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

The Traffic Incident Management Performance Measures Focus States Initiative (TIM PM FSI) involves 11 States that have defined three traffic incident performance measures (PM) and conducted field tests of two of these measures. The following measures were defined in December 2005 and field tested for 18 months:

1. Reduce “roadway clearance” time (defined as the time between awareness of an incident and restoration of lanes to full operational status)
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).

A third measure was defined at the final project work shop in October 2007 but has not yet been field tested:

3. 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.

The FSI represents the first effort by multiple States to measure TIM performance using common performance metrics. The results of the FSI demonstrated that TIM performance measurement is institutionally and technically viable. The participating States also demonstrated that integrating and coordinating TIM operations between multiple agencies can be done seamlessly. The final products of the FSI are an outreach plan and outreach products that can be used by States to promote TIM PM and integrated TIM programs.