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I-25 HOV Express Lanes
Plenary Roads Denver Assumes Operations and Maintenance Role for Toll Lanes
Plenary Roads Denver recently assumed operations and maintenance responsibilities for the I-25 Express Lanes. While that responsibility now falls on Plenary Roads Denver, ownership of the highway is always maintained by the public, through CDOT. The existing general lanes will also remain free for all commuters.
As part of the agreement, tolling services will continue to be managed by E-470, including billing and processing. Express Lanes users are reminded that they can benefit from 20 percent savings on tolls and exclusive deals, if they sign up for an ExpressToll sticker through the E-470 website.
Express Lanes and transponders on I-25 will continue to function as usual through the transition period.
High Performance Transportation Enterprise (HPTE) Board Approved Adjustment of Toll Rates
Late last year, the HPTE Board took action setting the tolling schedule for 2014. To maintain the reliability of the travel speeds, the board adjusted the tolling based on the congestion periods throughout the day. Specifically, the toll will increase by 10 to 55 cents depending on the time of day traveled with the highest increase scheduled for peak rush hours, ranging for a total of $4-6 during peak travel times. This dynamic pricing model supports the lanes' continued effectiveness for transit and other users. The new toll rates will become effective in Spring 2014
Express Lanes Overview
What is the Express Lanes concept? Express Lanes maximize the efficiency of High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes and help manage congestion on the highway. Rather than continuing to build lanes on congested highways, Express Lanes facilitate choice by allowing drivers to ride the bus, carpool or pay a toll. Buses and HOV vehicles are allowed in the lanes for free, while Single Occupancy Vehicles can choose to pay a toll.
How can HOVs use the lanes for free? Currently, those with two people in their vehicle can use the toll lane for free, however, starting in 2017, CDOT will be changing their Express Lanes rules regionally, requiring at least two passengers, for a total of three people, in a vehicle to use the lanes for free. Anyone with two or fewer people in their vehicle can either use the express lane and pay a toll, or use the general purpose lanes for free.
Where are the Express Lanes located? The Express Lanes includes seven miles on I-25, between downtown Denver and US 36. At this time, solo drivers/toll paying vehicles are not allowed to use the US 36 Express Lanes lanes until the lanes start to merge to I-25 near Pecos. Anything west of Pecos on US 36 is for HOV vehicles only.
CDOT is extending the Express Lanes on US 36 as part of the US 36 Express Lanes Project. The new lanes will be extended to 88th Street in Louisville (opening in 2015) and then to Table Mesa Drive in Boulder (opening in 2016).
When did the Express Lanes open on I-25? The I-25 Express Lanes opened on June 2, 2006.
Are Express Lanes being built elsewhere in Colorado? Currently CDOT is building Express Lanes on two highways – US 36 and I-25 (north of US 36).
The US 36 Express Lanes Project will build an express lane in each direction on US 36 from Federal Boulevard to Table Mesa in Boulder. The project is being built in two phases with Phase 1 (Federal Boulevard to 88th Street in Louisville) opening in 2015, and Phase 2 (88th Street to Table Mesa in Boulder) opening in 2016. These lanes will connect with the current Express Lanes on I-25. Click here for more information.
The I-25 North Express Lanes Project will add one express lane in each direction of I-25 between US 36 and 120th Avenue. This new lane will connect to the existing I-25 Express Lanes to and from downtown Denver. Click here <Insert link to: http://www.coloradodot.info/projects/I25NorthExpressLanes> for more information.
In addition, CDOT is including Express Lanes in the planning stages of other highway projects across Colorado – including I-70 East and West and C-470 – as a way to effectively manage traffic congestion.
Filed under: Express Lanes, HOV, Tolling
EXpress Toll


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Health Literacy Considerations for All Health Professionals
October 2013
The Problem
Most healthcare professionals are aware of the problems patients have in deciphering the myriad instructional sheets, brochures, appointment slips, authorization forms and educational materials placed in their hands, but the extent to which patients have these problems is not so well understood. It is recommended that these health-related materials for patients do not exceed a fifth-grade level, yet most of these materials are written at a 10th-grade level.
Many people would be shocked to know that, according to the Institute of Medicine, nine out of 10 adults are unable to read and process information related to their own health status and healthcare! Health literacy is affected by basic literacy, English language proficiency, cognitive status, visual impairment and other issues. Health implications for these individuals include longer hospitalizations, more office visits and higher numbers of prescription medications—all the more reason to make certain that reading materials for patients meet their literacy needs.
At a time when the priority for healthcare consumers is to participate as fully as possible in the management of chronic health issues and prevent unnecessary trips to providers and admissions to hospitals, the lack of health literacy has enormous implications for health status, outcomes and costs. Amplifying this last point is a study done by Health Literacy Innovations, which found that the average annual cost of healthcare for those who are proficient in health literacy is $3,000, while the cost for those with limited health literacy is $13,000.
To address this crisis, the Institute of Medicine convened a roundtable on health literacy in 2010, the first of its kind to address this issue. The meeting raised issues for further work on health literacy, its relationship to health disparities, and how information technology might improve health literacy. A range of resources resulting from this meeting, and on the issue of health literacy, are available for free here.
The Strategies
In order to address the health literacy of healthcare consumers, the healthcare professionals educating them and developing their educational resources should use the following basic process, recommended by Health Literacy Innovations, to increase the likelihood of successful messaging:
- Write in the first person.Use simple language and words of one or two syllables.
- Write in a conversational tone.
- Use an active voice in communications.
- Keep sentences and paragraphs short.
- Consider vision impairments when selecting font and font size.
- Lay out materials with sufficient white space to keep materials easy to read.
- Add graphics that help simplify the message.
- Evaluate materials for readability and literacy level.
The Resources
Abundant resources are available to help in the development and assessment of health educational materials for patients. Commercial products are available that can review texts for words that need to be replaced, and that can help in creating a design and layout that facilitates information uptake. Also, several educational institutions, independent organizations and federal government agencies, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health, provide a range of resources in both developing and assessing materials. A few of the most helpful online resources are listed below.
- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality: The AHRQ has developed many web resources for creating materials and messages that are more easily understood by those with low health literacy levels, including a guide for hospitals: "Improving Patient Safety Systems for Patients with Limited English Proficiency."
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: The CDC has developed a Gateway to Health Communication and Social Marketing Practice webpage. Here you can access many resources to help build your health communication or social marketing campaigns and programs. One such resource, CDCynergy, is a multimedia CD-ROM used for planning, managing and evaluating public health communication programs. The planning model is designed to guide the user through systematically conceptualizing, planning, developing, testing, implementing and evaluating health communication activities, while promoting accountability and the importance of evaluation.
- National Quality Forum: The NQF's report "Improving Patient Safety through Informed Consent for Patients with Limited Health Literacy" is designed to provide an overview of major issues related to informed consent for all patients, particularly those with limited health literacy.
- Health Resources and Services Administration: The HRSA offers health professionals free, interactive, self-paced modules, including "Effective Communication Tools for Healthcare Professionals," a course designed to improve health literacy skills.
- Harvard School of Public Health: The Harvard School of Public Health provides many health literacy materials, including one resource that may be of particular interest: a glossary of appropriate terminology to use when creating educational materials around health issues, such as arthritis, asthma and lupus.
- National Center for Education Statistics: The NCES's report, "The Health Literacy of America's Adults: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy" is based on assessment tasks designed specifically to measure the health literacy of adults living in the United States.
- National Patient Safety Foundation: The NPSF's Ask Me 3 patient education program is designed to promote communication between healthcare providers and patients in order to improve health outcomes. Ask Me 3 is sponsored by the Partnership for Clear Health Communication, a national coalition of health organizations that are working together to promote awareness and solutions for low health literacy. The site includes presentation toolkits for professionals and patients, fact sheets, brochures, statistics, logos, guidelines and more.

subset: commoncrawl


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Forrest Gump Reviews
L.A. Weekly
So afraid to dredge up debate that when Forrest is handed a mic at an antiwar rally, someone unplugs the speakers so we can't hear him - fitting for a movie with nothing to say.
Full Review | Original Score: C
Los Angeles Times
It's most successful when it is being off-center, a state of grace it doesn't quite have the nerve to maintain.
Philadelphia Inquirer
This isn't the meaningful movie it pretends to be. But as a goofy entertainment that speeds through the latter half of the 20th century, stopping here and there to snap a photo or two, Forrest Gump does just fine.
Full Review | Original Score: 3/4
Seattle Times
Good as Wright and Sinise are in their roles as Forrest's near-suicidal soulmates, the movie always comes back to Hanks, and director Robert Zemeckis helps him to achieve some of his finest emotional moments.
Full Review | Original Score: 3/4
Orlando Sentinel
The movie's technical tricks are great fun, as is its musical soundtrack, which captures the essences of the eras it traverses. But when you come right down to it, it's the oddly magnetic personality of Forrest himself that is the biggest draw.
Full Review | Original Score: 5/5
Chicago Tribune
This tall tale may reach monumental proportions, but Forrest Gump always keeps its magical airiness and grace.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/4
Chicago Tribune
Credit for the success of the film has to start with director Robert Zemeckis, who has taken his Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit success and parlayed it into a more mature, yet equally entertaining, film.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4
New Yorker
Warm, wise, and wearisome as hell.
For all its ambition, the movie ends up using great historical events in the service of a dubious sentimentality.
A picaresque story of a simpleton's charmed odyssey through 30 years of tumultuous American history, Forrest Gump is whimsy with a strong cultural spine.
Chicago Reader
Judging by the the movie's enduring popularity, the message that stupidity is redemption is clearly what a lot of Americans want to hear.
Time Out
As this mawkish conservative movie ultimately goes to prove: ignorance is bliss.
New York Times
Forrest Gump has the elements of an emotionally gripping story. Yet it feels less like a romance than like a coffee-table book celebrating the magic of special effects.
Washington Post
Skillfully adapted by screenwriter Eric Roth, the story belongs in the company of such sweet classics as Rain Man and Harvey.
Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5
Rolling Stone
A movie heart-breaker of oddball wit and startling grace.
TIME Magazine
Like the best movie actors, Hanks is a superb reactor.
| Original Score: 4/5
This is one summer movie that doesn't evaporate the minute you leave the theater.
San Francisco Chronicle
Hanks is so charming as Gump, so heroic in his guilelessness and belief in simple virtues, that you want to excuse the film's excesses and overlook Zemeckis' weakness for easy, maudlin sentiment.
Full Review | Original Score: 3/4
Passionate and magical, Forrest Gump is a tonic for the weary of spirit.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/4
Washington Post
Hanks is superb, reemploying the childlike presence he brought to Big.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5
Chicago Sun-Times
What a magical movie.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/4
Entertainment Weekly
Reduces the tumult of the last few decades to a virtual-reality theme park: a baby-boomer version of Disney's America.
Full Review | Original Score: C


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Envision Financial
Abbotsford Community Services
Abbotsford Community Services has been awarded a $7,500 grant towards their "Art of Supervision – Training and Curriculum Development" program, providing supervisory training for all supervisory-level staff at the organization plus the development of curriculum for ongoing training of new supervisors. Abbotsford Community Services has 30 supervisors and 300 staff; this new program will allow the organization to fulfill their mandate of promoting from within.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Langley
The Envision Financial Community Endowment has provided a $10,000 grant to the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Langley in support of its In School Mentoring Program. The program focuses on the mentor/mentee relationship and aims to help children and youth increase their self esteem, develop character and respect, and make better lifestyle choices.
Deltassist Family & Community Services
Deltassist Family and Community Services recognizes that while all people have the right to live free of violence, not all do. They see firsthand how violence disables people from living to their full potential, affects all ages and segments of society, and impacts not just the primary victim, but others as well.
Now, thanks to a $20,943 grant from the Envision Financial Community Endowment to Deltassist Family and Community Services (Deltassist), the society can offer a 12-week, self-referred Healthy Relationships and Stress Management program to counsel people at risk for committing domestic violence, and is free to people who struggle with anger management and violent tendencies.
South Fraser Community Services Society
The South Fraser Community Services Society has been providing food, shelter and most importantly, hope and support, to the region's most vulnerable citizens for more than nineteen years. "According to the last Regional Homeless Count conducted in 2008, there are more than 300 homeless individuals in Surrey, many of whom have mental health issues and struggle with addiction," said Shayne Williams, executive director, SFCSS.
Hope & Area Transition Society
Nothing can be more important in our communities than the health and welfare of our children. They represent our future, and investing in them will result in positive health, social and economic outcomes for today and tomorrow.
The Hope & Area Transition Society is promoting the development of a safe and healthy society everyday through the services, advocacy and education programs they provide for individuals and families affected by social issues. Most recently, through funding from the Envision Financial Community Endowment, they have developed the Violence Prevention Program, a nine month in-school initiative aimed at breaking the cycle of violence in children's lives.
Ann Davis Transition Society
Navigating the rocky road to adulthood is challenging for young girls at the best of times.
Girls Empowerment Group, a newly-launched program at the Ann Davis Transition Society in Chilliwack, brings girls aged 12-17 years together for eight-week sessions to build life skills and develop behavioural and emotional supports. The Envision Financial Community Endowment grant will provide funding for four groups of 12 girls each who will benefit from facilitated instruction and recreation and crafts to learn about communications, healthy relationships, abuse awareness, understanding emotions and leadership to enhance the girls' self-image.