Report on the Value Pricing Pilot Program Through April 2018

Chapter 3. Congestion Pricing Outreach and Technical Assistance Provided by the Federal Highway Administration

The following list summarizes outreach and technical assistance activities performed by the program.

Project Support and Technical Assistance. To enable effective and successful implementation of each VPPP project awarded, FHWA Congestion Pricing Program staff provides significant levels of support and technical assistance to VPPP awardees on an ongoing basis. Expertise includes coordinating with project partners, reviewing project materials, and collecting and posting quarterly reports. This effort ensures that VPPP successes and lessons learned are captured and documented, understood, and are available for sharing with other agencies.

Program Involvement with Professional Forums. The FHWA involvement in professional transportation organizations, such as the TRB Annual Meeting, has been an important link between public and private transportation professionals and DOT programs. With such a broad cross-section of transportation experts in attendance, TRB and the IBTTA are efficient means of getting the word out on current program results and sharing recent industry developments. The TRB and the IBTTA committees are effective in sharing common experiences, identifying research needs, and helping to plot the course for the congestion pricing industry into the future. Throughout the past two decades, FHWA has provided information at both TRB and IBTTA meetings to raise awareness of pricing success stories and pricing-related outreach materials.

Written Materials (Primers, White Papers, Guidance, and Flyers). The VPPP and other related FHWA programs have produced numerous informative documents for industry use. Since 2016, the following white papers have been prepared:

• Congestion Pricing: Engaging Public Awareness on the True Cost of Driving that highlights lessons learned from outreach efforts of LA Metro's I-10/I-110 Express Lanes and WSDOT's SR 520 tolling. A presentation of the white paper and a poster summarized the analysis for the 15th International Conference on Managed Lanes in Miami, Florida.
• Impacts of Congestion Pricing on Low-Income Populations, which studied tools and approaches used by agencies to examine income equity impacts of congestion pricing projects. The white paper documented the examples of LA Metro's environmental justice analysis for the I-10/I-110 ExpressLanes project and time of day tolling on the 183 North Mobility project in Texas. A virtual workshop will disseminate and discuss the findings.

Facilitated Peer Exchange. Many agencies benefit from FHWA-sponsored peer exchanges that include participation by congestion pricing experts. There is a great benefit in bringing together a broad array of technical specialists and key decision makers from the host agency for the opportunity to interact directly with the out-of-State expert. The local congestion pricing expert may already have specific knowledge; however, it lends additional credibility to have the project manager from another State deliver the message. It also creates a focus and urgency to bringing many decision makers together to meet with the out-of-State expert. The FHWA sponsored a Managed Lanes and Automated Technologies Peer Exchange in 2017. The Peer Exchange consisted of expert practitioners at the State level that came together to gain a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges associated with implementing Automated Technologies on Managed Lane facilities. The workshop participants included WSDOT, Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), Contra Costa Transportation Authority, and Minnesota DOT as well as private sector participants.

Workshops. The VPPP continued to sponsor a workshop series. A series of three Regional Congestion Pricing Workshops (RCPWs) helped States and partner agencies develop, advance, promote, and enhance tolling and pricing programs and initiatives within metropolitan areas.¹⁰ The workshops featured experts from operating projects who shared lessons learned from their experiences establishing congestion pricing programs. The information shared was designed to help workshop participants plan, implement, and advance a congestion pricing project in their region. The workshops incorporated an interactive and knowledge sharing approach to encourage stakeholder engagement. A lessons learned report is available that focuses on the findings from three workshops held between March 2016 and May 2017 in Schaumburg, Illinois; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Portland, Oregon. It details cross-cutting issues impacting participating stakeholders identified during the workshops, summarizes critical developments achieved in the candidate regions since the Webinars, and concludes with a summary of key takeaways and next steps based on stakeholder inputs and workshop experiences.

Webinars. The FHWA sponsors a continuing series of Webinars that explore challenges in implementing congestion pricing. Webinars have proven to be one of the most effective and efficient means of delivering project results, research findings, and lessons learned to industry, with the Congestion Pricing Webinar series consistently attracting 200 to 300 participants per event. The FHWA often collaborates with TRB committees in identifying congestion pricing topics that are timely and of interest to practitioners. Webinars sponsored since 2016 included Managed Lanes System Study Best Practices; Best Practices in Enforcement of Managed Lane Facilities; Virtual Workshop on Environmental Justice Tools and Approaches; and NCHRP Research Report 860: Assessing the Environmental Justice Effects of Toll Implementation or Rate Changes: Guidebook and Toolbox. Interested parties can access recordings and presentations from these Webinars using the link in the callout box (seen to the right).