Build Smart, Build Steady: Winning Strategies for Building Integrated Corridor Management Over Time

Chapter 1. Introduction

Background

Consider a special event like a college or professional game, parade, or political march. Multiple agencies prepare thorough and complex traffic and crowd control plans (TCPs) in advance. For a pre-determined period over many hours, signals are re-purposed, and traffic is managed. Some roads are blocked while others are managed as reversible lanes to favor inbound or outbound traffic. Resources are mobilized and all manner of other accommodations (messages, parking, concessions, etc.) are planned. Transit is mobilized to react (bus bridges and subway surges, etc.) and public messages are prepared to inform and direct the crowds. Now imagine a similar scenario that is unplanned! A critical road or corridor is suddenly compromised by an accident or a seemingly causeless surge of demand that is over and above nominal conditions.

Integrated Corridor Management (ICM) is a concept that brings together multimodal elements of a modern surface transportation system that are typically managed independently (e.g., freeway, arterial, transit) to make overall system operations more productive and cost-effective during sudden events. ICM helps mitigate the worst sudden breakdowns, surges, or accidents that would otherwise bring an already fragile region to a standstill. While ICM may be utilized for top-end peak surges, it is typically not used for day-to-day management of nominal conditions.

Events that benefit from ICM are above and beyond the nominal traffic congestion and management, even if that management already includes intelligent systems, like ramp metering, peak-hour shoulder use, lane priorities (e.g., High Occupancy Vehicle [HOV] lanes, High Occupancy Toll [HOT] lanes), pricing, dynamic messaging, and peak-hour signal algorithms and management. The ICM concept is best applied in corridors with multiple parallel facilities, stakeholders, and modes (i.e., roadway and transit) that experience severe irregular congestion resulting from high travel demand, incidents, and severe weather (or some combinations of the three). ICM can be particularly useful when unanticipated events occur on top of a "planned" activity such as emergency roadwork, construction or special events. For example, Central Florida (District 5) Smart Roads uses ICM to help during construction of the I-4 Ultimate project, mitigating the impacts of increased traffic volumes on the arterials.⁽³⁾ The resulting travel conditions under these operational conditions are problematic beyond the underlying congestion: there are longer delays and even more unpredictable travel times. Unreliable travel conditions may have serious implications for regional economic competitiveness and erodes the quality of life for frequent travelers.

Coordinated action among the agencies responsible for managing the sub-elements of the system can reduce delays, improve travel time reliability, and improve the economic competitiveness of the surrounding region. Examples include joint planning among all modes with respect to incident response, special events, and severe weather conditions. In these cases, adjustments to operational settings (signal timings, ramp metering, etc.) and comprehensive traveler information can have significant and cost-effective impact — reducing delays and making travel in the corridor more predictable and economically productive.

Surface transportation systems are not managed holistically as a default. Individual agencies and jurisdictions plan and operate facilities based on institutional and funding mechanisms independent from their peers. There is typically no over-arching entity responsible for co-management of all corridor activity, i.e., all modes and routes working as one. ICM enables the coordinated action of all agencies and stakeholders, such that the system is managed holistically.

ICM as an operational deployment concept is relatively mature. An extensive collection of ICM-related materials is identified as references in this document. Surveying this extensive body of knowledge, some relevant observations can be made regarding the successful deployment and evolution of ICM over time:

Incremental funding is an established reality for stakeholders considering deploying ICM, or for stakeholders already with some ICM capabilities.

It may not be possible to jump directly into ICM nirvana — nor is it entirely desirable to try to deploy an end-state ICM capability all in one concentrated effort.

• Time is needed to build relationships among ICM stakeholders.
• Time is needed to understand the system dynamics and corridor performance — and to sort out what "good" looks like from a shared collective viewpoint.
• ICM can be usefully pursued as a crawl-walk-run proposition, leveraging a set of relatively lightweight near-term early wins to create momentum.

Most ICM initiatives have prioritized on a single pass of the assess-design-build process. This is understandable since the creation of ICM must be built around conceptualizing, funding, planning, building and operating a new capability. The risk of such a singular one-and-done focus is that the capability deployed may be perceived as a permanent, rigid "ICM" solution. Such an approach essentially dooms the ICM collective management concept/vision by tying it too closely to a specific collection of technologies and operational practices that must inevitably become outdated, obsolete, or unnecessary.

An alternative to a one-and-done ICM mindset is to develop and implement organizational mechanisms that allows the fine tuning and adapting a corridor ICM concept, technology and institutional/operational/technical arrangements over time. Embedding such mechanisms into how ICM is managed in a corridor is critical in the development of a durable, long-term ICM deployment. Corridor agencies taking these steps set the stage to successfully build smart and steady towards a shared ICM vision, equipped to take on a range of expected technical, financial, and institutional challenges.

Purpose of this Document

This primer describes key organizational mechanisms of value across the ICM life cycle from early deployers just getting started to mature ICM deployments ready to move to the next level. The purpose of the primer is to provide guidance to agencies on how to:

Deploy incrementally ICM and supporting Decision Support Systems (DSS).

Adapt the ICM deployment and associated organizational form over time.

Achieve long-term ICM financial sustainability.

The primer is not intended to provide an understanding of ICM or a step-by-step process for initiating ICM. For an introduction to ICM concepts, the reader should refer to the literature identified in the Key References section.

How to Use this Document

The primer is intended to be used in an active and consistent way — with suggested exercises for ICM stakeholders to conduct throughout the ICM maturity spectrum, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Step 1 is to conduct an ICM Capability Maturity Model (CMM) assessment annually, presented in Chapter 2 of this document. The aspirational ICM deployers (i.e., stakeholders who are exploring the ICM concept as a possible solution to their corridor problems but don't yet have an ICM system in place) should skip Step 1 and move to Step 2. Once some ICM capital has been built (possibly in year), the exercise in Step 1 can be done.

Step 2 is to organize and conduct periodic planning meetings using structured activities with ICM stakeholders to actively and adaptively identify a set of high-priority strategic actions needed to move the ICM deployment forward, evolving to a new state aligned with the ICM vision.

Step 3 is to use the results of the exercises (and attendant strategic actions) to update and adapt the arrangements among ICM stakeholders that define the organizational, technical, and operational roles and actions of all ICM deployment participants. Utilizing the process laid out in this document over time enables ICM deployments to maintain forward evolutionary momentum — building smart and steady towards a more complete and effective ICM capability.

Key References

No single document can cover the many aspects of ICM and its considerations — however, there is a large body of prior work that can be used as references in this document. Rather than repeating this information, the intent of this document is to leverage the existing body of ICM guidance, by pointing to specific resources. Some key references and their specific relationship to this guide are provided here:

• Ten Attributes of a Successful ICM Site. This two-page fact sheet provides a concise assessment of how to select an appropriate site for ICM deployment.
• Planning for Transportation Systems Management and Operations Within Corridors: A Desk Reference. This comprehensive reference helps to place ICM within a broader operational context.
• Integrated Corridor Management (ICM) ITS Benefits, Costs, and Lessons Learned: 2014 Update Report. This summary document helps to both motivate ICM deployment by showing the impacts on corridor performance drawn from four early ICM deployment sites (Dallas, San Diego, Minneapolis, and San Francisco).
• Integrated Corridor Management: Implementation Guide and Lessons Learned. This document is specifically geared towards prospective ICM deployments and provides a step-by-step process for initiating an ICM effort. The guide also contains links and references to the USDOT ICM Pioneer Deployments sites and key lessons learned.
• NCHRP Project 20-68A, ICM Capability Maturity Model Assessment. This effort resulted in the creation of a useful Capability Maturity Model (CMM) utilized in this primer.
• NCHRP Report 899 Incorporating Freight, Transit, and Incident Response Stakeholders into Integrated Corridor Management (ICM): Processes and Strategies for Implementation. This institutionally focused report provides information on the creation and updating of ICM stakeholder agreements.

This primer is also intended to be utilized in conjunction with two complementary ICM primers: Mainstreaming Integrated Corridor Management⁽⁴⁾ and the Primer on Integrated and Active Management AMS (forthcoming). Additional information can be found on the FHWA Corridor Traffic Management website.⁽⁵⁾

Organization of this Document

The organization of the document follows the general process stakeholders are intended to follow as they initiate or enhance an ICM deployment effort.

Chapter 2 focuses on a comprehensive ICM maturity assessment conducted as a joint exercise with ICM stakeholders who are the champions of the corridor — the coalition of the willing. Based on the outcomes from this exercise, stakeholders are asked to move to one of the following chapters (Chapter 3 for early ICM Deployers, Chapter 4 for more mature ICM deployments, and Chapter 5 for advanced ICM deployers considering transformative institutional and financial models).

Chapter 3 is intended for ICM stakeholders who are either exploring the ICM concept as a possible solution to their corridor problems (Aspirational ICM Deployments) or are relatively early-on in the process of creating and implementing an ICM capability (Early ICM Deployments).

Chapter 4 is for ICM stakeholders who are ready to evolve from an early, exploratory/initial state into a more permanent, durable, and comprehensive ICM capability (Durable ICM Deployments). This chapter is for stakeholders who have already logged an early "win" or two and are ready to establish an ongoing ICM capability that successfully competes for operational/capital funding and demonstrates value on an ongoing and routine basis. As in the previous chapter, homework assignments followed by a joint meeting with exercises are used to tailor, enhance, or modify the vision, institutional capital, and investment planning associated with the ICM capability.

Chapter 5 is for ICM stakeholders who have established a durable and comprehensive ICM capability and wish to consider more advanced organizational forms and/or incorporate new transformative technologies (Transformative ICM Deployments).

Chapter 6 provides conclusions and some cross-cutting observations related to responding to typical challenges as capabilities mature from early-state concepts into late-state operational systems.