00780204

English

http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/1683-02

The development of an incident response team (IRT) program has been touted to improve incident response and clearance times, as well as to improve interdisciplinary cooperation. To determine the effectiveness of its IRT program, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) commissioned a comprehensive study that considered both quantified and perceived benefits. The average duration of incidents to which the IRTs responded was reduced by 20.6 min from 1994 to 1995. The ability to statistically attribute this reduction in incident duration to the IRT was limited because only 2 years of data were available (i.e., reduction may be attributable to temporal variations in incident characteristics). Nonetheless, the implications of this reduction can be quantified. This reduction results in a monetary savings of $20,600 to $61,800 per incident and an annual savings of $3.09 million to $9.27 million in King County. Comparing these monetary benefits to the IRT program costs in the Northwest Region results in a benefit-to-cost ratio of 4.3:1 to 12.9:1. Given these values, even minor reductions in incident duration attributable to IRTs can justify the program. Public support for WSDOT's incident response team program was high, with 62% of the respondents thinking it is a good idea. IRT program support from other response personnel was also high. WSDOT's IRT was viewed as an important service for improving scene accessibility and improving the safety of both the motoring public and the incident responders. Despite the positive feedback, inconsistency in operation among individual IRT members makes it difficult to draw conclusions as to the effectiveness of different operating styles, for other response personnel to work effectively with IRT members, and to build a positive consensus among the motoring public for continued program support.

This paper appears in Transportation Research Record No. 1683, Advanced Traffic Management Systems.

HRIS

p. 8-13

1999

Transportation Research Record

0309071100

Figures (1) ; References (3) ; Tables (2)

Benefit cost analysis; Incident management; Incident response; Public support; State of Washington; Time duration; Washington (State)

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; I73: Traffic Control

Dec 29 1999 12:00AM

• CRITICAL ISSUES FACING DEPLOYMENT OF NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION COMMUNICATIONS FOR INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM PROTOCOLS
• DETERMINING CAPACITY BENEFITS OF REAL-TIME SIGNAL CONTROL AT AN INTERSECTION
• DYNAMIC OFFSET TUNING PROCEDURE USING TRAVEL TIME DATA
• EFFECTIVENESS OF WIRELESS PHONES IN INCIDENT DETECTION: PROBABILISTIC ANALYSIS
• ESTIMATING QUEUE LENGTHS BY USING SIGNAL94, SYNCHRO3, TRANSYT-7F, PASSER II-90, AND CORSIM
• EVALUATING A ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE PROGRAM: PENN-LINCOLN PARKWAY SERVICE PATROL
• EVALUATION OF ANAHEIM ADAPTIVE CONTROL FIELD OPERATIONAL TEST: INSTITUTIONAL ISSUES
• EVALUATION OF DIAMOND INTERCHANGE SIGNAL CONTROLLER SETTINGS BY USING HARDWARE-IN-THE-LOOP SIMULATION
• EVALUATION OF MOBILE SURVEILLANCE AND WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS: FIELD OPERATIONAL TEST
• INITIAL EVALUATIONS OF NEW TRANSYT-7F VERSION 8.1 PROGRAM
• LOCAL AND ITERATIVE SEARCHES FOR COMBINED SIGNAL CONTROL AND ASSIGNMENT PROBLEM: IMPLEMENTATION AND NUMERICAL EXAMPLES
• LOS ANGELES I-10 FIELD EXPERIMENT: INCIDENT PATTERNS
• NETWORK TRAFFIC SIGNAL OPTIMIZATION FORMULATION WITH EMBEDDED PLATOON DISPERSION SIMULATION
• PITFALL TO AVOID WHEN ESTIMATING INCIDENT-INDUCED DELAY BY USING DETERMINISTIC QUEUING MODELS
• RULE-BASED APPROACH TO REAL-TIME DISTRIBUTED ADAPTIVE SIGNAL CONTROL
• SIGNAL TIMING OPTIMIZATION FOR OVERSATURATED NETWORKS USING TRANSYT-7F
• TRAFFIC SIGNAL OPTIMIZATION PROGRAM FOR OVERSATURATED CONDITIONS: GENETIC ALGORITHM APPROACH
• USING DUAL LOOP SPEED TRAPS TO IDENTIFY DETECTOR ERRORS