Federal Highway Administration Focus States Initiative: Traffic Incident Management Performance Measures Final Report

Introduction

This report presents the results of the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Office of Operations-sponsored Focus States Initiative (FSI) designed to advance the state-of-the-practice for traffic incident management (TIM) performance measurement. Through this effort, 11 Focus States¹ identified several national-level TIM program objectives and related performance measures. During the process, the States successfully overcame institutional, operational, and technical barriers and defined three multi-agency, measurable TIM objectives and methods of measuring performance toward those objectives. All 11 Focus States committed to build on the momentum generated by the TIM FSI and to continue to work together to advance program-level performance measurement in their States as well as nationwide.

Table 1 summarizes the three national-level TIM program objectives and their supporting performance measures agreed to by the participating States.

Table 1. TIM FSI Candidate National Program-Level Performance Measures
TIM Program Objective	Related Performance Measure
1. Reduce "roadway clearance" time defined as the time between awareness of an incident and restoration of lanes to full operational status).	Time between first recordable awareness of incident by a responsible agency and first confirmation that all lanes are available for traffic flow.
2. Reduce "incident clearance" time (defined as the time between awareness of an incident and removal of all evidence of the incident, including debris or remaining assets, from shoulders).	Time between first recordable awareness of incident by a responsible agency and time at which the last responder has left the scene.
3. (NEWEST) Reduce the number of secondary incidents - specifically unplanned incidents for which a response or intervention is taken, where a collision occurs either a) within the incident scene or b) within the queue (which could include opposite direction) resulting from the original incident.	Number of unplanned incidents beginning with the time of detection of the primary incident where a collision occurs either a) within the incident scene or b) within the queue, including the opposite direction, resulting from the original incident.

The results of the Initiative clearly demonstrate that:

All States can use the same performance measure to analyze their respective programs.
States are able to collect and analyze the data needed to support TIM performance measurement using a common performance metric. However, the methods of data collection vary significantly between States.
States are able to compare TIM performance measurement using common metrics.

During the course of the Initiative, the 11 States worked with representatives from State Departments of Transportation (DOTs), law enforcement agencies and the FHWA. Collectively, they achieved the following:

The group conducted an 18-month field test using the "incident clearance" and "roadway clearance" performance measures. Five States (Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Wisconsin, and Washington) identified data sources, collected and analyzed data to measure TIM performance.
All 11 FSI States established inter-agency programs to support TIM. By late 2007, only two States (Texas and Utah) were not yet measuring TIM performance.
Four States (California, Connecticut, New York, and North Carolina) committed to implementing TIM performance measurements as part of a comprehensive TIM program. Their TIM programs include establishing inter-agency agreements; identifying data requirements and data sources; and developing data exchange interfaces. These activities required substantial planning, and in several instances, the acquisition of technical assistance to modify legacy systems and interfaces. While these States may not be measuring TIM performance metrics yet, they have initiated planning to enable performance measurement as part of an integrated TIM program. Table 2 demonstrates the Focus States' TIM Performance Measurement activities through the notations "under development" and "in progress."²
The group developed a preliminary definition of secondary incidents and the third performance measure - "reduce secondary incidents" - at the final project workshop:³

Secondary Incidents are unplanned incidents (starting at the time of detection) for which a response or intervention is taken, where a collision occurs either a) within the incident scene or b) within the queue (which could include the opposite direction) resulting from the original incident.

Through this initiative, the 11 Focus States overcame common institutional, operational, and technical barriers that define multi-agency, measurable TIM objectives and measured performance toward those objectives, as shown in Table 2⁴. Examples of TIM performance data collected by States are included in the PowerPoint presentation described in appendix A to this Final Report, which is provided under a separate cover.

During the process, other States expressed interest in the outcomes of this initiative. One State (Missouri) participated as an observer in the TIM Focus State Initiative final conference held in Milwaukee in October 2007 to learn more. All 11 Focus States concluded the process by expressing their desire to build on the TIM FSI momentum and to continue the work together to advance program-level performance measurement in their States, as well as nationwide.

Table 2. TIM PM FSI Implementation Summary
State	Developing Interagency TIM Program	Interagency Data Exchange (CAD TMC)	Reduce Roadway Clearance Time	Reduce Incident Clearance Time	Results Used to Improve TIM Operations
California	Y	Under Development	In Progress	In Progress	Planned
Connecticut	Y	Under Development	In Progress	In Progress	Planned
Florida	Y	Y	Y	Y	Tracking average incident duration in Districts 4 and 6 and on Florida Turnpike.
Georgia	Y	N	Y	Y	PM used to determine if targets for major incident clearance - 90 minutes and incident response - 8 minutes are achieved.
Maryland	Y	N	Y	Y	Annual assessment data is used to identify high crash corridors, plan resource allocation, and identify trends in TIM.
New York	Y	Under Development	In Progress	In Progress	Planned
North Carolina	Y	Under Development	In Progress	In Progress	Planned
Texas	Y (Local Events)	N	N	N	N
Utah	Y	Limited	N	N	N
Washington	Y	Limited	Y	Y	In progress for incidents involving joint response with Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT) and Washington State Police (WSP).
Wisconsin	Y	Y	Y	N	Currently tracking average response times.

Footnotes

1 The 11 States that participated in the FSI include: California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, New York, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin. As the FSI effort proceeded, other States expressed interest in the outcomes of this initiative, with one State asking to observe the TIM FSI's final conference held in Milwaukee in October 2007.

2 Note: "CAD TMC" in the third column refers to Computer-Aided Dispatch Traffic Management Center.

3 At the time of the final workshop, held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in October 2007, this third performance measure had not been tested through the FSI.

4 The FSI implementation summary was developed during the final project workshop.

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