to making route changes. This helped in our design, so we can see in this picture here, you will see like a rolling system where they will see a sign that shows the first exit into the next exit.
In this slide, it is an overview of what is needed to have a seamless system. Each stage, when it comes to procurement, data collection, operations, and maintenance, everyone had a different system. So, how do we make a seamless system for the end-user? This is a slide that depicts the challenge we had of that. We decided to make four key decisions in what we call our 30% design framework. This was the basic framework we used for each state to determine how the system is going to work and how it was going to be seamless. And from that point move forward and develop a system that was seamless for the end-users and for the state DOTs to have the flexibilities they needed.
One of the key decisions that was made was to determine whether or not each state was going to use a public or private site, and that was up to each state. Most did want to use public because they were not ready to venture into the private side. We also talked about challenges with that and reaching out to the private sector. We wanted to make sure they understood what they were doing and how the system was going to perform before they go to the next step in reaching out to the private side. The next key decision was data collection, whether or not they were going to do entrance and exit or state by state counting. This goes back to the configurations of the rest area site or the site or the private site they were using. Also, the data aggregation, how we were going to get this information together into one area and put it out as a data feed that can be used by DOT's, app developers, trucker companies, etc. The last decision was about data communication and how to get the information out. We heard loud and clear the truck drivers wanted the signs on the road. But also, with the apps out there is the information how we could produce a data feed that is accepted that third-party developers could use.
That is kind of the overview of the TPIMS system. This is an overview of where we are now. This was completed last summer. We are approaching the last leg of this process and will be opening in early 2019. Right now, Phase 2 is underway. Construction is mostly complete for all the states. Currently we are doing testing for software integration for each state in terms of how the data is going to be aggregated, which is going to be into a central warehouse at the Mid-American Freight Correlation. They will be hosting the information to develop our performance measures.
The performance measures we decided to use, and the TIGER grant required us to have some level of measure, we decided to focus on parking utilization, safety and security, and system reliability. All were important for the success of this project also to have that information to determine how it was reacting to the marketing and any type of improvement to the truck drivers, and that goes back to the Benefit-Cost Analysis.
What do we need for our Benefit-Cost Analysis? There were three things we focused on in the application, which were safety, travel time, and environmental benefit. We know currently providing data to the truckers would decrease the time they are looking for parking, but we needed to figure out how to mathematically show how that would look. And these were the factors that we chose to develop and determine what that analysis would be to prove this project would be very beneficial.
So, focusing on safety, we looked at injury crashes and property damage only. We looked at that analysis and what you see on this slide the actual calculation we used for the injury crash analysis and for the property damage only. Michigan had already deployed a couple signs or systems on I-94, so we had basic information from that and there were some good assumptions made from that. So, this was a lot of the information we grabbed out of that. We used 10 years of data for that. That was the base number we used, because we figured that would give us a good set coming from that. And then also, if you look at the TIGER grant Benefit-Cost Guide, that was one of the staples they had. So, that is how we chose to focus on the safety factors for this analysis. The travel time benefit – we looked at the per parking space and then also the travel time per day. The components were twofold: looking at the benefits to the general public for the reduction of traffic and lane closures, and then also benefits to the commercial truck driver to increase their task productivity. When you think about going back to the percentage of drivers looking for more than an hour, the hope of this project is to improve that. For this calculation, we looked at the per parking space, looking at travel time savings per parking space times the number of parking spaces and the utilization rate. We chose the utilization rate of 80%, assuming that not at all times the parking spaces are going to be 100% used, but we know there was heavy utilization. Based off the studies we had, we chose the utilization rate of 80%.
Next was the Environmental Benefits Factor. I forgot to put up this equation, but it's really looking at the fuel savings per parking space times the number of parking spaces in total times the utilization rate. So, what we gathered using conservative numbers, we assumed because of this deployment and what happened on I-94 in Michigan, we were conservatively going to save the truck driver about 15 minutes looking for truck parking. We do feel like it is going to be higher, but that was the conservative number we had. Also, because of the time savings, they were going to save 2 gallons of gas as well. So, all of that factored into the environmental benefits when you think about them looking for parking and waiting for a parking space and the emissions that come from that. This information gathered into that equation to help us get to the gallons that was going to be saved per day. It was roughly estimated it was about 60,000 gallons of gas saved per day.
Here is the deployment capital and O&M cost. The budget looks slightly different now, but overall it is still the same. Originally, we were awarded $25 million, but adjustments were made in our Benefit-Cost Analysis because of the amount of detail, and we wanted to wait until we got towards the end. Once the project was deployed, we were able to get that additional $6 million, so we got it closer back up to that amount. We also included the annual maintenance cost for each state. That was developed independently by each state based on the number of sites they were going to deploy.
When you look at the Benefit-Cost Analysis when you go through the TIGER grant project application, you will see the total amounts for safety benefit, travel time benefits, and environmental benefit. We also did a 3% net present value and also a 7% net present value in 2013, as recommended by the resource guide. So, we were able to do that. And when you take away from the deployment cost and maintenance cost in all the scenarios we were still a high-level benefit cost for these projects, with the amount being about 4.2 and net present value at 4.3. We feel confident the deployment of this project was going to be beneficial for not only safety and travel time and environmental, but these intangible things that maybe you can't quantify but you can qualify in terms of having overall safety, because these rest areas are now going to have more lighting and more cameras. The idea of more cameras will reduce the idea of crime, property being damaged or stolen, and more importantly safety to the truck driver and gives them an opportunity to pick parking places that are safe. Which goes back to Jason's law and why the benefit cost of looking at the numbers, we also had to think about the benefit of life. When you think about that, no matter what, we are providing information for these drivers to be safe.
When you think about this project in terms of economic competitiveness, we always say time is money and wasted fuel and lost working hours. Based on the amount of time looking for parking and things that can happen, they are wasting about $7 million a year. The savings of 15 minutes a day to find parking within the parking corridors can save up to $10 million. It is not the complete answer for us, but we absolutely want to make an impact on what we want to do and be part of the solution to develop more strategies and work with other private partnerships to help expand this project on a nationwide basis. So, it is good when I see other states, like Florida, doing this. When this is expanded out nationwide, the bottom line is that 15 minutes can save the economy about $4.4 billion annually, so adding this level of information is important. That is all I have. There is a website for the project. If you want to go way into the weeds into the Benefit-Cost Analysis, that website is there, and you will see the TIGER grant application. There is information in an appendix about the national analysis. We have our spreadsheet tables and a write up on the equations I showed earlier. That's all I have. Thank you.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Davonna. I know we have some questions typed into the chat and we will get to though those after the final presentation, which will be given by Michael Lawrence, President of Jack Faucett Associates and an economist who specializes in the development and application of economic analysis tools to be used by planners, operators, and engineers in the transportation policy and planning process. He developed versions 2.0 and 3.0 of TOPS-BC for the FHWA Office of Operations and also developed the Safety BCA Guide and Excel Tool for the FHWA Office of Safety. He has completed over a hundred BCA and Economic Impact studies for state, regional, and local government agencies for transportation, energy, environmental, and flood protection projects throughout the country.
Michael Lawrence
Thank you, Jennifer. Greetings to everybody around the country, and thanks very much to the previous speakers. You gave me some nice material and examples of projects that will fit into the presentation I am about to give you. We have to start with a little disclaimer that the Federal Highway Administration requires to start with. This is Jack Faucett Associates' work I am presenting, was sponsored by the FHWA, but everything I say will be on me and not on them.
Let me start out with what we call weighty decisions. It is an exhibit that I have loved since I sought an economist that does Benefit-Cost Analysis. These scales indicate what a Benefit-Cost Analysis is. Our friends at the Missouri DOT Scout Program provided this to us, and it is a great example of what we are trying to do with the cost analysis and that is to weigh the benefits against the cost. The project might be efficient and viable as well. The colored weights indicate the different components of the benefits and components of the cost, and that is what we are trying to do when we put together a Benefit-Cost Analysis. What I will try to cover in this session, I'm going to go pretty quickly, and I apologize for that. We are trying to leave plenty of time for Q&A, so I'm going to rush through some of this a bit. Please ask any questions if I have gone through it quickly over anything. We might go a couple minutes over but not much. We are just going to introduce Benefit-Cost Analysis. We will talk about the steps were doing a Benefit-Cost Analysis. We will talk about the TSMO strategies for truck operations. All TSMO operations impact truck efficiency, but there are some particular ones targeted for trucks, and that is part of what we will talk about today. We will talk about measuring costs and quantifying benefits, then we will introduce the TOPS-BC freight components.
There are a lot of examples from the DOT on how to do Benefit-Cost Analysis. The operations benefit-cost references. These are all available online and you can look at those at any time. The Economic Analysis talks about a 10-step process. The idea is to establish a plan at the beginning, to be careful with what you are identifying and talking about to make sure your assumptions are transparent, that your work can be reproduced easily so we know what we are comparing to get a good traffic forecast which is often required, and to evaluate what the risk might be in the evaluation you were doing. All of our data is subject to uncertainty, so there is some issue of risk when we are going through this process. These steps get you through a Benefit-Cost Analysis.
The final step is how we present the information to decision makers, so they can understand clearly. As Jim said, the first benefit-cost model was probably a yellow pad of paper and somebody drew a line down the paper, and that is what Benefit-Cost Analysis tools do. They try to organize cost and benefits. We're talking about benefits for TSMO analysis in reducing congestion, reducing crashes, saving energy, and maybe other things as well for projects. The cost side is equipment, O & M software, communications, and others. One issue that comes up is what about agency costs. It might change the agency's cost. We usually think of that as a credit against cost as opposed to a benefit, but it depends on the circumstances and the analyst just has to make decisions about that.
Cost quantifications and how to get there. There are price lists for a lot of the kinds of equipment we are talking about. Jim mentioned the Federal Highway ITS Federal Database with lots of information going back for decades and, going forward, it is updated on a regular basis. Your cost for individual technologies have been identified and those are available through the planning process. Benefit quantification – I talk about this being the heart of the matter, this is more challenging on the cost side. We have a series traditional measures of effectiveness for benefits, travel time, savings vehicle operating costs, etc. And there are a few emerging benefits, travel time, reliability, travel and consumer surplus, climate change, these are new things the analyst needs to include. There are other measures of effectiveness that are hard to quantify. Things like quality-of-life, consumer satisfaction, feelings of safety and security. We should mention these, they should be included but not quantified.
Once we know the measures of effectiveness and the quantifications of time saved, the crashes reduced, etc., then we need to convert those to dollars, because Benefit-Cost Analyses are comparisons of dollars. So, we have data, like the value of time and reliability, the value of life, cost of injury, fuel prices, the value of emission reductions, etc. They are married with the measures of effectiveness change to give us our benefits. There are a number of other important concepts in Benefit-Cost Analysis. I'm not going to go over all of these in much detail, but risk and uncertainty, I mentioned these things before. The end result is the benefit-cost ratio, or the net benefits. Present value in discounting is important because cost and benefits occur in different periods. We have to be careful about what we are comparing Some benefits are just not quantifiable, but we can describe them qualitatively, and they should be presenting information to decision-makers is always critical.
Here is an example of a project life, where the dark bars are the costs, obviously big costs right up front. O&M costs occurring over the life of the project. And then periodic equipment replacements, for example, for the larger dark bars. Benefits may have a ramp up, or they may not. And they may come up to some level, then they are there for the rest of the project. The benefits and costs occur during different periods, so we need to worry about what kind of dollar we are looking at. A dollar is not always a dollar. We all understand prices change over time. Inflation is a general price level change. It means a dollar will not buy as much in 2023 as it did in 2018. At a 2% inflation, you need about $1.10 in 2023 to by the same things you bought in 2018. A dollar has time value. We would rather have a dollar today than in the future because we can take that dollar and invest it and enjoy the benefits. So, discounting is a critical component of the Benefit-Cost Analysis.
We talk about BCA tools and it's kind of a hierarchy of tools within transportation and Benefit-Cost Analysis. There are loads of spreadsheets around for every project for a person that is putting together a Benefit-Cost Analysis. They could generate their own spreadsheet. DOT has produced a number of spreadsheet models and online models such as BCA.net, which is an online model from the Office of Asset Management. This is primarily a major capital tool but could be used for TSMO as well. There are some tools designed for program areas. I.T. is deployment system many if you may remember, TOPS-BC is an example. There are a number out there available. There are some technology-specific tools such as the Clear Roads, Winter Road Maintenance, Traffic Incident Management and Smart Roadside Initiative Tool focused on freight.
What is TOPS-BC? I'm going to give you a quick introduction today and talk about some of the freight modifications that have been made to the tool for the 3.0 release. It is a tool to assist Operations planning and other state DOT and MPO staff to conduct a sketch planning level analysis. It is a sketch planning tool that has got a lot of assumptions in it, but it is also a framework that allows a Benefit-Cost Analysis as you improve the information you have available. So, you can take the defaults that are in TOPS-BC for cost in various components and convert those into the better information as you go forward with your project and have better data.
Jim mentioned there are a lot of different TSMO strategies. This is sort of the organization, and you see the four freight strategies. TOPS-BC is organized in three components – Benefit component, cost component, and then a combination of those where the Benefit-Cost Analysis results are produced. Each of the technologies, depending on how you count, has a separate component for cost and they get pulled together into a cost-benefit section.
It is easy to use and doesn't take much for the user, whether they are an economist or a planner or an engineer, or none of the above. You need very little information to get an answer. On the user inputs, the need things like selected technology, they need to know the number of deployments, the number of ramps there will be. They need to know the year it is going to be deployed so we know when to start turning benefits. Then we need an analysis period and how many years to analyze. We need to identify the peak period and the facility type, number of lanes, etc. All of these defaults can be overridden by the user easily. The user can make it their own tool and not the Federal Highway's tool. When you start BC, this is the introduction page for version 3. It is basically three components. You can do a Lifecycle Cost Analysis, a Benefit-Cost Analysis, and you can get more information, which is just kind of pieces of the manual included in the tool you can take a look at.
This is the big picture view. Don't try to see what those numbers are, I just wanted to give you an idea of what the page looks like. The bar on the left we call the navigation pane. That allows you to click on any of the technologies and get to the page focus on that particular technology. The next box is the cost example where costs are being calculated. The user is asked for a couple of items. The green items are where the user has to put some data in to produce a cost estimate, or they can override all of this to come up with their own cost. The cost is going to be graphed in this box here and below the cost is spread over time for the entire life of the analysis period and then discounted to a net present value. The tabs along the bottom are numbers, and normally these would have the names so the user can operate and go into the individual tabs or use the navigation bar.
What is new in TOPS-BC? The 3.0 updates: New cost data, a cost default matrix, it added four freight strategies, a new ATM detail, and added graphics for cost-benefit sheets as well. The new freight strategies include truck-only lanes, E-compliance for trucks, truck parking and reservation systems, and truck climbing lanes. Truck-only lanes restrict a lane or multiple lanes to large vehicles only, such as trucks and RVs. They can be configured as a toll for access or an open heavy-duty vehicle access Lane. They can require taking an existing lane, repurposing or rebuilding a shoulder or building a new right-of-way. This is what the cost page looks like. I will show you a little more detail but the navigation bar and some calculations going on. This is the second box from the left. This is where we have the truck-only lanes with tolls, so these are the various equipment items that TOPS assumes are used for the toll collection process. There are useful benefits and costs and O&M costs for each of those items. No assumptions are needed to produce this. The user can override any of these items. Then we have the incremental equipment. This is communications line, message signs and message towers, and again the useful life and a capital cost and an O&M cost. The user is required to fill in the green cells. So, the one is the back groove, sort of the transportation management system cost. The second is the number of incremental deployments. Sort of how many miles do you want for your each of your message system. So, for example, it could be a 20-mile segment with five towers. And the deployment year. Then it calculates the average annual cost and levelized costs for that particular item.
Now we have another portion, which is the truck-only construction cost. Each of these green boxes are drop-down menus. The user is asked to define the project category and type, and the types change with each category selected. This particular one is a reconstruct lane and widening the lane. And we have the roadway categories in the roadway type. Also, the type of terrain – could be flat, rolling, or mountainous. From this information we look up the cost per lane mile. The user indicates the number of miles in the life of the project, which gives a total capital cost. This information is then collected and we move on to the benefits side, and the user is asked to indicate what period of time he wants to analyze. In this case, it is one hour. They might be looking at a 24 period, so we take this one hour and multiply it by 24 hours. You might be looking at a particular peak period, so this might be a peak of one to four hours. We ask for the throughput on the lanes and the number of lanes. And TOPS uses a Highway capacity manual that calculates the average speed. It, of course, can be changed to anything the user wants. If the user doesn't like the yellow cells, they can type into the green cells and it will override what is in the yellow cells. When these numbers are put together, TOPS will calculate the benefits for each of those components.
E-compliance for trucks, electronic credentials and safety verification checks, Cost estimates, thermal detection, etc., allows external running of the Smart Roadside Initiative. This is a tool for very detailed estimation of the cost for E-compliance. The user can run that tool in parallel with the TOPS-BC, and then TOPS-BC can pick up the calculations of cost that are produced from the Smart Roadside Initiative Tool. On the benefits side, we use information on the facility characteristics, the number of inspections, days and hours of operation, the percent of rural trucks in the system, facility performance, out of service rates, impacts to strategies such as fuel and travel time savings.
Truck parking reservations is the next freight strategy. We have cost options for the two examples that the Florida DOT mentioned and what was being used in the Midwest program. On the benefits, we use the same kind of information.
Finally, we have truck climbing lanes. This is cost based on the Utah DOT study. That information is generalized using the HERS cost per lane mile and updated to the present value dollars for flat, rolling, and mountainous mixed roadways. The benefits are based on the percent trucks change in speed, change in crashes, and time saved.
This is what we call the summary of my deployments. In this case it is one example where the individual benefits are calculated to get the total annual benefits. TOPS allows you to do multiple strategies. If you could imagine this matrix moving out to the right, there could be additional technologies to the right with their benefits and costs presented as well.
I made it through that and I'm a little bit over. I think we have got about 25 minutes for Q&A, so we would like to turn it to Jennifer to manage that process. We have a few things we would like to ask the attendees to consider. We do workshops associated with the TOPS-BC model and conducting cost benefits analysis and we are always looking for new information and ways to present the information. Anything you think we did today that we can do better, ask a question, present the information, or email Jim Hunt with that information. We would like to hear from you.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. We are now going to move into the Q&A session. I encourage you to continue typing in your questions and we will try to get through all of them. We have a number of questions that came in for Marie and Davonna.
Marie, what are the savings expected from the Truck Parking System? What type of benefits are expected?
Marie Tucker
We do have our BC analysis we did, but I think that the biggest benefit and savings we can see, and they're kind of combined, first for the trucker is their time savings of trying to find a spot. For us, it saves our shoulders when they're parking where they're not supposed to be. We're hoping underutilized areas will be utilized more so you will see less parking on the shoulder. And safety, which is kind of unquantifiable. But really the truckers' time savings and our savings to the shoulders where they're parking illegally.
Jennifer Symoun.
Thank you. Marie, does it matter if truckers utilize public parking areas versus private parking areas? Are there any liability issues if the State includes private availability in its postings?
Marie Tucker
We don't see this as an issue. Our signs are on blue information signs, so we are providing information. We are not directing them to go anywhere specific. We do not see any liability on our side whether we post public or private.
Jennifer Symoun.
This is a question for Marie and Davonna. Have you received any feedback from truck drivers, truck carriers, or others in the trucking industry about your Truck Parking Availability System since the Electronic Logging Devices (ELD) requirement was formally implemented earlier this year?
Marie Tucker
We have not received any feedback on this.
Davonna Tucker
We have had several forms of outreach. We have gone to the National Truck Parking Counsel. We have been to several conferences with third-party developers and also dispatchers and companies. We have heard they are excited this type of project is happening. We heard a lot of complaints about the ELD mandates about and the hours of service. And we let them know we couldn't do anything about that, but this was part of our answer to those challenges that they are facing. I think them just knowing we understood the challenges they were facing about the ELD and the hours of service, and this type of project was to help with that. It was very beneficial from that end. We got more intimate details when we got into the Truckers Jamboree that took place in Iowa at the world's largest truck stop. We were able to talk one-on-one with a lot of truck drivers. They told us they were happy to see this happening and they are excited the DOT on the public side was part of the solution rather than the problem.
Jennifer Symoun
I have another question for both of you. What feedback and support, interest or concerns have you received from private truck parking providers?
Davonna Moore
What we have heard at kind of a broad level some of our project partners had. They were on board, but then there were other applications that were out there. I know the National Association of Truck Stop Operators was trying to develop a truck parking application as well, not necessarily using the same technologies. I think there was conflict about that and how they wanted to use it and possibly monetize it. This being a public grant they want to make this available to everyone, so I think there were concerns about what that would mean to work for the government. What would happen with the equipment if the project ended? Early on we reached out to NATSO as the guiding agency to deal with the project side and develop guiding principles about what would need to happen if we were able to start a partnership with some of these private sites. That is also available on the website, but we were able to come up with these guiding principles. They were concerned about the cameras and if they would be recording information and how that would work. We explained, based on the technology, what those cameras did and what they're used for and what they would not be used for.
Marie Tucker
Thank you. That is the last phase of our project, so we have not reached out to anyone and no private truck stops have reached out to us.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. Another question for both of you, can you give an estimated or approximate cost per site for the technologies discussed?
Davonna Moore
I'm probably going to lob that over to Marie. They are dealing with the more individual basis for each individual state to use different technologies based on their configuration, so it is hard to pinpoint that overall. So, Marie may have a better number for that.
Marie Tucker
We have our overall cost of our statewide deployment. If you kind of divide that by each site, you roughly get about 250,000, but this is encompasses everything from connecting the fiber, the sign, the embedded DMS, and the cameras. It kind of depends on site by site. I can provide more detailed information on the actual technology on the quotes we were given and the bids we received back off-line if wanted.
Davonna Moore
I can also do that for each state. It just gets into grainy detail for each individual state and what they had to do, and even states doing different deployments. It is a lot. You might get better information from Florida.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. Davonna, did you find savings related to vehicle operating cost savings? The presentation shows fuel savings, but I don't see them monetized in the slide that summarizes the benefits.
Davonna Moore
I'm trying to look for that question again. I think that goes back to them saving time and looking for the truck parking, but not necessarily quantify as we focused more on the fuel savings on that. I can look in more detail. One of my fellow partners is on the call that can maybe type that in. As far as I know we just focused on the fuel savings with the assumption of the fuel operating cost in terms of them staying idle or looking for truck parking would be reduced. I don't know if I answered your question.
Jennifer Symoun
Isabel, if you want to type in any clarification, we can get back to that. Mike, are truck-only lanes new construction type projects directly comparable to reconfiguring existing lanes for truck-only lanes using BCR? Or does TOPS make any internal modifications for facilitating comparisons across strategies like capacity additions versus other strategies?
Michael Lawrence
The TOPS truck-only lanes cost calculations include both a toll-based system and a non-toll-based system. For all truck-only lanes, there is usually some construction required, and that can be anything from minor modifications of a shoulder for a short period of time, a mile or even less, or a very long case. There is a proposal for an 800-mile Midwestern truck-only lane across all the states that we talk about in the parking program. There are examples that are different. TOPS allows the user to describe their particular circumstance, the kind of project, the facility it is on, does it include minor modifications to a shoulder, does it include adding another lane, does it include lighting an existing lane? The user has lots of options for identifying the particular configuration they are focused on. Remembering it is a sketch planning cost analysis, so not an engineering cost analysis, we take that information about the particular configuration, link that to the facility and the kind of construction. Then we use the HERS model estimate defaults for cost per lane mile which were estimated in 2010 and they are updated to current dollars, so they are representative of those costs. That particular configuration is the cost per lane mile for that configuration is plucked from the HERS detail, which provides differences about those particular items, type of facility, location, whether it is a shoulder modification or a new lane or new right-of-way. All of those options, the user is able to hone in on a particular cost per mile for their project in a sketch planning way.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. How broad of a geographic area is considered when examining the freight benefits (or for that matter non-freight benefits) of a given project? Some freight projects may provide greater benefits for a larger geographic area (such as reducing congestion on a key, national-level intercity truck corridor) than within a local, regional, or even state level geographic area.
Michael Lawrence
TOPS is focused at the project level. It is not a national benefit cost model. It is focused on a particular project, a particular set of investments. They identify the kind of investment, the kind of equipment being put into place, and the specifics of the facility where this investment is going to be made. Then what the characteristics of the facility are. Is it arterial or interstate? How many lanes does it have? What is the current throughput? What period of time are you analyzing? Is it a peak? Is it a whole day we are looking at? It provides the individual specifications for that project, and then it calculates benefits for that project. Using the Highway Capacity Manual, we are able to calculate or estimate perhaps a change in speed, and that change in speed changes the safety profile, the frequency of crashes. It changes the reliability of that particular facility and therefore there are reliability benefits. We have crashing reliability benefits. We also have fuel benefits. Is there a change in speed that entails a change in energy consumption? That is calculated into the facility. But it is only for that project and that geography. It is not a statewide or national model, unless the user uses statewide inputs to do the calculations.
Jennifer Symoun
All right, thank you. I know we have some questions regarding whether or not truck drivers, ELD drivers, how likely they are to secure public spaces. I don't see any questions geared at the presenters right now. Well we give people a chance to type in any additional questions, we can open the phone lines for questions. If you want to ask a question press star five and I can open your phone line.
Michael Lawrence
While we are waiting for call-ins, one of the things I mentioned I went over quickly was the addition of reliability estimates to the TOPS-BC model using the sharp two reliability research to allow the reliability benefit of individual projects, and the effect that project has on congestion and average speeds and travel times, and how that changes the perception of reliability and how we change the lack of reliability cost of a particular facility. There is an estimate now in TOPS for virtually all of the technologies that impact capacity. We can produce this estimate of reliability benefits. It is a sketch planning estimate, but it can be very important in some projects. The value of reliability can be equal to the value of the time in some projects. I think that is an important modification to producing a Benefit-Cost Analysis with TOPS. I know the BCA are still pretty uncertain on how to deal with reliability, so they may or may not give you credit for it. But I think it is an important component that eventually they will become comfortable with the notion and understand it and begin to give credit for reliability benefits.
Jennifer Symoun
Thanks, Mike. We don't have any questions over the phone, but Isabel typed in a clarification, truck VOC includes fuel and non-fuel operating costs. If the analysis shows savings in fuel, this could be monetized and be included as part of the benefits resulting from the truck parking.
Davonna Moore
I don't disagree with that. We just did not look at that. I think it was more focus on the safety aspect and trying to get what we knew we could get our hands on. We didn't totally get into that. Dan Murray was also part of that project and I see him typing in. Dan would probably know for sure.
Michael Lawrence
This is Mike again. There are some reports that estimate the amount of travel time that the truckers use currently to search parking or arrived at a parking site not to find parking and go elsewhere. There are estimates in the amount of time saved if they can park and the amount of mileage reduced if they know where there is an available spot or if they have a reservation and they can go quickly. This results in lower VMT and associated fuel savings.
Jennifer Symoun
I don't see any additional questions and it doesn't look like we have any questions over the phone. We do still have a few minutes, so I will give a few seconds to see if we have any additional questions coming in. In the meantime, do any of the presenters have any final comments?
Jim Hunt
This is Jim. I will start with one. I just wanted to thank you all and the Talking Freight community. I think this has been a great new venture for us. Us folks that primarily do with traditional operations and traffic management and promoting improved efficiency that way to bring in this freight component. I have learned a lot, so we are excited about the continued support and integration between our programs. Thanks to Marie and Davonna for excellent presentations, we look forward to seeing how those will evolve. Lastly, I want to mention, we talked about this latest version of our tool being available, and the download for that is on the link in the presentation Mike presented. We have been incremental in deploying the tool and that is the latest version. There are still some opportunities to take suggestions on what we want to do. We have a limited budget and time, but we are at the point with user feedback with developing this version. We would like to consider doing for another version probably toward the end of the year, and early '19 and look for version 3.5. If you're interested in downloading that, there is still some opportunity to help us prioritize what we might want to do for that in the last piece. Thank you.
Michael Lawrence
I reiterate what Jim said. This is Mike. We find the best evaluations we get for the tool are from users trying to put a particular project into the model to make it work for their particular circumstance, and they identify opportunities they would like to do that the tool just doesn't accommodate but could accommodate. When we get that feedback each of these cycles, we are able to make those modifications to do that particular kind of analysis that users are interested in. The only way we really learn those is if you open the tool and try to use it and let us know where you have challenges or difficulties. It is a large tool in terms of a spreadsheet. It has got a lot of pages in it, but typically a user is only using a couple of pages. They are looking at the Ramp Meter Cost page and the Ramp Meter Benefit page, or they are interested in truck parking and looking at the Truck Parking Benefit page. The rest of the tool just sits there. Having a lot of users and exercising the tool for those technologies they are interested in has given us great feedback over the years, and we need plenty more. So, use it and tell us what we did wrong. We would love to hear it.
Jennifer Symoun
I don't see any other questions coming in, so I think we will go ahead and closeout for today. If you do think of another question, feel free to type it in. I want to thank all of our presenters and thank you everybody for attending. The recording will be available online within the next few weeks on the Talking Freight website. Registration is not yet available for the October webinar but once it is information will be sent via the Talking Freight Listserv. The Freight Planning LISTSERV is the primary means of sharing information about upcoming seminars. I encourage you to join the LISTSERV if you have not already done so. Thank you and enjoy the rest of your day.
