Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the SAFETEA-LU conference call. My name is Liz, and I will be your coordinator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will, however, time permitting, allow for audio questions at the end of this conference. You may submit questions via the web at any time during the conference. If at any time during the call, you require audio assistance, press star-zero and an operator will assist you. Once again, for any difficulties accessing today's web presentation, dial 8667779-3239. You would like to turn the call over for to your host today, Jennifer. Thank you. Hello, everybody, and welcome to a special edition of the Talking Freight seminar series. Today's topic is Freight Provisions of SAFETEA-LU. Please be advised that today's seminar is being recorded. Today's presentation will be given by Tony Furst, director of the FHWA department. Today's seminar will last 90 minute, with the final 30 minutes for audience question and answer. We will be taking questions through the chat area of your screen. You can type in questions at any time during the presentation. Following the presentation, I'll read the questions typed into the chat area. If we get through everything typed in, we'll have the phone lines open for questions over the phone. However, there is an expected large number of attendees in today's seminar. We'll try to answer all of your questions, but it's possible we won't get through all of them. We will be compiling a list of the questions asked and the answers and posting them to the freight website in the future. Again, the session is being recorded a file containing the audio and a visual portion of the seminar will be posted within the next week. Visit www.talkingfreight.webex.com, and click on the recorded events link on the left-hand side of the page. Due to the size of the file, recorded files are available for viewing and listening purposes only and cannot be saved to your own computer. We encourage you to direct others in your office access the recorded seminar. So with that, I'll turn it over now to Tony Furst. Thank you, Jennifer, and thank you for setting this up. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm really surprised at the turnout that we've had. We've had to turn people away and move them to the seminar that we'll have on the 12th of September. As we go through this presentation, there are any number of ways to take a look at provisions of freight within the SAFETEA-LU. This presentation of freight is one way to cut all the different projects that are in there. I'll walk through the provisions, some which directly affect freight, and others which indirectly affect freight. I know many of you have waded through this document. Please let me know about anything that I may have missed. Here in the room with us today is Leo Penny. Leo, is there anything you'd like to add? Well, just a word of thanks. We view this session as a continuation of the freight partnership that was initiated between us and federal highway authority. And t getting information out and then doing the implementation, we think it's a collaborative effort, and we're looking forward to a good working relationship. Thank you. All right. Moving to the first slide on quick impressions -- if you were to take a look at a word search, either iced tea or t21 for freight, you wouldn't see as many references as you do in this bill. This bill encourages creativity in finding new ways to solve existing problems and contains many problems aimed at improving global productivity and economic productivity. The way I've decided to go ahead and put this together, the first chart deal was the programmatic parts of the legislation, directly related to freight, as they specifically target freight activity. Then I will cover issues in finance. There are changes to a number of these finance provisions that are very supportive of freight projects and activity. In the case of section 9002, there's the establishment of a new program. These are a number of the project sections of the bill, woven all through these, particularly in the projects of national and regional significance and the national corridor program are a great many freight projects. These are commissions of studies that could help chart the course for the next reauthorization. And freight needs need to be well represented. These are a number of programs and projects that could impact freight movement, moving forward. We'll cover all of these as we go through the presentation. The freight intermodal program, in all of these you will see the section number within SAFETEA-LU, so you can reference if if need be. This program provides grants to state and intermodal initiatives. These criteria will likely be coordinated with and collected with projects of national and regional significance, which we'll talk about later. And again, we'll put together a report on the program to Congress, basically 3 years from the date of the actual bill. This is 6 a2.5million-dollar a year program. As you can see here, as a pilot program to address the shortage of long-term parking for commercial motor vehicles on the national highway system. Project applications are to be submitted to DOT and approved by the Secretary, includes construction to new facility, modifying existing facilities and its. The related activity is not specifically linked in the legislation. For instance, as new truck parking facilities are established, should they meet the standards established for the interstate oasis? There's no direct linkage in the legislation. In 1412, it opens up section 1111 of title 23, to the installation of idling reduction females on interstate right-of-ways. Freight planning and capacity-building program. This is the freight professional development program that we already have under way, attention to courses, peer-to-peer exchange, technical assistance and all other things we're currently doing within the freight professional development program. So this is a funding stream now, moving forward for the next 4 years. The National Cooperative Freight Transportation Research Program is a program we will put together in partnership with the National Academy of Sciences. We need to put together a memorandum of agreement between the Secretary and the National Academy of Sciences; and within that, they need to be governed by an advisory committee which will recommend a national research agenda, solicit and review research proposals, eye ward contracts and disseminate the findings. It has a good deal to advance a lot of freight research. We'll work with the national academy to get this one up and running as soon as we can. Now I'll turn to the finance section. If you look at that first bullet, you'll see that program project eligibility has been expanded to include public freight rail facilities or private facilities, providing public benefit to highway users, intermodal freight transfer facilities are now available and access to any one of the facilities listed above. They have dropped the minimum project size from 100 million to 50 million, and allowed the grouping of smaller related projects. Its project minimal authorities has been reduced to $15 million. The last two bullets take a little bit of explanation. A certain amount of the loans needs to be allocated. The funds for the budget authority are set at $122 million a year. In looking through the history, that amount of budget authority roughly translate noose although amounts in the area of $2 billion a year. So there is no cap on the helping authority; the cap is on the budget authority. If you look over the history, like I said, $122 million a year in budget authority will roughly translate to $2 billion a year in loan amounts. State infrastructure banks: this is the extent of the program to all states. It allows a number of states to pool their funds together in a multi-state infrastructure bank. They may be used for capital projects and credit enhancements and all the times -- items in bullet number 2. It allows the establishment of rail accounts through title 49 funding. Private activity bonds: the purchasers of the bond don't have to pay federal taxes on the income they receive. It places another option into the suite of finance options available to build or operate highway infrastructure. Place note that the projects must be receiving federal aid under title 23, or title 49, in order to be eligible for activity bonds. And the department is working through how the $15 billion a year limitation -- actually, it's a total of $15 billion at any point in time. This is one we pushed for pretty hard in our proposal, and we're very happy to see it in the final legislation. Rail transportation provisions, 9002 is one I mentioned earlier. It's a new program. It's a grant to local rail line relocation project, only states may apply. They need to establish regulations to carry out the program. Temporary regs. will be in place by April of 2006, and final in October of 2006. This is authorized in the legislation, not appropriate rated in the legislation. Then there was an increase in the RIF program to $35 billion in loan authority, and they need to post the criteria for guidance on the application process by a month from the establishment of the legislation, which is right around the corner, Saturday of this week. Now to the projects. These are the big mega-projects such as the Hartland corridor, to improve rail activity from Norfolk to Columbus; create projects in Chicago, and the like. Now, the group will be probably a multi-modal group. For that, I'm talking the first bullet there, and we have to put that in the regulations. We've been given 180-day window in order to do that. And the group that puts that together in the department will definitely be a multi-modal group. We'll have to report to the Congress by the first Monday in every February on how this program is proceeding. This one is totally earmarked. So again, the eligibility criteria won't be applicable for the next 4 years, but after that, we have high hopes. The National Corridor Infrastructure Improvement Program, again, the Secretary must establish a program for receiving grant applicants and establish criteria for selection. But again, this one is completely earmarked. This one is particularly designated for projects in corridors of national significance to promote economic growth in international or enter-regional trade. The amount it has is greater than the one for projects of national and regional significance. These are two other project sections within the bill. The high priority project program has over 5, 000 designated projects. Many of them affect freight ability. I haven't personally walked through all 5, 000 of them, but the ones I've seen improve freight now and improve highway safety. The transportation improvements program is in section 1934. Again, it's projects like the Alameda Corridor East and the one that you see here for the Rail Project in Vermont. That project is also section 1946, which is the Gateway Rural Improvement pilot program. And then you have to go into the transportation improvement section to find out where it's funded, which is $30 million a year. The other one also includes the intermodal facility work in Rhode Island, and i-9. That freight movement and safety improvements are another one of the projects. The coordinated border infrastructure program is not an earmarked program. It's the formula program. The Secretary must establish a formula distribution program based upon what you see in front of you there for the different percentages. The key piece is that it's within 100-miles of the border and we can fund projects in Canada or Mexico, provided they provide a benefit there at the U.S. border. Under the commissions and studies, these are the two large commissions. The first one is pretty fast-tracked, given the scope of activity that it must cover. And for that they need to look at the current condition and performance of the interstate system, including the physical condition of the bridges and pavements. The future of the interstate system based on a range of legislative and policy approaches for 15, 30, and 50-year time periods, the expected demographics, and so forth. This is a huge commission that is going to be quite involved. It's got not only the commission activity of the 12 members appointed by president and Congress, but a technical advisory committee must be established as well. And all of this must be completed within a 2-year timeframe. The National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission, the second one there, is to be funded strictly out of GOP money, either in DOT or Treasury. And a final report is due within the first 2 years, within 2 years of the first meeting date. These two studies again will probably play a large role in what we look at, moving forward. The study of rail transportation and regulations an interesting, where we will study performance of the nation's railroads regarding service levels, affected demand for freight transportation over the next two decades and constraints limiting the railroad's ability to meet that demand. We have to report to Congress within a year. So all of these will start coming to fruition in the latter half of 2007. Annual reports to Congress and funding at 1. 25 every year for 4 years. The next, the commune can I enhance -- community enhancement study talks about how well the transportation projects promote, among other thing, economic development. We will definitely take an interest in study, as it moves forward. And then the office of intermodalism has a large tank, looking at the national system improvement plan and putting it together to include emerging trends that could impact national systems, a recommended R&D policy transportation decision-making and financing, again, probably every bit as broad in scope as the first one we talked about regarding surface transportation. So taken collectively, these commission, studies and improvement plans can help outline what the future reauthorizations could look like. And now to related activities. Transims is being put together; this piece of legislation serves to accelerate the deployment of this advanced transportation model and calls for the model to take into consideration economic analysis, freight movement and port studies. This is funded at about 2.65 million a year for the next 4 years. The roadability issue is one that's been bubbling up for quite some time. Now Congress has told us to go ahead and establish a program to ensure that intermodal equipment used to transport container-safe and systematical maintained and have given us a year to put the regulations on the street. This will be done as the private sector moves towards chasse pulls. We have a number of size and weight technical amend empties to put in. There's an exemption now for drive-away satellite vehicle, all of which is under the nuance of size and weight. In the energy bill there was an exemption for 400-pound force carrying idle reduction equipment. We'll have to see how we will weave that into our size and weight regulations. Section 1201 for this next one, requires U.S. DOT within 2 years to establish data exchange formats to ensure that information can be readily exchanged across jurisdictional boundaries. And the freight performance measures program that we have ongoing here can lend itself very readily to the establishment of this type of capability in all the states to provide real-time monitoring of traffic conditions and sharing of information. Now for the process. The office of the Secretary will facilitate the first cut of the plan, and will send that out to all the agencies, who will review it and provide their input back to OPS regarding how they think the different pieces of the legislation should be put together and into which agencies it shall be given. We will then begin implementation of the legislation, moving forward. So that covers all of the freight provisions that we've identified in SAFETEA-LU. And I'm ready to answer your questions. I don't know how many of them have come out so far, Jennifer. We don't have any typed in so far. A-ha! Well, then the phone lines of open. [ LAUGHTER ] Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please key star-one at this time. And your first question comes from the line of Ann Cappel. Tony, is there a timeline for the first cut of this implementation plan? We have lots of questions about the overlaps that seems to be among the councils and the commissions and the studies and so forth. The first cut of the legislative implementation plan is already out. So the agencies are already taking a look at that and putting together their feedback for the Office of the Secretary. Exactly when the final will come out, I can't give you an estimate on that. I would hope within 2 months or so, at the latest. Okay, thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please key star-one. And your next question comes from the line of Louis Rubenstein. On the projects of national significance, is that all earmarked out now? And do you expect that criteria will be used in the next round, do you think there will be other earmarks? It's possible. That's what happen they had round and it could happen next round as well. But I think it's important that we go ahead and put out the selection criteria anyway. There's a lot of it currently in the piece of legislation that we've got regarding what Congress's intent is. And I think going ahead and putting out is a worthwhile endeavor. It kind of paints a picture of what it is we expect when these promises get brought forward. Besides,we'll have to report back to Congress on it. Are you soliciting input from agencies for that criteria, or is it all internal ? We are still working through how to propagate those regulations. My guess is there will be an opportunity for notice and comment in the standard regulatory process. It still remains to be seen, exactly what avenue we'll proceed. But it's going to go into the final registry at some point and then it will go for review and comment. On the national surface transportation policy revenue study commission, those 12 members, have they been selected?