Analysis of Performance Measures of Traffic Incident Management in Utah

• Main Author: Hadfield, Mitchell Gregory
• Format: Others
• Published: BYU ScholarsArchive 2020
• Subjects: traffic incident management; incident management team; performance measures; response time; roadway clearance time; incident clearance time; excess travel time; excess user cost; TIM; Engineering
• Online Access: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/8529; https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9529&context=etd

In 2009 the Federal Highway Administration published a report regarding a Focus States Initiative that had been conducted with 11 states to discuss the development of national Traffic Incident Management (TIM) standards. Performance measures were defined, and a national TIM dashboard created, but very little data has been added to the dashboard since. In this research study, performance measures of the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) TIM program were analyzed. Data availability was first assessed to determine whether these performance measures could be calculated. It was determined that crash response data available from the Utah Highway Patrol (UHP) could be used to calculate the performance measures of Incident Management Teams (IMT) and UHP units; however, roadway clearance data were missing. UHP personnel agreed to collect additional data regarding crash roadway clearance for six months of the study. Performance measures of response time (RT), roadway clearance time (RCT), and incident clearance time (ICT) were calculated for responding units at 168 crashes. Using the crash response data from UHP and traffic speed, travel time, and volume data from UDOT databases, 83 of the 163 crashes that met additional criteria were evaluated to determine the volume of traffic affected (AV) by each incident and the associated user cost (EUC). Statistical analyses to determine relationships between different measures such as RT, RCT, ICT, AV, and EUC were conducted to assist UDOT in optimizing the allocation of their IMT resources.