S1E8: What makes a Best Workplace for Commuters?

Transcript

[00:00:00] Announcer: The following research is part of the National Institute for Congestion Reduction funded by the United States Department of Transportation through the University Transportation Center program. Learn more at www.nicr.usf.edu.

[00:00:25] Wayne Garcia: Welcome to Out My Lane, a podcast of the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida in Tampa. I'm Wayne Garcia, your host. I'm very excited in this episode, unlike the other episodes that we've done so far, we focused on the journey. Now we're gonna talk about the destination, the place where you end up.

[00:00:50] Wayne Garcia: In your daily commute, which is for the most part a workplace and an organization that we are, uh, part of at USF actually, we're an institution that's a member of it as well. The best Workplaces for Commuters is the name of the organization, and with me today, I have Julie Bond and Tom Harrington, who are part of Best Workplaces for Commuters or BWC, shall we say.

[00:01:20] Wayne Garcia: Julie is the program director for BWC and is a senior research associate for the Transportation Demand Management Program at CUTR here at USF Tampa. And Tom is the global commute solutions leader in Intuit's workplace organization. You know, Intuit, the financial software giant if you haven't used their software, well that's unusual because everybody has pretty much used their software and Tom is out in Mountain View, California. Hi. Welcome to both. 

[00:01:57] Julie Bond: Thank you. 

[00:01:58] Tom Harrington: Good afternoon. 

[00:01:59] Wayne Garcia: It is great to have you here to talk about Best Workplaces for Commuters. Before we start with that, we always like to have our icebreaker on the podcast and Julie's been on before, so she's told us about her daily commute.

[00:02:14] Wayne Garcia: So, Tom out there in California, what's your daily commute? 

[00:02:20] Tom Harrington: Wow. So I'm gonna give you two answers on that. I'm gonna give you my pre pandemic commute and my current commute. I actually am in the office right now. I'm in the office two days a week. That's going to be my schedule going forward. Pre pandemic, what it was, was I would either take a shuttle or I drive about two miles to get to the train station. I take Caltrain, which is often referred to as the spine of the peninsula here for transportation. I take it to the Mountain View Transportation Center, and I take a transportation management association shuttle, Envy Go shuttle, into the office directly.

[00:02:56] Tom Harrington: That total commute would probably take me close to an hour and a half to do that, but it would be great time. It would be productive time. I could use it on calls. I could use it doing email. I could use it any way I saw fit; I could relax on it. Got a great employer here and I'm able to do that. Well, let's fast forward now.

[00:03:15] Tom Harrington: Things quite aren't as clean as they had been. Currently, I'm trying to take our public shuttles that Intuit runs. We actually have Intuit routes that we open to the public for a fee. They are actually a fee to our employees too, as well. And I try and take that whenever I can. Unfortunately, on our fixed route shuttles, we've run into situations where we don't have enough critical mass coming into the office, and we often have to cancel the shuttles.

[00:03:44] Tom Harrington: We do a reservation system, and if we don't have at least two riders on a shuttle the evening before, we cancel that next day shuttle. So earlier this week I was able to take the shuttle to and from work, which was absolutely super. I, I made that little two mile drive still to get to the shuttle stop and two mile drive home, worked out great.

[00:04:03] Tom Harrington: I was able to work the entire way, both directions. Today, thought it was going to be a situation where I'd be able to take the shuttle in, but, there wasn't enough people, I literally would've been the only one on that shuttle and Intuit with sustainability as a core value, we basically don't want to be running empty shuttles.

[00:04:21] Tom Harrington: So today, instead, I drove in... a little bit about that. And the reason why the train isn't in the mix post pandemic... what we've seen is we've seen an increase in traffic on our roadways. We've, we've seen that we're probably at about 90% of traffic on the roadways that we've had before, but we're also seeing that that 90% is spread throughout the day and no longer just a peak commute window in the morning and a peak commute window in the afternoon.

[00:04:51] Tom Harrington: What takes me 25 minutes to take that free shuttle to get to the train station now takes me 25 minutes at four o'clock in the afternoon to make the full drive of, what I said was an hour and a half before, is now 25 to 30 minutes directly door to door if I drive. So it's more advantageous to me time wise to actually drive myself.

[00:05:16] Tom Harrington: So I do try and take the shuttle where I can, but if it's not offered, then I will end up driving into the office. 

[00:05:22] Wayne Garcia: And it's so interesting because we've heard from a lot of the guests on the podcast about how their commutes have changed and how our commuting has changed because of the changing workplace.

[00:05:34] Wayne Garcia: And it's something that continually fascinates me about the transportation system, and especially people who do research into transportation. It's just how many pieces of the puzzle can change what's going on in terms of if workplaces go later or go earlier, and the capacity of all the different systems that we have, whether they're trains or shuttles, or roadways.

[00:06:00] Wayne Garcia: So that's a great example. So let's talk a little bit... you touched on some of the things in the specialty items. I don't winna call 'em items, I guess, but services, transportation wise that Intuit has. We're going to come back to that, but let's start first and Julie, tell us about BWC. What, what is the organization and what does it do?

[00:06:22] Julie Bond: Sure. So Best Workplaces for Commuters, otherwise known as BWC, we're a nationally recognized membership program, and so we demonstrate that options for commuting and those things such as can be transit, carpools, van pools, active transportation, which is bicycling and walking, also teleworking, which we're all doing now, and that they're economically and environmentally beneficial. So they really yield value to the employers and to our communities, and that's what BWC is all about. Members meet the BWC standard of excellence for their employer organization. I'll talk a little bit more about what that standard of excellence is, and it can be for a university or a college and then, or a multi-employer site, and they simply submit an application, we evaluate that application and they become part of our BWC member network. Our members are really offering these commuter benefits to well over a million employees each year, so we're very proud of that. Just a little bit on the background, in case you're wondering how this program came about. Program was launched in 2002, and Tom, you may remember this, by the US Environmental Protection Agency along with the US Department of Transportation.

[00:07:41] Julie Bond: And at that time, they unveiled BWC as a program to honor and to really recognize employers who offer their employees outstanding commuter benefits. Then based on our reputation, we're a well known research institution with a focus on transportation demand management, they actually came to us and asked us to take over management of the program.

[00:08:02] Julie Bond: This was during 2007. And we were excited at that prospect and we've been growing the program ever since that time. 

[00:08:09] Wayne Garcia: And so program, in addition to sort of having a set of criteria and, and other things, you do recognize these folks. I know there's an annual recognition of the organizations that have met these standards.

[00:08:23] Wayne Garcia: So USF's involvement has, well, I'm sure from early on, but you've been running the program since then. Have you been part of that that whole time? 

[00:08:32] Julie Bond: I, I sure have. And during 2007, I was part of the team that met with EPA and we began the program there. The foundation really was the recognition. And so that was very important to our members across the nation.

[00:08:46] Julie Bond: There really wasn't a program doing this type of thing, recognizing employers for their great programs. We have taken that program even further. We've listened to our members, we've made changes based on what they need, so we've added some really valuable programs to the membership. It's, it's been really great to be a part of that when it initial began, and we've grown it. The membership grows every year. Of course, I, I can't do this all alone. We have a very strong and effective team that, that I work with. They each have their role. We, for example, for our members. We produce two new member guides. They, they help our members understand how to use commuter benefits.

[00:09:28] Julie Bond: We also created a new partner guide for our partners. We're just really listening to our members and growing this program and providing the services they need. But the recognition still is the foundation, and we do have a list release during January of each year. We announce all the new members at that time in a national press release. 

[00:09:50] Wayne Garcia: For those who are listening if you want, and will also put this on the website, but Best Workplaces. Org and you can go there and download all this stuff. It's available to anybody. And if your institution or your company is not now a part of the organization, it, it certainly could look at doing that. So let me shift to Tom. When did Intuit become interested in this and become a member, and how did that all happen?

[00:10:20] Tom Harrington: Wow. I'm going off the top of my head here, and I may be wrong about this, but I believe it was around 2015. I'll be honest with you, my background in transportation and Intuit really started late in 2013. Before that I had been at Intuit in another role, and one of the things that Intuit really values is somebody doing a third party independent assessment of our programs.

[00:10:45] Tom Harrington: When I first learned about BWC, I believe it was in August of 2014, when I first learned about it. I saw that there was a great opportunity here. It basically was a third party assessment of our commute offerings, and there was a, a Best Workplace for Commuters designation that came out of that. We're always searching for Best Workplace.

[00:11:08] Tom Harrington: We're number 11 on the Fortune list right now in terms of best workplaces, so this was a really good fit for us. The press didn't hurt either. The other thing too that we saw early on was there's some real value that BWC brings to us in terms of other programs that are available for free to us.

[00:11:26] Tom Harrington: I've been able to benefit from a telework program, a certification program, a social marketing in transportation, tele certification program, and finally, a transportation demand management certification program, which has been great. 

[00:11:40] Wayne Garcia: The value to the employees and to the management was that something was immediately apparent because a lot of smaller companies or other companies would say, "Hey, it's your job to get here. Once you get here and start doing your job, then that, then that's part of what we do." So did that take a while to sort of adopt the philosophy that. Hey, we don't have people working if they can't get here. 

[00:12:02] Tom Harrington: It was really interesting here because Intuit really manages our budgets as if they're your own personal finance.

[00:12:10] Tom Harrington: It's not that we can't get money, it's just you better have a good reason for using the money. And the manager that I had at that time was always saying no when I asked for additional budget items, and on this particular one, because there's a culture of feedback at Intuit and because there's a culture of always wanting to benchmark ourself externally, it was a real easy conversation to have on this one, and I'm going to be completely frank. The dollar amount to join is relatively low, at least in our opinion. It was relatively low to join, so it was an a basically an easy assessment for us to get at a time when we were actually paying for professional assessments to come in, because to be quite honest, I was new in the role and our leadership wasn't a hundred percent certain that I was doing all the things I should be as it turned out.

[00:13:01] Tom Harrington: Three of such, such reviews later, and one association for commuter transportation employer award later, they kind of believe in me and they kind of, "Okay, he knows what he's doing, we'll let him go." So it was a real easy conversation for me to have, and it was really well received. I think we could do more with it.

[00:13:18] Tom Harrington: I think we could do more to publicize that, that we've received these designations and maintain these designations. But all in all, I think it, it was an easy path for us to do and most of my paths when I ask for money are, are not easy to do. 

[00:13:31] Wayne Garcia: Yeah. I know There's people listening out there say, Yeah, I hear you about the asking for money thing.

[00:13:36] Wayne Garcia: So Julie, what does an institution university, on one hand, or an employer corporation company have to do to get this designation?

[00:13:47] Julie Bond: To get the designation, the first thing they need to do is look at the application and understand what that involves, and that's really easy. They can just go to our website and we have different designations.

[00:13:59] Julie Bond: We have a designation Best Workplaces for Employers. We have Best Universities and we have also a Best Sites. Once you go to the website and look at which one you fall into, then you can look at the application. Each application has different criteria, so for example, each entity submitting application has to offer some type of great commuting benefit to their employees.

[00:14:23] Julie Bond: So that could be free or discount. Transit passes, a compressed work week. Telework, I think I mentioned some of these before, but again, carpooling, a bicycling program, there's really a pretty good list. And they also have to offer an emergency ride home option for employees that provides a free ride home.

[00:14:41] Julie Bond: So if someone, for example, takes the bus to work and they have an emergency and need to get home, They don't have to worry. They're going to get that free taxi ride home. And so they do have to offer that. The Best Site's designation is a little different, and we have different categories for improvement of facilities, enhanced parking management and services for commuters.

[00:15:02] Julie Bond: And then the employers within those sites can also independently apply. There's different designations; it's easy to go to the site and look at. I think the main thing to remember is that you need to just be offering those great benefits to your employees. It's going to, it helps everyone. It's really a, a great financial incentive for employers to do.

[00:15:22] Julie Bond: It's great for employee recruitment and retention, and it's really something good for everyone in the community. 

[00:15:30] Wayne Garcia: It sounds great because it's not you have to do these two or three things, but there's a number of things, choices, because it's not a one size fits all. I'm, I'm going to assume. So Tom at Intuit, what kind of transportation benefits do you all have in place as part of earning this designation?

[00:15:48] Tom Harrington: We have pretax benefits across the United States. It's offered. We offer a subsidy of $150 a month across the US to each employee, and then we start looking at some of, some of our local programs, there's certain sites where we have free bike share available. There's certain sites where we belong to transportation management associations and run shuttle programs out of that, there are some sites where we offer free last mile shuttles. We have bike showers; we have bike lockers. We have all kinds of things along the lines for bikes. Not enough. Like that's one of the things that's on my priority list to improve this year. We've got those programs. I mentioned the public shuttles that we have.

[00:16:32] Tom Harrington: That's a real important one for the folks. Post pandemic, we've been piloting since the third week of January, we've been piloting a near demand shuttle that we use for folks that are within seven miles or so of the campus, and that has been working out really well. We've had more than double the amount of riders on our near demand shuttles than we've had on the fixed route shuttles, and it's the same number of shuttles that we have.

[00:17:00] Tom Harrington: So it's, it's been proving to be really the hybrid work model that we're moving into the future on. And then the only other thing that I would probably call out, and I know I'm missing a lot of things. We've had van pool programs right now. They've pretty much ebbed, but I'm sure they'll pick up again. We have preferred carpool parking.

[00:17:18] Tom Harrington: That's another thing we actually, believe it or not, some of the things that you look for on the Best Workplace questionnaire. Do you have cleaning facilities or an ATM on site things? There's questions like that and we're able to actually check those boxes too as well. The only other thing I, I'll mention is we've taken the guaranteed ride home a little step further.

[00:17:38] Tom Harrington: So for us, every employee is entitled to five guaranteed rides home. They determine when they want to use it. It's a, a Lyft ride for them that's fully paid by the company. It is from the place they conclude their business for the day to their place of work. And we've also expanded that to include some things like hospitals, daycare, schools, things along those lines. Because every now and then that emergency may impact somebody else and it may impact a child or something to pick them up. So we wanted to make sure it was as flexible as it could be. And I, I think, to be honest with you, that's one tip that I, I'd throw out there to people don't think of it as an emergency ride, think of it as a guaranteed ride. And I think the more flexible you can make it, the more people will welcome it and the more it'll help support your other alternate commute program. 

[00:18:30] Wayne Garcia: Because I know, I hear and have heard at the various different places I've worked from time to time people saying, "Oh, I'd love to take transit, but you know, I got to have my car available in case, you know, something happens."

[00:18:41] Wayne Garcia: Or "I got to go pick up my, uh, child at, uh, daycare or school." You mentioned also Intuit has locations all over the world. So Julie, how does a company that has all of those locations, do they have to apply for each location or do they have to apply in the aggregate? Or is it, is there a lot of flexibility?

[00:18:59] Julie Bond: Sure, and, And I just wanted to say Intuit is really an example of a really great company for commuters. For example, they have multiple locations across the nation that are certified as Best workplaces for Commuters. Tom would just fill out one application. And he would list each one of those locations on the application.

[00:19:22] Julie Bond: So it's pretty easy and we encourage that for different employers to certify as many locations as they can. They just need to offer the same level of benefits at each one of those locations. It does take just one application. They don't have to fill out the multiple applications, which makes it easy.

[00:19:39] Wayne Garcia: That sounds great. So Tom, what's the reaction from your fellow employees across the company? To these kind of assets that, that they have available to them? 

[00:19:51] Tom Harrington: Yeah. They love the program. Where we're at in the, especially in the Mountain View area, we're located, we're literally surrounded by Google buildings.

[00:20:00] Tom Harrington: Google has a fantastic transportation program. They've got fantastic assets that they can use to run that program. I could never compete with that, but I do my damnedest to be quite frank, and we do pretty good there. The expectation from employees across the US and actually across the globe is that we make their commute easy.

[00:20:21] Tom Harrington: We make it simple, we make it affordable, we make it fast, and they really love the fact that we try and make it productive if that's their choice as well. So I, I think we've gotten some really good feedback on that. I think we've gotten some really good voice to the customer on that. Give you an example here on our, our shuttle program that we had last week, one of the employees shared with us that they actually gave a birthday party to one of the shuttle drivers and actually had a cake for 'me and actually took photos of that. It's really kind of cool because really those drivers become kind of a mini community and these shuttles pick up a culture, they pick up the company culture and they pick up a culture of their own and it's, it's just been really great because getting folks together, it's really beneficial.

[00:21:11] Tom Harrington: It's really a community spirit. 

[00:21:13] Wayne Garcia: The journalist in me now, so wants to do a story life on the shuttle. You know, as, as a, as a look piece, anytime there's a subculture like that. You also anticipated my next question, which was going to be your recruiters have got to love that they have this as a tool. As you said, you're in a very competitive high tech atmosphere, so what do they say about it to someone that they're trying to lure and work at the company. 

[00:21:41] Tom Harrington: They do. And we have a public facing website that talks about our commute benefits that are out there to help things along. For our headquarters company, for Mountain View, we actually have an external concierge tool that actually helps our visitors and our recruits that we have.

[00:21:57] Tom Harrington: They're coming to figure out what the, the best solution is for 'me. When you start talking about some of the large areas like New York, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, you have multiple transit agencies involved and trying to navigate all those transit agencies amongst all those different locations that people could be living is a real challenge. I, I had one come up and I had to, I had to redirect the person a little bit. Had one come up in la we had somebody in LA say, We just don't have carpool options that are out there, and we do have carpool options. The problem that we have is we just don't have the density privately within the company to have good carpool options for these folks.

[00:22:43] Tom Harrington: That come in at the same time, on the same days under the hybrid model to come into the office. So that's, that's been a bit of a challenge. So what I did on that, that particular person, is I took them in front of all the other transit options that we have and pointed out these are all the things you could do for free and use your, your transit benefits here and ride these for free.

[00:23:02] Tom Harrington: In that particular case, I also pointed to a, a public carpool site LA Metro operates. We don't like to do that because at least if you are carpooling with another Intuit employee, we've done a bit of a background check on you so you know who you're getting into the car with. Whereas if it's a public carpool site, we don't really know.

[00:23:25] Tom Harrington: So we usually put a disclosure out there that's disclaimer out there that says, "Make sure you do your due diligence. You don't know who you're getting in the, the carpool. You don't know who's driving. You don't know who's the passenger. Do your due diligence. Find out who they are." 

[00:23:39] Wayne Garcia: So Julie I know you mentioned this previously that I wanted to circle back a little bit, the annual list.

[00:23:45] Wayne Garcia: Tell us a little bit about the annual list and, and the release and, and all that goes into that. 

[00:23:49] Julie Bond: Sure. Well, we take applications for Best Workplaces for Commuters during an application period each year. Once the application period is over, we are going through all the applications, making sure everyone meets the standard of excellence.

[00:24:02] Julie Bond: And then during January, we have a list release announcement, and that's a national list release. Everyone who made the list is named and we provide marketing tools to each member because we want them to really utilize that designation, get the word out, so we encourage them to send out local press releases while we cover the big national press release.

[00:24:24] Julie Bond: And so we have lots of tools in the toolkit for them. We give them, you know, examples of different social media they can use, and we want to make it a really big event during January for everyone. Something else we encourage is the BWC logo. That BWC brand is there for employers to put on their website.

[00:24:42] Julie Bond: They can put it on their human resource page, they can put it on their transportation page, and then people know that this employer, university, or site offers some great commuting benefit. So it is a brand that we're trying to get a get across to everyone. Let people know that this employer has really great benefits.

[00:25:00] Julie Bond: So it's a big event during January and we like to get everyone excited and talking about it in the media and it provides that really great recognition. 

[00:25:08] Wayne Garcia: Yeah, which is great. The companies get all those benefits, but then they also get a very nice public pad on the back and, and that ongoing recognition. So Tom, this is your platform right now.

[00:25:20] Wayne Garcia: What would you tell other employers who are not part of this program? What would your advice to them be? 

[00:25:27] Tom Harrington: Wow. So the first thing would be talk to your peers that that's the best way you can get benchmarks out there. So you know, uh, what your program should look like, what your TDM programs should look like.

[00:25:37] Tom Harrington: Then I'd say look for your local resources, like for instance, transportation management associations, air quality boards, they all have programs and resources for free that you could tap into and then look for organizations like CUTR at USF or the Association for Commuter Transportation, you may hear that referred to as ACT.

[00:25:57] Tom Harrington: Great resource there, relatively inexpensive to join on that particular one. And then look for solutions that are in the moment. What I mean by that is today we've employees and workers who literally won't take the time to read a document, they won't read a flyer. They won't even bother clicking on a link.

[00:26:21] Tom Harrington: Look for solutions that may be native to things like Slack or team messaging that are in there. We're, we're working right now to see if we can find a way to integrate commute concierge into our Slack messaging that goes out to, to folks. So the questions that are answered on the, the internet or are answered in the employer guide that we have.

[00:26:45] Tom Harrington: Basically what people want is they want to know what's their specific answer to their specific question as it applies to them? We're trying to set it up so that that could have some automation in it and is answered automatically for them. 

[00:27:00] Wayne Garcia: Julie, where do you see BWC going? Is this going to be a recognition and a set of helpful tools that are going to be able to move globally?

[00:27:11] Julie Bond: Sure. That's a good question and I really think because we work with employers like Intuit and many others across the nation, I really see a bright future for BWC. We're currently working on expansion to Canada. We also have requests from other countries, and you never know we could be a global program someday.

[00:27:30] Julie Bond: We do get lots of requests from all across the nation and internationally. Really very exciting. So I'm, I'm very hopeful that we will continue to grow. We listen to our members and we give them what they need. I think it has a really great future. 

[00:27:45] Tom Harrington: Julie, you and I need to talk about Canada cause I, I mean, we're doing some absolute fantastic stuff in Canada, better than what we're doing in the US. I'm going to, I'm gonna say that outright better than what we're doing in the US. 

[00:27:59] Wayne Garcia: Very cool. 

[00:28:00] Julie Bond: Great. That's exciting. Yeah, and I, I think expanding too. We bring in, we have webinars for our members on different topics and on the more members we bring in, just the more networking and the more ideas that can be generated from that.

[00:28:15] Wayne Garcia: Julie, give our listeners a sense how many total sites, organizations, companies. We're on the, the January recognition this year. Just a, a ballpark. 

[00:28:27] Julie Bond: Yeah. We recognize over 550 different work sites, universities, and best sites, and we're planning on growing that even more. That represents, again, well over a million employees that are being impacted.

[00:28:40] Julie Bond: It's been a great program that we just see continuing to grow. 

[00:28:43] Wayne Garcia: Great. Big bang for the buck there in terms of helping. Make all these other resources that CUTR and other transportation researchers are looking at reducing congestion out there, giving people alternatives. Any final thoughts, Julia or Tom as we wrap up our discussion of vest workplaces for commuters?

[00:29:05] Tom Harrington: So the only thing I'm going to say is with the hybrid work model that's coming at us. It's going to change the way employers look at transportation. I'm actually going to say, I'm actually hoping it changes the pre-tax benefits as well that are available to us under the the current regulations. I think there's going to be even more of a need for employers to share their transportation networks. I mentioned that Intuits is available to the public. It, it has been since we started it back in 2015, to be quite honest with you. So we're not doing something new. But I think there needs to be more collaboration among peers. If I reach out to neighbors and say, "Hey, I wanna share a, a shuttle program today, I get the Heisman."

[00:29:51] Tom Harrington: Which is a, a hand up saying, "Get away. Uh, I don't want to talk to you," but I think the future is we're, we're not gonna have as many people grouped as close as they are coming in on the same schedules with the hybrid model. And I think that's going to necessitate the fact that we've got to do more collabortation. 

[00:30:12] Julie Bond: And you know, I just wanna say, I mean, we really have seen the biggest changes in the way we work over the last couple of years, really.

[00:30:19] Julie Bond: Some of those are great changes. I think we've embraced, you know, the, the hybrid workplace and people can work from, from anywhere and be very productive. And we're just keeping up with those changes and I think it's just going to be, there's gonna be more and more options for people to work the way that they need to work.

[00:30:37] Wayne Garcia: Great. Tom, Julie, thank you, Julie Bond is the program director for BWC at CUTR at the University of South Florida, and Tom Harrington is the global commute solutions leader, Intuits Workplace Organization. Thank you so much for both of you. If you're listening and you're interested in this, we'll have more information on our website.

[00:31:02] Wayne Garcia: Again, it's best workplaces. dot org org and you can, uh, just Google Out of My Lane and you'll find a page at CUTR's website as well. Thank you for listening. Appreciate it. And for Wayne Garcia and all of the folks at the Center for Urban Transportation Research and the NICR organization of the National Institute for Congestion Reduction.

[00:31:31] Wayne Garcia: I'm Wayne Garcia. We'll see you next episode. 

[00:31:35] Tom Harrington: Bye bye.

[00:31:40] Announcer: The National Institute for Congestion Reduction, NICR, is a transportation research center focused on innovative congestion strategies. The center is composed of researchers from the University of South Florida, the University of California, Berkeley, Texas A & M University, and the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and funded by the United States Department of Transportation.

[00:32:02] Announcer: For more information, please visit www.nicr.usf.edu.