Emergency Transportation Operations

National Support Needed to Improve Highway Safety and Reduce Congestion

Printable Version [PDF, 325KB]
To view PDF files, you need the Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Contact Information: Operations Feedback at OperationsFeedback@dot.gov.
Emergency Transportation Operations Web Site

Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2)

National Support Needed to Improve Highway Safety and Reduce Congestion

The Second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) delivered two products to improve traffic incident on-scene management. The first product is a multi-disciplinary training course that promotes a shared understanding of the requirements for quick clearance and safeguards responders and motorists. The second product is a 2-day Train-the-Trainer course that facilitates widespread use of the multi-disciplinary training. Governors, transportation leaders, police, and firefighters across the country can save money, time, and lives by championing full-scale deployment of these innovative training courses focused on traffic incident management (TIM).

For each minute a freeway lane is blocked during peak use, an estimate 4 minutes of delay result after the incident is cleared, accounting for 4.2 billion hours/year in delays.

SHRP 2 was created by Congress to address the challenges of moving people and goods efficiently and safely on the Nation's highways. This short-term research program addresses four strategic focus areas:

  • Safety – The role of human behavior in highway safety.
  • Renewal – More efficient highway project delivery.
  • Reliability – Congestion reduction through improved travel times.
  • Capacity – Improved integration of community, economic, and environmental considerations for new highway capacity.

Training Objectives

The new multi-agency National Traffic Incident Management Training Program equips responders with a common set of core competencies and assists them in achieving the TIM National Unified Goal of strengthening TIM programs in the areas of:

  • Responder safety.
  • Safe, quick clearance.
  • Prompt, reliable, and interoperable communications.

Flexible delivery approaches for full-scale implementation of the TIM training courses are also under development.

Nearly 13 percent of police officer & firefighter line-of-duty deaths result from vehicle-related incidents.

Program Strengths

  • Promote more effective multi-agency, coordinated, and planned incident response.
  • Improves responder safety.
  • Improves travel-time reliability for person and freight trips on the Nation's highways by improving incident clearance time.
  • Reduces congestion, collisions, and delays caused by secondary crashes.

Key to Success

In order to effectively strengthen TIM activities, the training courses must reach a majority of the Nation's TIM responders. You can effect change by encouraging the deployment of the new National TIM Training Program in your State.

Contact Information

For more information, contact Mark Kehrli, Director, Office of Transportation Operations, FHWA, 202-366-1993, mark.kehrli@dot.gov.

U.S. Department of Transportation - Federal Highway Administration

FHWA-HOP-12-007