Q. Michael Cribb asked: What types of Federal funds were used to design, implement and maintain the 511 systems?
Mac Lister: The first question had to do with federal funds, can you use federal funds? The FHWA answer is yes, federal funds are available for these 511 systems. I did want to clarify that, and David had mentioned specifically, systems that met the guidelines developed by the coalition. USDOT participated in the development of those guidelines with the coalition, but the guidelines are not tied to any use of federal funding at all. The guidelines are just that, they are guidelines only, so the use of federal funds is not related to the specific content of the systems involved. I would just ask real quickly, do any of the three of you presenters have any comments, anything unusual about using federal funds with how you developed your systems?
Barb Blue: Mac, this is Barb, we did have the deployment grant of $100,000 and the thing that I really appreciated was that you all were very flexible about how that money could be used. I would say plan out, you've got to have your match, 80/20 match the majority of the 511 network, phone and web, have been supported by state funds in Kansas. Our system does meet all the guidelines as well. I didn't mention that during my presentation.
Brandi Hamilton: This is Brandy in Montana. For the implementation MDT used an ITS earmark and the federal grant and annual operating costs have been built into our state budget.
David Lively: This is David and there was an earmark for the San Francisco bay area [TravInfo traveler information service] before that evolved in to the 511. We used the national planning grant to lay out an overview of how California would go in particularly to address the rural 511 issues in north earn California and the central valley and central coast. That document provided a discussion point to go on with San Diego an Los Angeles are using locally controlled funds whether it's federal, or local motorist assistance tax funds.
Q. WV Group asked: Why wouldn't the website information include weather?
Mac Lister: The next question had to do with weather and the website. The question was asked very early in the process and I think you've all shown how you use weather in your seasonal reporting. I'm thinking that whoever asked that, you can contact us with more detail.
Q. Linda Dowlen asked: What has been done to promote ridesharing and other commute options on 511 and how did you work to get multiple agencies in metro areas to all participate and have a common message?
Mac Lister: The next question was kind of an interesting one for me. Did your implementation do anything to promote ride sharing and commute options? Where there other kinds of transportation ride share options as part of your 511 implementation and pulling together your agents.
Barb Blue: We are working on content for metro area and in the Kansas City area. We had strong feedback they want to include ride sharing information. We are looking at that.
Mac Lister: Anybody else?
David Lively: This is David, including ride sharing and transit has been an essential part of all of our deployments in California. In rural areas we did try and were not able to follow through on getting local transit or rideshare interest. To us, that multi- modal traveler information is essential to give the traveler a choice of travel, route, mode, time of day and we want to use traveler information so the informed traveler can help manage the demand on the transportation system. We also are working very much with using 511 for specific major construction projects. A telephone number to call for the immediate delays or to forward to the project managers for your major construction such as with the. [indiscernible] Two examples of project-specific information are the McArthur Maze Melt down, where the bridge melted in last spring in the San Francisco bay area; and major highway reconstruction going in to the mountains on Interstate 80.
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Q. WV Group asked: How do quantify or qualify whether content is value-added? Is the value-added content coordinated with an evaluation process?
Mac Lister: Terrific. There were two questions having to do with the cost benefits. Within one of them was stated quantify value added. Do any evaluation to quantify value added. Specifically have you done any cost benefit analysis on the system? Those are kind of related. Do any of you have any comments on what you have done to look at those issues or what you might be doing to look at those issues?
Barb Blue: We did do some of the cost benefit analysis on our early on research and looked at that. Kansas also did participate in the national cost benefit analysis done of 511. We are one of five systems that participated. There is excellent information that is available on the national website. We also did presentations at the last national 511 conference where we addressed some of the issues that came out of the cost benefit analysis. I do have some of that information if people are interested in that.
Mac Lister: Thanks Barb. That national website that Barb mentioned as having a wealth of information is: deploy511.org website.
David Lively: Things like having the consumer call line and questions line what Brandy has in Montana are very good feedback. A research study of a consumer surveys and focus groups for our state-wide highway conditions service both web and phone. Those things are essential to do when ever you can to get feedback and have baseline and follow -- baseline and have follow through on it. Finding out what the consumer and what the reaction is. Are we really affecting mode choice and travel time? In my recent research that I just received at the very end of last year, 75% of the people who call (California statewide highway information telephone) call when they expect something to be wrong with their road.
Barb Blue: I would add that the benefit of a comment line is, if they will leave you their contact information, the opportunity to do one on one education if there's some misunderstanding of how to use the system. In addition to that, it gives you real perceptions of feedback while generally speaking, user perception is reality, there are errors in those perceptions sometimes and you have to do education to help.
Mac Lister: And, as Brandi mentioned, sometimes different opinions about the way --
Barb Blue: It gives you firsthand opportunity to educate and to reach out. Like Brandy, I too, have the responsibility of transcribing those and doing the follow ups. I do delegate some of the follow-ups with appropriate individuals. You do learn a lot from that feedback where people really understand, where they don't: It's given insights as to changes to the system to make it clearer for users. What you thought was clear to them just isn't.
Q. Paul Pisano asked: Does "State's Operational Data" that goes into the system include maintenance actions, such as when roads are or will be treated or plowed?
Mac Lister: A couple other questions: Does data include maintenance actions such as roads treated or when they are plowed? Who would like to take a quick crack at that?
Barb Blue: This is Barb and yes we do include maintenance in terms of maintenance projects with road closures or impacts of travel on a road. The road conditions reflect in some cases the mitigation efforts. It does not include the time plowed. We do get questions sometimes, "I want to know when you are going to plow such and such a road." It does not include that information.
David Lively: This is David from California. All of our maintenance activities from the snowplows to lane closures for -- lane closures for repaving or whatever. If it is going to cause more than a ten minute or so delay to the traveling public we'll put it on the network. We do not get in to the residential streets snowplow situation that some other state's DOTs do.
Q. Tim Rochte asked: Will someone be discussing 511's linkage to 211?
Mac Lister: Thanks David. Had another question about, do any of you have established linkage with a 511 with a 211 number.
Brandi Hamilton: Montana - We do have a project going on 511, 211 one stop shop. Efforts are under way.
David Lively: This is David. In the San Luis Obispo or, Central Coast 511, there's been considerable discussions about actually using the 211 call center for some of the 511 calls when people need personalized transit information. In the San Francisco bay area and in Los Angeles some consideration or discussions about how does 311 for non-emergency government service relate to 511 which is government traveler information.
Barb Blue: This is Barb, we've had discussion with the 211 folks in Kansas City. They are interested as to how we can work together.
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Q. Eli Sherer asked: Can Barb please clarify the 711 link? Where does the call go and how is it presented to the caller?
Mac Lister: Another specific question for Barb about your 711 link: Someone was asking how that interface was?
Barb Blue: We have a relay center in Lawrence, and I set up the ability for people to call the 711 center. Their call operators have been trained to assist users in asking to obtain 511 and translate it for them. All of our promotion materials indicate that hearing impaired can access the information by calling 711.
David Lively: We have three 711 centers that are funded by the California Public Utilities Commission to do the translations for people from the hearing impaired. They all have the back door numbers to the various regional 511 systems so that from the 711 call center, they can get to the back door number for the bay area 511 or the Sacramento 511 or San Diego 511.
Q. Timothy Pieples asked: How does Kansas acquire the traffic information that the system uses and how do they ensure timeliness and accuracy (quality control)?
Mac Lister: I believe the next question, [which] we could each speak for half an hour about, is how to acquire data to assure quality information? We're not going to answer that today, whoever asked the questions can look at the guidelines, if they would like to contact any of you to get more detail about approaches you've taken, they can do that. I think it's just too broad a question for us to do justice to.
Q. Christopher Joncas asked: How is your IVR issue getting corrected, you had mentioned it was getting better?
Mac Lister: The next question had to do with IVR issues and a number of you mentioned the learning process with IVR Ina couple of sentences address what you have learned about IVR?
Barb Blue: This is Barb. One of the things I would clarify is that there are actually two different technologies, the IVR Platform that is the basic menu platform and the speech recognition that allows the user to talk by voice and to have the system respond to that is actually an automated speech recognition technology. That is the technology that I spoke of that we continue to work to improve. That is separate from your IVR platform. So if you are going to talk about good speech recognition, the two have to work in concert with each other and be compatible with each other, but you are really working to upgrade your automated response technology.
David Lively: The voice recognition technology that Barbara is referring to and that we have
in many other states, getting that reality to the quality so that people can say in various accents or nomenclatures the difference between 80 and 18 but voice recognition goes to the interactive response or menu machine, I'm actually getting rid of the IVR technologies and going to a more network-based technology where all the switching is done on a network. I do not have a limited number of ports. I can do to two or three calls or I can go to 5000 calls and only get billed for 5000 ports for those minutes I'm using them. (After the ports and voice recognition the problem is) a voice to text technology to get content back into voice to the traveler having the correct pronunciations and place names where we have some native American terms, Spanish terms, French terms and English terms and having the correct pronunciations for those. To group them all in to IVR doesn't really answer what could be a 30 minute discussion.
Q. Jeannie Burkhardt asked: What is your plan to implement 511 in rural areas?
Barb Blue: Well, this is Barb. A good majority of Kansas is rural. When it comes to the weather information, the rural information is critical to safety. There aren't resources out in the rural areas that are very remote if someone should get stranded in inclement weather. We do recognize that the needs of our travelers vary some what. So our system to date is really designed to meet cross textual needs We will be adding content that will address more specifically the metro needs. We also have a rural transit project in Kansas that we'll be looking at for accommodating public transportation or the multimodal needs for the aging travelers, especially in rural Kansas.
Brandi Hamilton: We decided to do the state-wide implementation as well.
David Lively: In California, the rural information our state highway information is very well-compiled and presented up to the minute for any incidents or capacity restrictions on the state highways. But getting the many miles of county roads in rural areas, basically very few counties that have any infrastructure available to do that. That's a continuing area of investigation. California is also part of the rural state consortium for ITS along with Montana and many others.
Q. Bob Pento asked: Do any of the providers have multi-lingual capability?
Mac Lister: Another question about multilingual-you have done that in California, David, and there have been at least one implementation in French that I'm aware of in the eastern coast states.
Q. Hal Decker asked: Did you write the RFP's in-house, or hire a consultant to write the document?
Brandi Hamilton: This is Brandi and I wrote the RFP for Montana.
David Lively: For California statewide 511 and the US DOT 511 feasibility grant, we did everything in house. The partnership in the bay area was led by metropolitan transportation commission. They had consultants working with them in developing the
RFPs. In the Sacramento 511 everything was done in house and there is no contractor. There is one part time person because everything is automated. In the Eastern Sierra 511 it only took a few telephone calls to set it up, and it has $400 a year operating cost. The San Diego 511 had hired a consultant to write the RFP. The Los Angeles RFP was written in house.
Mac Lister: Can you guys correct me? I'm trying to remember there are sample RFPs on the deploy511 website? Is that correct?
Barb Blue: I think there are but I think most states are willing to relinquish them if people ask for them.
Mac Lister: Contact me and we'll fiend some for you if there is somebody in the line that's interested. I'd like to wrap it up. Contact Dave directly for the specific questions on California. Thank you so much all of you presenters. You did a great job and provided a lot of good information.
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