Chicago, IL - April 7-9, 2008

T-FLEx Workshop
April 7-9, 2008
Summary Notes

The Fall 2008 T-FLEx Workshop was held in Chicago, Illinois, and was hosted by Joe Costello and the Regional Transportation Authority. Our sincere thanks go out to Joe and his staff for the wonderful job they did in making this workshop a successful event. Twenty-three people registered for this workshop. Everything was well organized, and the lunches and lunch-time speakers were very enjoyable. Even the Tuesday night thunderstorm and downpour could not dampen the spirit of those attending the closing night dinner. Thanks again to everyone at Chicago's RTA!

The theme of the workshop centered on Federal Funding Issues. Presentations included discussions of various funding initiatives used by attending agencies, JARC and New Freedom Grants, and the FTA's priorities for funding.

Jon Davis, Deputy General Manager/CFO of the "T" in Boston, gave a presentation on the State of Good Repair (SGR) Database the MBTA developed to evaluate and quantify the need for system reinvestment. The MBTA is investigating the possibility of licensing this software to other transit authorities for them to use in their capital investment program. His presentation gave an overview and showed input screens and reports from the software. The presentation is available here. Please contact Jon here for further information.

Yet another discussion of the T-FLEx benchmarking project focused on attempting to narrow the focus of the KPI's that are being tracked. Between the Spring workshop and the Fall workshop, Terry Cordell will be working with all member agencies to define a small number of KPI's that everyone can agree on. The goal is to be able to use more of the data from the NTD so that each agency does not have to use a large number of man hours to compile data from scratch.

Monday afternoon was devoted to Needs & Leads. We began with a discussion of the Job Access Reverse Commute (JARC) and New Freedom programs. LA MTA has a good deal of experience with these programs. Gladys Lowe filled the group in on issues that have arisen in their programs. If anyone is interested and would like more information, Gladys is a great resource and can be reached here.

Tuesday morning Dan Duff, attorney with Thompson Coburn started the day with a presentation on the FTA's revised charter regulations that are effective April 30, 2008. These new regulations are a major overhaul of existing regs and each member agency is encouraged to become familiar with the changes. The new regs can be found at APTA's website (www.apta.com) or at the FTA website (www.fta.dot.gov). Dan believes these new regulations will make it easier for transit agencies to determine if they are meeting the new guidelines.

Jeff Boothe, attorney with Washington D.C. based firm Holland & Knight made a presentation that went far beyond a simple discussion of the FTA's priorities for funding. His take on the authorization of SAFETEA-LU is that it is not likely to pass by September 30, 2009. He also discussed the serious trouble and likely deficit in the Highway Trust Fund by FY 2010 and the Mass Transit Account by FY 2011. He had some very interesting ideas on smart growth and land use planning being instrumental in the reduction of vehicle miles traveled. His entire presentation is available here and should be required viewing for every transit employee.

After a breakout session to develop ideas for Transit 201 modules, the group came up with: 1) Grants, 2) Triennial Review, 3) NTD, 4) Regulatory Framework, i.e. FTA/FHWA. There was also discussion of Transit 101 modules. Terry Cordell plans to work with a curriculum writer to review all Transit 101 modules and make corrections that were brought forward at the Fall 2007 Los Angeles workshop.

Irene DeMers led a discussion on the Budget and Grants Significant Interest Groups (SIG). Ideas were brought forth to increase participation in the calls. Some of those ideas included retitling the groups, narrowing the focus of the content of each call, emailing lists of questions to each agency prior to the calls, and bringing in subject matter experts to speak on specific topics in each call. There was also discussion of using other media to meet, i.e., emails, blogs, etc. Irene will be taking all the suggestions and will work towards making the SIG calls more relevant and increasing participation in the calls.

In addition to the workshop topics, each day included a guest luncheon speaker. On Monday, Luann Hamilton from Chicago DOT spoke about their CREATE program, designed to improve the efficiency of the rail network in the Chicago region. One third of the nation's rail traffic passes through Chicago. This program brings together freight, passenger and commuter rail agencies to improve safety and congestion. On Tuesday, members received an informative presentation regarding Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Wes Wallace volunteered to host the Fall 2008 Workshop in Boston on September 8-10. More information will be forthcoming shortly but please mark your calendars now to attend this workshop.