Traffic Incident Management Gap Analysis Primer

2. Traffic Incident Management Gap Analysis Summary

In preparation for the development of this primer, a necessary first step was to inventory current traffic incident management (TIM) practices nationwide. To accomplish this, a two-tier gap analysis was conducted on (1) the federal TIM program as well as (2) State and local programs to investigate what the institutional, technical, and financial capabilities of TIM programs currently are at the different government levels. This analysis included a review and synthesis of relevant literature regarding agency practices, experience, process, and outcomes; as well as reviewing the summaries of Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) TIM workshops conducted across the nation between March 2010 and June 2013 and recent TIM self-assessment (TIM SA) reports.

2.1 The National Unified Goal (NUG) Gap Analysis Framework

Although the details of the comprehensive TIM gap analysis are presented in-depth in a separate report, the key findings of that analysis are summarized within this document to help TIM stakeholders recognize the gaps identified in current TIM practices and reflect them in their own respective TIM programs.

To classify the gaps identified, the 18 National Unified Goal (NUG) strategies were used as a framework to assess the challenges and barriers in the current TIM process. The NUG for TIM encourages local and State transportation and public safety agencies to adopt unified, multidisciplinary policies/procedures/practices that help improve the way traffic incidents are managed on roadways. Although the NUG does not address funding, it does emphasize that by joining together to pursue common goals TIM stakeholders can leverage their opportunities to secure resources to pursue these goals. The NUG strategies are separated into these four categories: crosscutting strategies; responder safety; safe, quick clearance; and prompt, reliable, interoperable communications; and include the following:

Crosscutting Strategies

1. TIM Partnerships and Programs – TIM partners at the national, State, regional, and local levels should work together to promote, develop, and sustain effective TIM programs.
2. Multidisciplinary NIMS and TIM Training – TIM responders should receive multidisciplinary National Incident Management System (NIMS) and TIM training.
3. Goals for Performance and Progress – TIM partners should work together to establish and implement performance goals at the State, regional, and local levels for increasing the effectiveness of TIM, including methods for measuring and monitoring progress.
4. TIM Technology – TIM partners at the national, State, regional, and local levels should work together for rapid and coordinated implementation of beneficial new technologies for TIM.
5. Effective TIM Policies – TIM partners at the national, State, regional, and local levels should join together to raise awareness of proposed policies and legislation that affect the achievement of the NUG strategies of Responder Safety; Safe, Quick Clearance; and Prompt, Reliable Interoperable Communications.
6. Awareness and Education Partnerships – Broad partnerships should be developed to promote public awareness and education regarding the public’s role in safe, efficient resolution of incidents on roadways.

Responder Safety

7. Recommended Practices for Responder Safety – Recommended practices for responder safety and for traffic control at incident scenes should be developed and widely published, distributed, and adopted.
8. Move Over/Slow Down Laws – Drivers should be required to Move Over/Slow Down when approaching traffic incident response vehicles and traffic incident responders on the roadway.
9. Driver Training and Awareness – Driver training and awareness programs should teach drivers how to react to emergencies on the roadway in order to prevent secondary incidents, including traffic incident responder injuries and deaths.

Safe, Quick Clearance

10. Multidisciplinary TIM Procedures – TIM partners at the State, regional, and local levels should develop and adopt multidisciplinary procedures for coordination of TIM operations, based on national recommended practices and procedures.
11. Response and Clearance Time Goals – TIM partners at the State, regional, and local levels should commit to achievement of goals for traffic incident response and clearance times.
12. 24/7 Availability – TIM responders and resources should be available 24/7.

Prompt, Reliable, Interoperable Communications

13. Multidisciplinary Communications Practices and Procedures – Traffic incident responders should develop and implement standardized multidisciplinary traffic incident communications practices and procedures.
14. Prompt, Reliable Responder Notification – All traffic incident responders should receive prompt, reliable notification of incidents to which they are expected to respond.
15. Interoperable Voice and Data Networks – State, regional, and local TIM stakeholders should work together to develop interoperable voice and data networks.
16. Broadband Emergency Communications Systems – National TIM stakeholders should work together to reduce the barriers to integrated broadband emergency communications systems development and integration (both wired and wireless).
17. Prompt, Reliable Traveler Information Systems – TIM stakeholders should encourage development of more prompt and reliable traveler information systems that will enable drivers to make travel decisions to reduce the impacts of emergency incidents on traffic flow. This includes use of ITS-type methods such as dynamic message signs (DMS), hghway advisory radio (HAR) and 511 systems as well as non-ITS methods such as local media and social networking sites.
18. Partnerships with News Media and Information Providers – TIM stakeholders should actively partner with news media, ISPs and other pertinent resources such as social media service providers to provide prompt, reliable incident information to the public.

The comparison of the different TIM programs to the 18 NUG strategies serves as a basis for developing a framework to:

• Document the identified challenges and barriers in the current TIM practice.
• Develop a means to bridge these challenges and barriers.
• Propose the components of a complete TIM program.

The main intent of using the NUG strategies as a benchmark is to identify the missing strategic and tactical aspects in the current TIM practices at the local, State, and national levels. However, the emphasis on the NUG strategies is not meant to understate the need to address budget limitations and availability of dedicated funding to develop a complete and successful TIM program that is sustainable over time.

The outline of the NUG gap analysis framework is presented in Table 2, listing the key elements of each of the 18 NUG strategies as well as the identified challenges, barriers, and strategies based on the inventory and review of current TIM practices.

Table 2. The National Unified Goal (NUG) Gap Analysis Framework

2.2 Current State of TIM Practice

On the local and State levels, many variations exist among the different TIM programs. Variations in TIM practice occur between urban and rural areas where most of the urban areas have regional TIM programs that cover large metropolitan areas and the rural TIM programs are mainly corridor-based programs that may extend coverage to multiple States. TIM practices also vary between States, where some States have strong statewide support and coordination among the different regional TIM programs within the State while others do not.

The success of the TIM practice at any of the State/local level programs depends primarily on the active involvement and coordination between the different TIM partners. Examples of the State/local level TIM activities include conducting regularly scheduled TIM committee meetings, multidisciplinary training programs, tracking of targeted performance goals, developing and promoting TIM procedures and policies, coordinating the available TIM resources including equipment and data, and successful incident scene interagency collaboration. In addition, inclusion of TIM into the State’s Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) is essential in order to ensure the full funding opportunity under the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP). It also utilizes the presence of the different TIM partners within the SHSP. Examples of States that include TIM in their SHSP are Arizona (in progress), Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, and Wisconsin.

On the national level, government and non-governmental agencies and coalitions contribute to the development and success of the TIM practice at both the policy and operations levels. A key role of the national TIM agencies is to provide support to the State/local level TIM programs to enhance and advance their TIM practices. Examples of the national TIM-involved agencies include FHWA Office of Operations’ Traffic Incident & Events Management (TI&EM) Team, International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC), National Association of State EMS Officials (NASEMSO), Emergency Responder Safety Institute (ERSI), Towing and Recovery Association of America (TRAA), and the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA). Another important national effort that started in 2004 and ended in 2013 is the National Traffic Incident Management Coalition (NTIMC) that was instrumental in the development of the NUG. The NTIMC was succeeded by the National TIM Executive Leadership Group (ELG), which was formed in 2012 by FHWA following the Senior Executive Transportation & Public Safety Summit [8].

Figure 5. Photo. FHWA Senior Executive Transportation & Public Safety Summit. [8]

The coordination among these agencies and others is key to the success of the national TIM practice. Examples of the coordinated activities at the national level include the development of tools, primers, guidelines, handbooks, and outreach packages; offering training courses, workshops, and educational materials; formulation of policies and standards, and conducting research and synthesis on new TIM initiatives.

As mentioned earlier, a TIM gap analysis webinar was conducted in October 2014 in order to seek TIM stakeholders’ input on the current state of their TIM practice and their presently identified gaps. Figure 6, Figure 7, and Figure 8 summarize the webinar attendees’ responses to questions about the NUG, their TIM program strategic plans, and their current TIM gap analysis process, respectively. It can be seen that many TIM programs (74%) incorporate the NUG into their TIM program (Figure 6), and this suggests that the different TIM programs are quite familiar with the NUG strategies and they can easily adopt the NUG gap analysis framework presented earlier.

In addition, only half of the stakeholders have a TIM strategic plan, and only 55% keep their strategic plan updated periodically (Figure 7). Such results indicate the significance of the strategic/institutional gaps in the current practice of most TIM programs. Furthermore, and as presented in Chapter 1, only 30% of the webinar attendees indicated that their TIM programs have undertaken gap analysis. Among those TIM programs, their gap analyses revealed a fair distribution, between strategic, tactical, and support types of gaps. Moreover, it was found that the institutionalization of the TIM activities among the different partners are some of the important strategic TIM gaps (Figure 8).

Have you incorporated the NUG into your TIM program?

Figure 6. Chart. Current State of TIM Practice: TIM Stakeholders’ Responses about National Unified Goal.
(Credit: FHWA TIM Gap Analysis Webinar, October 2014)

 

Figure 7. Chart. Current State of TIM Practice: TIM Stakeholders’ Responses about TIM Strategic Plan.
(Credit: FHWA TIM Gap Analysis Webinar, October 2014)

 

Figure 8. Chart. Current State of TIM Practice: TIM Stakeholders’ Responses about TIM Gap Analysis.
(Credit: TIM Gap Analysis Webinar, October 2014)

2.3 TIM Gaps and Gap Filling Recommendations

The variations in the current TIM practice between the different State/local level and national level TIM programs result in differences in the gaps identified in each program. The TIM gap analysis presented here identifies specific themes of the gaps in the overall state of TIM practice. The identified gaps outline the barriers and challenges that hinder the State/local level TIM programs from having a complete TIM practice in their areas. These gaps also represent focus areas for national level TIM agencies in order to most effectively support State/local programs in achieving their TIM goals. It is worth reiterating that lack of funding and budget limitations are key challenges facing different State and local TIM programs, and can hinder them from achieving their envisioned TIM goals. Nevertheless, the focus of the analyses based on the NUG strategies is primarily on the strategic and tactical aspects that are missing in the current TIM practice of these programs. However, that does not diminish the fact that availability of dedicated funding is vital for a complete and successful TIM program.

In addition to the need for dedicated funding, the ability to efficiently utilize the available resources in order to achieve the 18 NUG strategies represents the founding framework for a successful and complete TIM program. These elements build upon the benchmarking of the current TIM process against the NUG strategies, as well as the analysis of the TIM SA results, in order to identify and prioritize the different TIM gaps. Based on the analyses conducted, examples of these gaps include:

Program and Institutional Gaps

• Multiagency involvement from all TIM partners.
• Formal documentation of the TIM agreements (e.g., memorandum of understanding (MOUs)).
• Multidisciplinary TIM training.
• Performance measures (PM) and goals tracking.
• Road clearance laws and legislations.
• Public awareness and outreach.

Operational Gaps

• Responder safety procedures and practices.
• Equipment staging and scene management.
• Accident reconstruction and investigations.
• 24/7 responder availability.
• Safety service patrol (SSP) availability.

Communication and Technology Gaps

• Emergency communications systems during incident response.
• Prompt incident detection and notification.
• Interoperable data sharing.

The recommended actions and measures at both the State/local level and national level based on the conducted TIM gap analysis are summarized in Table 3. This table of actions is a tool that can be used to allocate TIM resources at the different government levels into the focus areas that still need additional improvements. It is worth noting that the action items below are recommended based on the information gathered when this analysis was conducted. Some of these actions may have been already addressed by the time the report is publicly available.

Table 3. Summary of State/Local and National Level Actions