Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

Regional Traffic Incident

Management Programs

IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE

May 2001

Regional Traffic Incident

Management Programs

IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE
Foreword

Dear Reader,

We have scanned the country and brought together the collective wisdom and

expertise of transportation professionals implementing Intelligent Transportation

Systems (ITS) projects across the United States. This information will prove

helpful as you set out to plan, design, and deploy ITS in your communities.

This document is one in a series of products designed to help you provide ITS

solutions that meet your local and regional transportation needs. The series

contains a variety of formats to communicate with people at various levels

within your organization and among your community stakeholders:

• Benefits Brochures let experienced community leaders explain in their own

words how specific ITS technologies have benefited their areas;

• Cross-Cutting Studies examine various ITS approaches that can be taken to

meet your community’s goals;

• Case Studies provide in-depth coverage of specific approaches taken in reallife communities across the United States; and

• Implementation Guides serve as “how to” manuals to assist your project

staff in the technical details of implementing ITS.

ITS has matured to the point that you are not alone as you move toward

deployment. We have gained experience and are committed to providing our

state and local partners with the knowledge they need to lead their communities

into the next century.

The inside back cover contains details on the documents in this series, as well

as sources to obtain additional information. We hope you find these

documents useful tools for making important transportation infrastructure

decisions.

Christine M. Johnson Edward L. Thomas

Program Manager, Operations Associate Administrator for

Director, ITS Joint Program Office Research, Demonstration and

Federal Highway Administration Innovation

Federal Transit Administration

NOTICE

The United States Government does not endorse products or manufacturers.

Trademarks or manufacturers’ names appear herein only because they are

considered essential to the objective of this document.
Table of Contents

iii

Executive Summary es-1

Part 1: Introduction 1-1

Objective 1-3

Methodology 1-3

Part 2: Incident Management Overview 2-1

Part 3: The Case for an Incident Management Program 3-1

Problems Addressed by Incident Management 3-1

What Incident Management Can Accomplish 3-2

Part 4: An Institutional Framework for Incident Management 4-1

Who Is Involved and How? 4-1

Part 5: Implementing an Incident Management Program 5-1

Following an Organized Framework 5-1

Phase I: Program Concept 5-2

Phase II: Program Development 5-13

Phase III: Program Maintenance and Sustainability 5-19

Part 6: Lessons Learned in Implementing and Sustaining Incident

Management Programs 6-1

Conclusion 7-1

Appendix A: Incident Management Program Monitoring,

Evaluation, and Reporting of Benefits/Influence A-1

Acknowledgements

References
Figure 1 Timeline of Elements in Incident

Management Process 2-1

Figure 2 Effect of Demand Reduction in Delays Caused

by Incidents 3-2

Figure 3 A Framework for Organizing and Sustaining

Incident Management Programs 5-3

Figure A-1 Sample Evaluation Goals and Objectives Table A-1

Figure A-2 Sample Questionnaire A-2

Figure A-3 Sample Table for Analysis of Data A-3

Figure A-4 Sample Implementation of Recommendations

Timeline A-3

List of Figures

iv
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

The purpose of this document is to assist organizations and their leaders in

implementing and sustaining regional traffic incident management programs,

both by examining some successful models, and by considering some of the

lessons learned by early implementers. There is some form of incident

management activity in most major and many mid-sized urban areas. Typically

this involves each agency carrying out its own responsibilities, with primarily

working-level and middle-management administrative teams to provide

coordination with the other agencies who are also involved in their own aspects

of managing incidents. Such a situation not only achieves less than the full

potential benefit, but also leaves open many risks for failure within individual

agencies or on a broader scale.

The objective of this document is to present a framework for developing what is

missing in almost every urban area—a formal multiagency traffic incident

management program, with endorsement by, participation from, and

coordination by senior agency management, and which includes all of the

participating agencies. Formalizing the incident management effort—turning it

into an incident management program—involves such steps as developing a

written and endorsed strategy and a plan to implement the strategy; identifying

and building support from a full complement of stakeholders and with the

public; gaining support and ongoing participation in program direction from

agency senior executives; documenting the respective roles and responsibilities

of participants; establishing program goals and objectives and evaluating

performance on these; establishing incident management as a major mission

within and between the participating agencies; and “mainstreaming” of funding

for incident management into the traditional transportation planning process.

More importantly, formalizing the program transitions incident management

from reliance on the cooperative relationships existing between responders and

between middle management of the agencies to an official recognition and

endorsement of incident management as a core agency activity at senior

executive levels. Incident management is then recognized as an overall initiative

and purpose within and across agencies, significantly increasing the likelihood

that its influence will be recognized when policies and other programs which

may impact it are being discussed. When incident management reaches

program status, it starts to be integrated into every aspect of what each

participating agency does, whether this is planning for its information

technology needs, or defining the types of vehicles that the law enforcement

agency acquires.

Similarly, such focus demonstrates a long-term commitment to incident

management. Formalization moves incident management from “special

program” status, subject to availability of resources from outside the

mainstream, and places it into the category occupied by the ongoing missions

of each agency, whose existence is not questioned at each budget and staffing

cycle. It has a clearly defined strategy, linked to the regional and statewide

strategies guiding such major areas as law enforcement and transportation. The

Executive Summary

es-1
strategy sets direction for incident management, supporting the policy and

resource needs which increase its impact and effectiveness.

This program then also becomes a component in the budget process of each

participating agency to obtain the resources needed to implement and sustain

the program. This executive endorsement (and ongoing support and

participation), as well as the infiltration of incident management into every

major aspect of each agency, provides a foundation that sustains incident

management from year to year across personnel changes and even political

changes. Furthermore, it creates conditions where agencies support one

another’s requests for the resources necessary to carry out their respective

incident management duties and for the resources to expand program scope

and coverage.

This document begins by presenting the case for incident management,

describing the extent of the impact of incidents in the United States and how

this impact occurs. It then discusses goals, objectives, and potential benefits of

formal incident management programs.

The primary goals of traffic incident management are to minimize the impact of

incidents and reduce the probability of secondary incidents. Five measurable

objectives of incident management are:

• Reducing the time for incident detection and verification

• Reducing response time (the time for response personnel and equipment to

arrive at the scene)

• Exercising proper and safe on-scene management of personnel and

equipment, while keeping as many lanes open to traffic as possible

• Reducing clearance time (the time required for the incident to be removed

from the roadway)

• Providing timely, accurate information to the public that enables them to

make informed choices.

This document provides a framework and a series of steps for implementing and

sustaining a regional traffic incident management program. The framework

involves:

Program Concept

• Describe the current state of incident management efforts

• Describe and justify formalizing incident management

• Identify stakeholders involved

• Develop program goals and objectives

• Identify institutional and jurisdictional challenges.

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Executive Summary
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

Program Development

• Obtain buy-in from stakeholders

• Develop performance measures for objectives

• Develop incident management program strategy and plan.

Program Maintenance and Sustainability

• Solidify relationships with stakeholders

• Evaluate performance against every objective

• Modify implementation strategy and plan based on evaluation

• Leverage public support.

The organizations typically involved in incident management are:

• Transportation agencies

• Law enforcement agencies

• Fire and rescue agencies (including emergency medical services)

• Hazardous materials (HAZMAT) cleanup services

• Towing and recovery companies

• Public and private traveler information providers

• Other public and private entities on an as-needed basis.

This document also provides a series of lessons learned from traffic incident

management programs around the country. Finally, the document discusses the

importance of program monitoring, evaluation and reporting, as well as the

need for strategic planning throughout the process.

The intended audience for this document is mid- and upper-level managers in

police, fire and emergency medical service departments, as well as transit and

transportation agencies.

es-3

Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

It has been estimated that 57 percent of the nation’s traffic congestion is due to

crashes and other incidents, amounting to 2.45 billion vehicle-hours of delay in

1997 in the 68 areas studied by the Texas Transportation Institute for their 1999

Urban Mobility Report. Between 10 and 20 percent of incidents are caused by

other, pre-existing incidents.1 In 1995, 10,200 police cars, 1,800 fire vehicles,

and 2,900 ambulances were themselves involved in motor vehicle crashes.2

With this type of impact on the health and well being of the nation and its

citizens, a mandate exists in many areas to mitigate, to the extent possible, the

impact of incidents on American roadways.

Organized traffic incident management is the primary tool in mitigating the

impact. Traffic incident management involves multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional

responses to traffic disruptions that result in congestion. Efficient management

and coordination of these responses is essential to reducing the negative impact

of incidents on safety and traffic flow, but coordinating the different agencies

and jurisdictions can be challenging, given their diverse institutional functions

and individual agency goals.

The results of effective incident management activity can be impressive:

• On the Gowanus/Prospect Expressway in Brooklyn, NY, the average time to

clear all types of incidents was reduced 66 percent, from 1 1/2 hours to 31

minutes.

• Philadelphia’s Traffic and Incident Management System (TIMS) has decreased

freeway incidents by 40 percent, and reduced freeway closure time by 55

percent.

• San Antonio’s TransGuide traffic management program reduced crashes by 35

percent, and secondary crashes by 30 percent on its urban freeways.

• Maryland reports a benefit/cost ratio of 5.6:1 for its Chesapeake Highway

Advisories Routing Traffic incident management program, with a savings of 2

million vehicle-hours of delay per year from incident-related congestion.

• In Atlanta, the maximum time from incident verification to lane clearance was

cut from 6 1/4 hours to 1 1/2 hours, resulting in an estimated decrease of 2

million vehicle-hours of delay per year.3

Although safety benefits of incident management are of equal importance, data

on these are not readily available. These benefits would accrue from lower

exposure risk and shorter periods of exposure for incident responders and

incident victims, and fewer injuries to motorists resulting from the reduced

number and severity of secondary incidents.

Part 1: Introduction

1-1

1 Strategic Plan for IVHS in the United States, ITS America, 1992

2 Speech by Deputy Secretary of Transportation Mortimer Downey, April 19, 1999

3 Intelligent Transportation Systems Benefits: 1999 Update, Mitretek for USDOT, 1999
Introduction

Typically, traffic incident management activity is underway in large- and

medium-sized urban areas with significant traffic congestion problems. In order

to be successful, incident management requires support from multiple

organizations in the region that have a stake in responding to traffic incidents.

Key to the success is a high level of interagency coordination, particularly among

the state and local departments of transportation (DOT), state and local law

enforcement agencies, fire departments, towing and recovery companies,

HAZMAT cleanup companies, and other organizations that own, operate, report

on, or are involved with transportation infrastructure. These include transit

agencies, the media, local environmental protection agencies, insurance

companies, and national agencies such as the National Transportation Safety

Board or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

Incident Management is not the core purpose of any response agency. Incident

management coordination is usually initiated by individual agency champions

who decide that agencies can do the job of incident clearance more effectively

by working together more closely. Sometimes it is only one dynamic person

who holds the effort together by force of personality, people skills, and

aggressive decision-making which gains the respect of other players. The

individual agency resources needed are provided to the extent that the mid-level

managers can command them, but since incident management is not a core

function of an agency, these resources are subject to being redirected, especially

if the agency champion leaves.

Today’s best incident programs have developed from small beginnings under

the leadership of self-styled champions (from one or two agencies) who have

rallied the support of their peers in partner agencies. These programs faced

considerable difficulties in the beginning and consolidated their position later

when the benefits to the community became clear.

Despite their success, incident management efforts are vulnerable to decline or

demise for a number of reasons:

• Incident management is not viewed by most of the participating agencies as

their primary role.

• Incident management requires involvement and commitment from multiple

levels and departments within many of the participating agencies, adding to

the challenge of building unified support due to the diversity of goals and

personalities involved.

• The retirement of the original champions has left a number of incident

management efforts without strong leaders capable of garnering sufficient

fiscal and staffing resources.

• Most incident management efforts do not justify their existence with welldocumented evaluations, leaving them vulnerable to budget cuts.

• Most incident management activity depends heavily on the operations and

maintenance budgets of their state DOTs and may need to draw upon capital

budgets of participating law enforcement and emergency services agencies.

1-2
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

In many locations, this funding must be re-approved annually and is not

guaranteed.

• Since the senior executive leadership of many of the participating agencies is

not always aware of the incident management effort’s focus and needs, the

effort may suffer budget cuts when money is tight.

Creating and maintaining effective, trust-based working relationships among the

multitude of individuals and organizations involved in traffic incident

management can be challenging. Equally challenging is the process of justifying

both initial and ongoing investments in resources to support traffic incident

management.

Traffic incident management is commonly classified as a category within the

larger incident management arena. The effective multi-agency and multidisciplinary management of traffic incidents is the focus of this report. It is

recognized that the term ‘incident management’ has also been used to describe

nationally-recognized protocol for on-site command and control procedures

synonymous with ‘incident command’. For the remainder of the document,

references to incident management are intended to pertain to collective and

cooperative practices used to effectively manage traffic incidents.

Objective

The objective of this implementation guide is to provide a robust framework for

agencies to use to organize and conduct current and future incident

management efforts, and to evolve these efforts into formal long-term sustained

programs. Such a framework will help programs to grow in a structured

manner, thus fostering sustainability and enhancing program performance and

efficiency. The framework is not intended to imply that program evolution is

necessarily a smooth progression with clear delineations from one step to the

next, but rather to provide a list of activities which have been found to be

important to successful transition from a cooperative effort to a sustainable

program, and to provide a sense of the order in which such transition normally

occurs. The framework is focused on the needs of mid-level managers and

supervisors who often originate, have been tasked to implement, or are fostering

continued operation and improvement of existing incident management efforts.

Methodology

While no single approach can be prescribed for all incident management efforts,

a flexible framework based on experiences from successful incident management

programs in the United States can be considered a highly effective approach to

building a successful program. Thus, this guide will provide a multi-phase

framework to organize and sustain successful incident management programs.

This guide will also provide experiences based on actual cases from some of the

most successful programs. It begins by introducing incident management and

by describing why agencies involved in transportation should be interested in

1-3
1-4

incident management, as well as what they may reasonably expect as the

benefits of effective incident management. This guide then describes an overall

plan for implementing and operating regional incident management, and gives

details of each step in the plan, within the context of the institutional

framework. The guide also provides both lessons learned and examples from

several nationally recognized incident management programs. Following the

document’s conclusion, the reader will find appendices containing more detail

on several aspects of the process described earlier, and a list of relevant reference

documents.

This implementation guide is based on face-to-face interviews with incident

management leaders in Atlanta, Houston, Maryland, Seattle, Milwaukee,

Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, and San Antonio. Information was

also gathered through an extensive review of literature about and from incident

management efforts nationwide. This information was then combined with

business management best practices to develop this guide. All efforts were

coordinated through and reviewed by Mr. David Helman of the Federal Highway

Administration Office of Travel Management and Dr. Joseph Peters of the ITS

Joint Program Office, without whose assistance and guidance the document

could not have been prepared.

Introduction
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

For the purpose of this guide, traffic incident management is defined as:

Traffic incident management involves the systematic use of human and

mechanical processes for:

• Quickly detecting, verifying, and clearing temporary obstructions on roadways

in a specific operational area

• Providing information about such obstructions to the traveling public

• Restoring normal traffic flow as efficiently and safely as possible

• Providing multi-agency, multi-disciplinary frameworks for planning,

conducting and evaluating special events that significantly impact the

transportation system.

Effective incident management encompasses six basic elements or steps, often

overlapping, as illustrated.

An operational strategy for a transportation network that involves a

coordinated and planned inter-jurisdictional, cross-functional,

multidisciplinary, and ongoing approach to restore traffic to normal

conditions after an incident occurs, and to minimize the delay caused by

the resulting disruption to traffic flow.

Part 2: Incident Management Overview

2-1

Figure 1: Timeline of Elements in the Incident Management Process

PHASES IN INCIDENT MANAGEMENT

Incident Verification

Incident Response

Incident Clearance

Recovery

Traffic Management/Motorist Information 

Incident Detection

Incident Site Management

Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

Incidents on the road network can have a significant impact on the lives of

citizens and on the economic health of communities. Effective management of

traffic incidents can help to mitigate their impact.

Problems Addressed by Incident Management

Two important ways that effective management of traffic incidents can mitigate

the incident impact are:

• By promoting rapid, well organized and coordinated clearance of incidents,

thus improving safety of responders, victims, and the motoring public

• By reducing the impact of the incident on regional travel and travelers.

The incident scene is a complex and dangerous environment. It exposes both

victims and responders to any combination of moving traffic, hazardous

materials, fire and electrical hazards, damaged vehicles and debris, and stressful

weather conditions. Any safe and coordinated actions that can be taken to

reduce the length of exposure and safely control the scene have a direct benefit.

Coordinated incident management—where organizations work together to

accomplish their respective duties as quickly as possible—and where each takes

measures that facilitate (or at least do not impede) the actions of other

responders—is a major step beyond each agency simply performing its duties

without close coordination with the other participants. Actions that reduce the

traffic hazard, such as properly established lane closures and diversions and

provision of traveler information, also decrease the latent traffic demand. The

number of secondary incidents which then also require attention from

responders is effectively reduced.

Congestion resulting from traffic crashes and other incidents, or non-recurrent

congestion, is one of the most significant elements in most metropolitan areas’

congestion problem. The occurrence of an incident in a transportation system

disrupts traffic flow and temporarily reduces roadway capacity. Incidents

intensify the impact of recurrent congestion during peak periods, sometimes

even as a result of incidents that occurred during off-peak periods.

The effects of an incident on a facility’s normal traffic flow are illustrated in

Figure 2. When an incident occurs, highway capacity is reduced and traffic

queues begin to build. The vehicle hours of delay accrued by motorists in the

queue are represented by the shaded area between the normal flow rate and the

incident flow rate—the difference between traffic demand and available road

capacity at the incident location. If traffic demand going toward the incident

site is reduced by diverting traffic to alternate routes, the delay will be

minimized (dark gray area, noted as Cumulative Delay with Demand Reduction).

However, if traffic is not diverted, additional delay will accrue (shaded area).

Upon incident clearance, traffic will clear through the incident site until the

queue is dissipated. Nevertheless, the getaway traffic flow will be limited by the

maximum capacity of the highway.

Part 3: The Case for Incident Management

3-1
Incident management helps relieve congestion by reducing the impact of

incidents on traffic in two ways: by reducing incident detection, response, and

clearance times; and by disseminating information that advises drivers to use

alternate routes, thus shortening the queue.

The Case for Incident Management

3-2

Incident Duration Recovery

Capacity Flow

Normal Demand Flow

Traffic Volume

Time (Hours)

DetectionResponse

Getaway Flow

Incident Flow

Clearance Recovery

Cumulative Delay with

Demand Reduction

Additional Delay

without Demand

Reduction

θ

Figure 2: Effect of Demand Reduction in Delays Caused by Incidents

(Incident Management: “Challenges, Strategies, and Solutions for Advancing Safety and Roadway

Efficiency” Final Technical Report. ATA Foundation and Cambridge Systematics, 1997)

What Incident Management Can Accomplish

The overall goals of incident management are to minimize the impact of

incidents and reduce the probability of secondary incidents. Five measurable

objectives of incident management are:

• Reducing the time for incident detection and verification

• Reducing response time (the time for response personnel and equipment to

arrive at the scene)

• Exercising proper and safe on-scene management of personnel and

equipment, while keeping as many lanes open to traffic as possible

• Reducing clearance time (the time required for the incident to be removed

from the roadway)

• Providing timely, accurate information to the public that enables them

to make informed choices, such as revising travel plans and using

alternate routes.

When achieved, these combined objectives reduce the overall delay incurred by

travelers using the road network and improve the overall safety of both incident

victims and responders. At a societal level, this translates into gains in economic

productivity, reduced fuel consumption and air pollution, and increased on-time

delivery of goods and services to businesses and consumers.
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

4-1

Part 4: An Institutional Framework for Incident

Management

Who Is Involved and How?

Coordinating and managing responses to an incident by multiple agencies and

jurisdictions requires a complex array of interagency relationships, and

relationships between key incident management personnel at those agencies.

These relationships form the basis for the institutional framework of an incident

management program, and in most cases must exist before a formal framework

can be undertaken.

The organizations that are typically involved with most incidents are:

• Law Enforcement Agencies—These include state, county, and city police

departments responsible for public safety and enforcement, who respond to

traffic incidents on the interstate system, state roads, and city streets. Law

enforcement agencies are often the first to receive notice of an incident (as

receiver of 911 calls) or the first to detect incidents because of their role in

traffic patrol and traffic law enforcement. They are typically in command at

the incident scene, may execute traffic control measures at the scene, request

additional services, and lead crash investigations when the incident results in

personal injuries, fatalities, or significant property damage.

• Fire and Rescue Agencies—These agencies include county, city, volunteer,

and private fire and rescue organizations. They respond to incidents involving

fire, hazardous materials, medical emergencies, life support, or rescue, and

thus play an important role on incident management teams. Though fire and

rescue agencies respond to fewer than 15 percent of all incidents occurring on

freeways4, their support during incident response and clearance is critical for

the efficient movement of traffic at a scene. Due to the organizational

structure of fire companies, and their primary focus on public safety and the

safety of incident responders, coordinating operations with fire departments

can present challenges. The best incident management efforts have a high

level of coordination with their fire and rescue departments through involved

planning and education of each other’s staff. This has led to an appreciation

that more rapid and coordinated incident response cuts response operation

time, and therefore reduces the period during which response personnel and

crash victims are exposed to the hazards presented by adjacent traffic.

• Transportation Agencies—These include departments of transportation and

other agencies that operate and maintain the road network in the region,

including state DOTs, city and county public works departments, and others.

These agencies generally provide traffic management support, incident

information dissemination to other impacted organizations, equipment and

4 Incident Management: Challenges, Strategies, and Solutions for Advancing Safety and

Roadway Efficiency” Final Technical Report. ATA Foundation and Cambridge

Systematics, 1997
4-2

personnel for incident clearance, special signing, activation of detours,

containment of minor hazardous materials spills, debris removal, and related

activities.

• Hazardous Materials Cleanup Services—These services are generally provided

by private companies, although for small situations, other responding agencies

such as DOT Maintenance or the service patrol may perform cleanup. While

fire departments often have HAZMAT containment capability, they usually rely

on private companies under contract for HAZMAT cleanup. Highly unusual

payloads may require specialized assistance, as was the case in 1999 with an

overturned gunpowder truck at a major interchange on the Washington, D.C.

highway network. Significant spills may involve not only the HAZMAT service,

but also related environmental protection authorities.

• Towing and Recovery Companies—These are private companies that provide

towing and recovery services for highway incidents. They are often under

contract to one of the agencies involved in incident management, may

independently patrol the roadways, or may have been contacted by the

motorist. Special recovery resources, such as heavy lift or rotator vehicles, are

usually privately contracted for by an involved agency.

• Public and Private Traveler Information Providers—These include public

agencies and private companies such as information service providers (ISP) that

collect, process, and disseminate traffic and transport-related information to

benefit travelers. Common methods to disseminate information are television,

radio, the Internet, highway advisory radio, and variable message signs.

• Transit Agencies—These include bus, subway, and commuter rail companies,

both public and private. Buses are frequently affected by traffic delays resulting

from incidents. Transit can also reduce congestion caused by long-duration

incidents by providing a transportation alternative. Information must be

passed on to transit agencies in order for them to make proper operational

decisions in response to an incident, and to ISPs so that information is provided

to the public on availability of transit alternatives. Transit buses, by their

constant presence on the road network, can also serve as “traffic probes”,

reporting back information about potential and actual problems much earlier

than it would otherwise reach the Transportation Management Center (TMC).

The magnitude or nature of an incident may require other organizations to

respond to or participate in incident management on an as-needed basis.

In working with incident management partners, it is important first to recognize

and then work through differences in organizational culture.

• Some organizations operate around-the-clock, and are response-oriented,

while others are not.

• Police officers are trained to act autonomously, assume command, and make

unilateral decisions, whereas fire and rescue personnel act in teams.

• Private sector organizations like towing companies are profit-driven and

therefore very mindful of the amount of time they are involved and the

resources they apply.

An Institutional Framework for Incident Management
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

• Media often view an incident primarily for its relative newsworthiness, and

may not give adequate consideration to additional information from which

travelers could benefit.

The impact of major traffic incidents transcends political, jurisdictional, and

geographical boundaries, and may affect entire regional road networks and

hundreds of thousands of travelers. For those reasons, it is important to

coordinate response regionally rather than just locally. Often, agencies across

jurisdictions can share information about how to address specific incident

management situations, allowing agencies to benefit from the experience of

outside partner organizations.

Such coordination must take place at more than one organizational level. The

traditional relationships for managing incidents have been at supervisory and

working levels, often on an informal basis, and between the middle managers

sponsoring the incident management coordination. To achieve true success in

institutionalizing incident management programs, the highest organizational

levels must also be involved and formally committed to the incident

management program. Formation of a senior executive level steering

committee to set direction for and oversee the work of other incident

management related committees and staff is a direct way in which to focus

efforts and increase the likelihood of a sustainable program. Maryland and

Milwaukee have both made some progress in this area by instituting steering

committees to lead their respective incident management programs, although

neither steering committee has an extensive presence from the most senior

agency levels.

Endorsement and involvement at senior executive levels facilitates the filtering of

incident management issues and concerns throughout each of the involved

agencies. Thus, incident management considerations are reflected in policy

discussions, staffing profiles, and budget preparation. Interagency cooperation

extends beyond simple coordination to the level of each agency supporting the

relevant budget line item applications of other participating agencies and of

agencies identifying cooperative funding and budget opportunities such as

application for special grants.

Undertaking incident management from a regional perspective is also key to

creating a sustainable incident management program. This is particularly true in

planning. Using a regional approach for incident management planning offers a

number of opportunities by:

• Providing a predictable and consistently administered mechanism for bringing

stakeholders together to address transportation operations and management

issues of mutual concern, through the use of

— A formal interorganizational structure

— Regular, structured functions and meetings

• Promoting greater consideration of systems management and operations as

part of a region’s overall approach to meeting transportation needs

4-3
• Allowing agencies to coordinate efforts and technologies such that future

projects will be compatible, resulting in cost savings and easier integration of

systems over time

• Facilitating agreement among agencies on future operational strategies and

information exchanges to be pursued

• Providing an opportunity to coordinate long-term implementation of incident

management programs and establish general strategies and priorities.

The coordination of this complex web of relationships requires that the

functions, cultures, and objectives of each agency are well understood by all

agencies involved, and that trust exists between the agencies and the individuals

involved. Efficient coordination, shared objectives, and mutual understanding

are key to minimizing conflicts and maximizing incident management

performance.

Who’s the Boss?: A Hypothetical Scenario at an Incident Scene

On a rainy evening during rush hour in Capital City, a tractor trailer carrying 40 tons of

hazardous material goes over an embankment, landing on its side to the right of the

roadway. The regional 911 center receives hundreds of calls from passing motorists

with cellular phones. The local state patrol dispatch center, fire department, and

HAZMAT center are contacted, and vehicles are dispatched to the scene. Based on the

likelihood of a significant traffic problem, information on the suspected incident is also

shared with the regional TMC. The TMC investigates with its closed circuit TV (CCTV),

and directs a patrolling DOT safety service vehicle to the scene.

Upon arrival at the scene, the police officer begins diverting traffic away from the scene.

The DOT service patrol officer sets up cones and flares, and activates the variable

message sign on his truck to assist the officer in directing traffic.

The fire chief and engine arrive and park their vehicles across two additional lanes of

the freeway in the interest of protecting the responders and travelers. Traffic grinds to

a halt. Although the personnel at the scene can’t see it, two fender benders occur in

the rapidly forming queue of traffic, compounding the problem.

The police officer and fire chief engage in an extended discussion over how to manage

the incident. The police officer, while concerned about public safety, has had more

exposure to traffic control and recognizes the need to quickly and efficiently restore

traffic conditions to avoid secondary crashes. The fire chief’s highest priority is the

safety of the crew at the scene and the parties injured in the crash and has yet to be

convinced that adequate safety can be achieved through effective traffic control without

establishing large safety zones.

Because of the difference in experiences between the responding agencies and lack of a

common understanding of and approach to working together in such situations, the

officer and fire chief are forced to work out their differences on site, delaying incident

clearance, and further straining the relationships between the organizations.

Had the organizations established regular communications, developed coordinated

procedures, participated in joint training activities, and built trust in their desires to

achieve each agency’s goals, this scenario might have been avoided.

An Institutional Framework for Incident Management

4-4
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

Part 5: Implementing an Incident Management

Program

Effective incident management requires a systematic and integrated approach

that transcends jurisdictional boundaries. Therefore, the development of an

incident management program must include a regional perspective that allows

for the coordination of all its stakeholders and the crossing of jurisdictional

boundaries. Such interagency coordination is not easily achieved. The primary

barriers to developing regional incident management programs are institutional

issues that must be overcome if an effective program is to be developed,

implemented, and sustained.

This section provides an overview of the challenges to implementing a regional

incident management program.

Following an Organized Institutional Framework

Most incident management programs have grown under the leadership of one

or more partner agencies that typically invest a disproportionately high level of

resources in incident management, particularly during the early stages. Without

a predefined structure and organization, this approach can lead to differing

expectations among the partners and result in strained relationships that take

years to mend.

Formalized incident management programs are a logical next step from the

everyday performance of incident-related duties by the agencies and personnel

involved in managing incidents. Relationships are created, trust and

understanding begin to grow, and processes begin to be refined. Often the

value of formalizing the program is first recognized and promoted by middle

management at the participating agencies and organizations. The task facing

these managers is to raise the commitment to incident management to senior

agency levels, and to build interagency links at these levels. Once senior

participation begins, a strategy will be created which provides guidance and

direction to the program, and which supports long term commitment of

resources, and incorporation of incident management influence into every

relevant policy or program decision.

Following an organized approach to formalizing the incident management

program ensures clear expectations among the partners, resulting in increased

cooperation and effectiveness. Such an approach includes clearly defining each

agency’s role and explaining how the agencies can most effectively work

together. Following this approach, combined with tactics such as joint training

exercises, after-action analyses, and regular and effective communication, will

lead to increased trust and respect among partner agencies.

Due to the involvement of numerous agencies and jurisdictions, organizing an

incident management program should follow a phased approach. The threephased approach presented below can help provide the partners with sufficient

structure to organize the numerous activities involved while allowing adequate

5-1
5-2

flexibility to accommodate their unique situations. Activities are grouped into

three phases, focusing on concept development, program development, and

program maintenance and sustainability.

This framework is not intended to imply that programs can only be developed in

an orderly, stepwise fashion with clearly defined points of demarcation between

each stage. The more common model is one where incident management

evolves, at varying rates, from initial, informal efforts driven by each agency’s

activities, roles, and responsibilities, to a formalized, documented, rehearsed,

and clearly understood process which continues to improve as opportunities are

identified and can be implemented. Often the progression to a formal program

will encounter setbacks, and will have to repeat a step or will have to skip to a

step further down the process in order to satisfy agency schedules or political

demands. This will require continued focus on the primary goals and objectives,

and flexibility to sustain the incident management activity even when the

degree of progress toward formalization is discouraging.

The following framework is provided to assist incident management efforts in

their progression, by identifying critical elements in evolution and providing

some insight into possible approaches and issues.

Phase I: Program Concept

Developing a Program Concept document is the first step in incident

management program formalization. The document focuses on the basic

foundations of the incident management program. The document describes,

based on current incident management activity, the idea of a formal incident

management program. The document then justifies the need for and the

benefits to be derived from having a formal incident management program. It

is not enough to say that just because other places have successful incident

management programs that a this area needs one as well. As with any program,

the regional incident management program must be tailored to the needs,

resources, capabilities, and priorities of the region and the participating

organizations. The program will reflect the technical and institutional realities of

the region’s transportation network, authorities, and travel conditions.

The concept phase must be completed in a relatively short period. It is critical

to get the program formalization started while the momentum of the partners is

still high, and to keep the process moving forward with recognizable results.

Spending too much time in defining the program concept could lead to

withering of support, especially from senior managers of the partner agencies.

The typical steps in the Program Concept phase are:

• Describe the current state of incident management efforts

• Describe and justify formalizing incident management

• Identify the full range of stakeholders who should be involved

• Develop program goals and objectives

• Identify institutional and jurisdictional challenges.

Implementing an Incident Management Program
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

5-3

Figure 3: A Framework for Organizing and Sustaining

 Incident Management Programs

PHASE I

PROGRAM CONCEPT

Describe and Justify Formalizing

Incident Management

Identify the Full Range of

 Stakeholders Who Should

 Be Involved

Develop Program Goals

and Objectives

Identify Institutional and

Jurisdictional Challenges

• Conduct Study of

Problems/Needs

Workshop with Stakeholders

Facilitated Sessions to identify

Program Goals/Objectives

Discuss Issues Openly

•

•

•

METHODS

PHASE II

PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT

METHODS

Obtain Buy-in from Stakeholders

Develop Performance

 Measures for Objectives

Develop an Incident Management

 Program Strategy and Plan

Implement the Plan

• Meetings with Stakeholders

Select measures based on best

practices followed and local needs

Strategy development led by

Steering Committee

Implementation led by Program

Operations Committee

•

•

•

PHASE III

PROGRAM MAINTENANCE &

SUSTAINABILITY

METHODS

• Conduct Periodic Program

Retreats

Retain outside evaluator to

assess program performance

Swiftly implement

recommendations from

evaluation reports

Conduct Public Awareness

Campaign

•

•

•

Solidify Relationships with

Stakeholders

Evaluate Performance against

every Objective

Modify Strategy and Plan based

on Evaluation

Leverage Public Support

Use the Transportation Planning

 Process to Secure Funding in

the Long Term

Describe the Current

State of Incident

Management Efforts
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Describe The Current State Of Incident Management Efforts

The foundation of a formal incident management program is almost always the

incident management activity already underway. Each agency or organization is

typically carrying out its own idea of what its role is in dealing with incidents.

Often, there is little formal coordination of these efforts between the agencies.

At best, such existing coordination is based on relationships between

responders, and between middle management in each of the responding

agencies/organizations. Often such coordination was sparked by an unusual

need, such as hosting a major sporting tournament, or by an embarrassing

event which created temporary traffic havoc or which inconvenienced an

influential person.

Within each agency incident management resources would typically be drawn

from other, higher level line items, and thus would not clearly visible in the

budgeting process. It would be unusual to find an identifiable budget line item

for incident management. Similarly, there are seldom staff within each agency

dedicated to formal incident management efforts. More commonly, there may

be a person or two whose primary duties are to better coordinate response to

traffic incidents with other agencies through organizing training and awareness,

and by enabling some technical improvements to facilitate communication.

The objective of this step is to document what is already being done, so that the

full scope of incident management can be understood, and so that the

importance to each agency of sustaining incident management is clearly visible

at the executive level. This step also highlights how many different aspects of

each agency’s operation are impacted by or can/should be involved in incident

management.

Describe and Justify Formalizing Incident Management

At some point, one or more of the participants, often at the middle

management level, realize that formalizing the effort into full program status will

assist in many ways in improving and sustaining it. The next step is to create a

vision of how the formalized incident management program may work, and to

justify having a formal program.

There are two aspects to this next step: demonstrating the need for sustained

incident management, and understanding the benefits that can be derived from

formalizing incident management into program status. Since incident

management addresses mitigation of non-recurrent congestion and the hazards

of dealing with incidents, it is necessary to document the significance of nonrecurrent congestion and incidents in order to justify formalizing the program.

Potential sources of information include both state and local departments of

transportation, the metropolitan planning organization (MPO), and state and

local law enforcement agencies. Such impacts can often be quantified in terms

of lost work days and general negative impact on productivity, property

damage, air quality damage, and wasted fuel. Documenting the impact is best

accomplished by conducting a short study. The impact of incident management

activity elsewhere in areas comparable to the one under consideration can be

Implementing an Incident Management Program
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

5-5

used to predict the results. For example, in planning for a small/medium urban

area with large rural environs, don’t solicit results from a large metropolitan

area. Such predictions should also be based on program implementation rates

similar to that desired, i.e., gradual rollout or rapid implementation and

expansion.

While it is important to make an effective case, it is also important not to oversell

the potential benefits. Failure to achieve expected benefits will often lead to

questions about the program’s necessity, which will be difficult to answer

satisfactorily.

The second aspect is to understand how a formal program is superior to an

informal incident management effort. The most important reason is that a

formal program is likely to survive and continue to operate under conditions

(such as loss of a key champion, funding, or other resources) where an informal

effort may disappear. In a similar sense, a formal program is able to justify the

resources needed to expand, either functionally or geographically, or to respond

to special circumstances such as a major multiyear roadway reconstruction

effort. The effectiveness of incident management is also enhanced by

formalization. In particular, once a program is endorsed by senior agency

executives as a major initiative within and across agencies, its influence can be

exercised as policies and programs are considered from which it can benefit.

Thus, it becomes a component of every activity within an agency, and not just a

special effort which must stand on its own.

It is also important to understand to whom the program should be justified, and

what factors and issues are important to these key decision makers. The most

important decision makers are those whose organizations would be the primary

participants, who have relevant responsibilities, and who have funding or other

resources available. It will, however, be necessary to justify the program at more

than one level of an agency or organization, depending on the commitment or

support which will be required. The justification must also speak to each

organization’s and each level’s most important goals and concerns. It may be

useful to produce a series of documents targeted at different audiences to justify

the program. Key stakeholders, in turn, can use these documents to generate

additional support within their organizations. The multilevel structure of

USDOT’s information and assistance program series on incident management

may serve as a model:

• Tri-fold brochures with peer comments and benefits emphasis targeted at

senior agency executives, and potentially to elected officials:

Improved Mobility, Saving Lives—Safety Service Patrols, EDL# 6872

Safer Travel, Improved Economic Productivity—Incident Management Systems,

EDL# 6868

Sharing Resources, Coordinating Response—Deploying and Operating Incident

Management Systems, EDL# 6869
5-6

Implementing an Incident Management Program

• A 26-page “cross-cutting” study of benefits, lessons learned, and successful

practices:

Incident Management Successful Practices—A Cross-Cutting Study, EDL# 11484

• This document, a 50-page implementation guide with step-by-step

instructions and detailed appendices for some topics targeted at

implementing managers:

Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs Implementation Guide,

EDL# 13149

• A 175-page handbook of practices and procedures targeted at day-to-day

supervisors—an update to the 1991 document The Freeway Incident

Management Handbook:

Traffic Incident Management Handbook, EDL# 13285

• 2-day course on implementing incident management, including binders of

course and reference material (National Highway Institute Course No. 13348)

• National Incident Management Coalition half-day workshops for elected

officials and senior agency executives

The documents listed above are available through the USDOT Electronic

Document Library (EDL) at http://www.its.dot.gov/welcome.htm. More

information about the National Highway Institute courses is available at

http://www.nhi.fhwa.dot.gov.
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

5-7

Maryland’s Incident Management Program Begins at the Beach

As in other vacationer corridors, Marylanders stream to the beach on summer

weekends. Maryland State Highway Administration (MdSHA) implemented a

multifaceted program of outreach, traveler information, traffic management,

roadway improvements, and incident management, titled “Reach the Beach”,

to assist motorists journeying to and from the shore. The program was both

successful and highly popular with Maryland citizens, and cast MdSHA in a very

positive light. Based on this experience, and recognizing the potential for such

a program in other areas of the state experiencing increasing traffic demand,

MdSHA created a program—Chesapeake Highway Advisories Routing Traffic

(CHART)—to provide incident management statewide. As a component of

CHART, Maryland became one of the first states to pass “push off” legislation

allowing state vehicles to move disabled or abandoned vehicles from active

lanes at incident scenes, and has equipped many MdSHA and Maryland State

Patrol vehicles with push-off bumpers. MdSHA also automatically dispatches a

front-end loader and a sand truck to any incident involving a truck. If first

responders see that this equipment is not needed, it is turned around enroute

and sent back. Experience, however, dictates that these pieces of equipment are

often needed for truck accidents and in the past were difficult to get to the

scene quickly. The acronym CHART has since been renamed to stand for

“Coordinated Highways Action Response Team” to reflect the expanded

statewide nature of the program.

Incident Management In Milwaukee Begins With MPO Support

The recommendations in a regional transportation plan developed in the mid1970s were carried forward into a preliminary detailed plan which was

completed in the mid-1980s. A joint study conducted by the regional planning

committee and Wisconsin DOT (WisDOT) included local law enforcement. The

result of the study process was consensus about having a central TMC,

areawide ramp meters with High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) preferential access,

and incident management and traveler information elements of traffic

management. The incident management recommendation included recognition

of the significant impact of any incident on typical flow conditions. The study

concluded that the regional incident management program needed to quickly

identify, confirm, and remove atypical conditions. Previously, incidents were

identified to law enforcement, but not confirmed until an officer was on the

scene, and no action to clear was taken until ordered by the officer on scene.

This study provided the foundation for the MONITOR system and the area’s

incident management program.
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Implementing an Incident Management Program

Identify the Full Range of Stakeholders Who Should Be Involved

Once the need for a formalized incident management program is understood

and the benefit is clearly expressed, other affected stakeholders have to be

identified. Up to this point, the program’s focus has been on the primary

participants at working and perhaps middle management levels. Numerous

additional agencies (and possibly private sector organizations) and jurisdictions

may play a role in responding to the full range of incidents in any urban area.

From this group, a core set of key officials at primary stakeholder agencies has to

be identified as the most active program partners. These core stakeholders will

be involved in guiding the program. A second group of stakeholders, who will

participate on an as-needed basis for special events and emergency response

planning, also has to be identified and appropriately involved. Also, within this

tier of stakeholders will be other departments within the primary stakeholder

agencies, who have lesser involvement in daily incident management activity,

but whose input and support will be critical to having a successful program.

The organizations listed for Milwaukee’s incident management program can

serve as a starting point. Since a regional approach is necessary to achieve the

greatest impact, it is appropriate to look at state and local levels for each

category, and to look across jurisdictions. It will be necessary to involve multiple

organizational levels within an agency. A primary objective is to build support

and gain participation at the highest levels, at which incident management may

currently have no visibility. This may also include key staff members of

executives, whose influence on the agency’s and therefore the program’s

direction can be considerable.

Stakeholders in the Milwaukee Traffic Incident Management Program

City of Brookfield, police and public works Medical College of Wisconsin

City of Greenfield fire, police, public works Northwestern University Traffic Institute

City of Milwaukee fire, police, public works, Wisconsin Towing Association

safety commission City of Glendale

Fond du Lac County sheriff City of Menomonee Falls police

Ozaukee County highway commissioner City of Wauwatosa fire and police

and Sheriff City of West Allis fire, police, public works

Walworth County highway commissioner Kenosha County public works and sheriff

and sheriff Racine County public works and sheriff

Waukesha County highway commissioner Washington County highway commissioner

and sheriff and sheriff

Southeast Wisconsin regional planning Illinois DOT and Toll Authority

commission Wisconsin DOT

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources USDOT/FHWA

AAA Wisconsin Interested consulting firms

Greater Milwaukee convention and Marquette University

visitors bureau Metro Networks

WTMJ Radio Wisconsin Motor Carriers Association
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

5-9

Develop Program Goals and Objectives

Defining goals and a set of objectives for the program is critical. At the present

time, few programs have documented goals and even fewer have documented

objectives. The absence of clearly defined goals and corresponding objectives

for the program can lead to difficulties in executing responsibilities during

critical periods. Specifically, this situation can lead to misunderstandings among

partners when they are faced with tough choices during budget cuts.

Goals and objectives must address needs. Therefore, those involved in

developing the program must understand the relevant needs and problems, and

how incident management can assist in resolving them. Such needs and

problems will come both from the participating agencies (i.e., the law

enforcement agency may be concerned about safety of officers at the incident

scene) and from the regional perspective and broader than any single agency

(i.e., there may be a general concern about the impact incident-related

congestion is having on the region’s economy).

The goals and objectives must be a coherent set representing those of the entire

program and not merely a collection of goals and objectives from all of the

stakeholders. Reconciling the differences between the partners and agreeing

upon a set of common goals and objectives is absolutely critical for the

program’s success.

There are also stakeholders who may be outside of the geographic area, such as

the Federal Highway Administration division office and resource center, but who

are interested and who can contribute in valuable ways. Similarly, it may be

appropriate to involve, or at least inform, the headquarters components of such

stakeholders as the state DOT or the state patrol even though they do not

participate directly in incident management. Since most budget and personnel

requests must be approved by these organizations, having their understanding

and buy-in at upper levels will be valuable. These units also strongly influence

statewide policy (such as on distribution of traveler information), which can

impact the conduct of regional incident management.

Incident management is not necessarily easily understood by many of the

stakeholders who have only peripheral involvement. Thus, it is critically

important to understand how to explain incident management and

communicate the importance effectively to these stakeholders. When working

with the stakeholders, one key element in achieving success is to understand

each stakeholder group’s priorities, perspectives, and expectations for the

incident management program. Often the overall organizational orientations

differ. For example, the DOT may be focused on transportation efficiency and

the state patrol on safety. The public and private sector motivations and

timeframes may prove to be substantially different. Each stakeholder group will

need to understand its role, how it will benefit, how its constituency will be

served, and how it will be aided in carrying out its mission. As discussed earlier,

perspectives may be different at different levels of a stakeholder organization, or

may differ between different departments within an organization. Each group

or level’s perspective should be considered, and each should receive appropriate

involvement and information.
5-10

In jointly developing the goals and objectives, it may be helpful to engage the

stakeholders in a workshop environment. Using this approach:

• Will ensure that inputs are received from all key stakeholders and are well

understood

• Will build a sense of ownership of the program

• May provide a forum in which preliminary issues can emerge and solutions

can be developed.

To keep the discussion directed and to improve the likelihood that the

workshop’s objectives will be achieved, it may be beneficial to employ a trained

facilitator who can organize the program, make arrangements for facilities and

resources, and be responsible for recording and distributing the interactions that

take place in the workshop.

As for any program, the goals and objectives should be clearly definable and

performance measures should be developed which correspond to them. Goals

and objectives should also be, to the extent possible, free of external influence,

and of a nature such that the impact of external influences can be separated so

that all benefits of the program are fully understood.

It is equally valuable to reflect the goals and objectives of the incident

management program in each agency’s higher level goals and objectives during

the agency’s periodic strategic planning process. The incident management

program goals and objectives should also be tightly integrated with those

expressed in the Regional Transportation Plan. Once in place, this linkage

between the incident management program and the agency’s and region’s

fundamental conceptual documents will support incorporation of incident

management into mainstream activity.

Implementing an Incident Management Program

Goals and Objectives of Milwaukee’s

Traffic Incident Management Program

Goal 1. Improve and enhance freeway incident management, reducing the time to

detect, verify, and clear traffic incidents

Goal 2. Improve freeway safety

Objective 2.1 Reduce the number of traffic crashes

Objective 2.2 Protect the emergency response personnel

Objective 2.3 Improve response to hazardous materials incidents

Objective 2.4 Reduce the response time of emergency medical services

Objective 2.5 Educate drivers to improve their reaction to traffic incidents

Goal 3. Enhance the quality and efficiency of freeway travel

Objective 3.1 Use existing freeway capacity to its fullest extent

Objective 3.1 Provide more information to travelers

Objective 3.2 Improve traffic management during traffic incidents

Objective 3.3 Reduce vehicle emissions and improve air quality
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

5-11

Identify Institutional and Jurisdictional Challenges

In the process of coming to agreement on goals and objectives for the program,

the institutional and jurisdictional differences emerge quickly. Identifying and

recognizing these challenges will go a long way towards shaping a stable

program. Organizing one or more workshops involving all stakeholders is a

technique that can assist in developing the program goals and objectives

quickly. It is best that these sessions be facilitated by individuals with no obvious

allegiance to any of the stakeholders. Typically this could be someone from the

federal government, the consulting community, or academia.

The following are examples of significant barriers that are identified when

discussing goals and objectives. These barriers need to be overcome, as do

issues that arise when implementing regional incident management programs.

• Commitment of Resources—The most serious institutional challenge

affecting program development is commitment of resources, which come

primarily from budgets approved by legislative bodies such as city councils,

county councils, and state legislatures. Each legislative body has a

corresponding chief executive (mayor, governor) who writes a budget for the

agencies under his or her authority. The key to making an incident

management program work is coordinating between agencies to assure that

critical resources are available for the participating agencies. In a program,

agencies support one another’s requests for incident management resources,

and assure that neither gaps nor overlaps exist.

• Jurisdictional Issues/Barriers—Jurisdictional issues surface when two or more

agencies/organizations must respond to an incident but where their respective

responsibilities are unclear, or if the immediate objectives of their field

personnel conflict. Jurisdictional problem areas include definition of site

responsibilities, field communications, legal ramifications, political sensitivity,

perspectives of each agency, and administrative coordination among agencies.

Jurisdictional barriers can require legislation, or may be overcome through

executive level review and discussion or by examining and adapting roles in

cross-jurisdictional situations.

• Resource Constraints—Sufficient resources (equipment, staff and funding)

typically are not allocated specifically to incident management programs,

which makes it difficult to sustain the programs over the long term. Most

often, this situation occurs when incident management is considered as a

lower tier priority of one or more participating organizations. The availability

and allocation of resources both within and among agencies play significant

roles in the selection and implementation of overall incident management

strategies. Although resources are almost always limited for every partner,

sharing of resources, alternate procurement approaches (leasing vs. buying),

realistic planning, funding participation by more partners, identification of

special funding, and privatization may offer relief from resource pressures.

• Operational Procedures—The multiple agencies who agree to allow their

personnel to cooperate with partner agencies (even outside their traditional

scope of operations) and to share equipment to respond to incidents need to

develop and follow specific procedures that facilitate an appropriate and
5-12

effective response to specific situations. Good communication among

agencies at both the managerial and field levels, knowledge of the national

Incident Command System used in natural disaster response, and

understanding of the legal ramifications of specific operational decisions are

key to optimizing operational procedures.

• Training Needs—In most cases, field personnel from one agency are not fully

aware of the objectives and duties of their counterparts in cooperating

agencies. Training of field personnel in their own incident management tasks

must be complemented by an understanding of the duties and abilities of

other agencies and the importance of cooperation among all agencies

involved. Such an understanding of each others’ duties and abilities, along

with repeated interaction in planning, implementation, and analysis of

incident responses, will build the trust necessary for rapid and wellcoordinated response. Formal training of its own personnel by each agency is

also an essential starting point. Joint training, simulations, and rehearsals can

be highly effective approaches to improving interagency coordination, as well

as after-action analyses.

• Administrative Issues—Administrative issues address the coordination and

cooperation of the different divisions within each agency at the administrative

level. Administrative problem areas include human resource management

and internal turf battles over funding, staffing, equipment, and operations.

Recruitment by multiple organizational units, identifying how each can

support incident management once it is identified as an agency-wide

initiative, involving less constrained third parties, and seeking win-win

opportunities can assist in overcoming these problems.

• Agency Commitment—Incident management programs need to get buy-in

from within the participating organizations themselves. This is true in

particular for the law enforcement, fire, rescue, and other similar agencies that

do not own the roadway infrastructure. These partners must be involved from

the beginning, at multiple organizational levels all the way to the top, must

understand their roles, and must have a clear vision of the reasons for the

program and how their organizations will benefit. Formalization of the

commitment—through memoranda of understanding, joint operating plans,

or jointly signed strategic plans—is an ideal demonstration of that

commitment. Participation of senior executives in an incident management

steering committee not only regularly raises the awareness of these executives

about incident management, but also provides each stakeholder with

meaningful input to the strategic direction and major tactical decisions

regarding how incident management is carried out.

• Over-reliance on Technology—Incident management programs are

increasingly becoming technology-oriented and, broadly speaking, there is a

push toward incorporating additional technology into operations. However,

incident management technology, like Intelligent Transportation Systems, is

nothing more than a tool for incident management personnel. Without the

correct training and application, it can be a costly investment that will serve

the needs of neither the public nor the service providers. Organizations must

recognize that technology by itself will not solve the institutional issues that

affect incident management.

Implementing an Incident Management Program
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

5-13

• Lack of Clear Leadership—A champion for incident management is often

required to coordinate and implement an interagency incident management

program. This person, or group of persons, rallies organizations, each with its

own missions and goals, around the incident management cause. Without a

champion, it is more difficult to build support and sustain the momentum

necessary to implement a program. The champion often serves as

spokesperson (to multiple audiences) for the program, and leads efforts to

build support and acquire or justify the resources that the program needs.

The champion may also be a visionary, defining the program and providing a

strategy and sense of direction for the program. The champion often provides

continuity for the program as individual participants arrive and depart. The

champion is also ideally a strong conduit for communication with agency

executives and key staff and support departments, as well as with incident

management leaders at other participating agencies.

Addressing institutional challenges is critical for the sustained success of any

regional incident management program. Incident management programs that

do not have a solid institutional foundation and which rely solely on the

leadership of a single champion, or on temporary synergies created by

interagency coordination for special events, may fall apart over the long term.

The critical factor for the long-term success and sustainability of an incident

management program is its institutionalization and multilevel commitment

across all agencies involved. Thus, the development and implementation of

strategies to overcome the institutional challenges previously mentioned is of

utmost importance when organizing incident management programs.

Phase II: Program Development

The program development phase involves activities that will result in a

comprehensive incident management program. The steps in Program

Development are:

• Obtain buy-in from stakeholders

• Develop performance measures for objectives

• Develop an incident management program strategy and plan

• Implement the plan.

Obtain Buy-in from Stakeholders

Once the stakeholders are identified in the concept phase, they must formalize

their commitment to the program. Many will already be participating in

incident management activity through performance of their respective duties.

Within these organizations, the appropriate key participants and decision makers

must be convinced that formalizing the program will have meaningful benefits,

and that it is consistent with their own best interests and those of their

organizations. This is most often accomplished on a peer-to-peer basis within

the agency or between the agencies, building on existing relationships,

understanding, and trust created while managing incidents.
5-14

The challenge of building buy-in is encountered both when dealing with other

agencies, and when dealing with other departments within one’s own agency/

organization. Ensuring involvement of and acceptance by other participating

units is equally critical, and requires the same identification of shared benefits

and common goals as with partner agencies/organizations.

The process of formalizing buy-in starts with identifying and agreeing upon a

basic set of program goals and objectives. As an incident management program

grows in scope, new partners join in and new responsibilities are added.

Obtaining stakeholders’ buy-in is an ongoing process.

The degree of success experienced in securing adequate funding is influenced by

the extent of buy-in by senior agency officials. Adequacy of funding is typically

less of an issue when there is strong support from senior organizational leaders

because the initiator of the program often can garner the resources necessary to

implement the program. In addition, a leader with enough power and respect

among his or her peers and subordinates can persuade parties that might

normally resist change, thus overcoming some of the risks inherent in program

startup.

Most often the realization of the need for institutionalizing incident management

and efforts toward it originate with middle management levels of participating

organizations. The easiest way to create support for new activities is to build on

such existing support and trust. This most often comes from building on

existing relationships. If, for example, the state DOT and the state patrol are

already working together on improving work zone safety or have partnered to

operate a service patrol, it would be much easier to build on these existing

organizational and personal relationships and trust to support the incident

management program, rather than to start with relationships that have no

existing foundation.

Once one or more relationships are in place, the program concept is viewed as

being more legitimate and realistic, and it is often easier to persuade less familiar

partners to join the effort, and more senior officials to provide their support.

Working through some of the fundamental issues using existing relationships

where communication is more frank and forthright may also expose some of the

more complex issues, and will allow preliminary approaches to be prepared or

initial hurdles to be overcome.

Support of mid-level management and supervision within the partner agencies is

an important component of building a high level of cohesion and morale at the

working levels of the partners. Some of these managers develop into champions

of the programs shortly after its commencement. Periodic meetings of

personnel who carry out daily incident and traffic management activity can be

equally beneficial, both in building understanding which leads to more effective

practices, and in building trust and cooperation. A program that does not have

the support of the supervisors and staff cannot live up to its full potential, even if

funding and equipment are available to do the work. This is especially true in

programs that are dependent on the good will of personnel from other agencies

or divisions to staff a transportation management center or manage incident

management efforts after hours.

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5-15

In order to obtain support from all levels and stakeholders, lines of

communication must be opened early in the process and increasing levels of

trust must be established. Care must be taken to ensure that none of the

stakeholders or their interests and contributions are taken for granted. It is

advisable to set up a system to recognize individuals and organizations for

obtaining stakeholder buy-in and fostering interagency cooperation.

Interagency working groups are one way to accomplish this objective. A

supplemental approach is to engage the stakeholders through extensive

outreach that demonstrates the benefits of implementing an efficient incident

management program to both the public at-large and the individual agencies

and organizational levels involved. While success cannot be guaranteed just

because all parties recognize the benefits of an incident management program,

the widespread support that arises from the combined approach can help

ensure that a program will be effective and sustainable in the long term.

Buy-in must occur across all levels of the partner organizations involved in the

program. An integrated approach involving both supervisory/management

levels and senior agency leadership is the best suited to obtain broad-based buyin at all levels of the stakeholder organizations. Often the senior officials are less

familiar with incident management, and may not be directly involved on a

continual basis, even on a steering committee. In such cases, it is important

that the participating individuals understand what is needed in order to

persuade their superiors, and be armed with the right resources in order to do

this successfully.

Develop Performance Measures for Objectives

Tracking progress of the program’s performance through evaluations is critical

to its long-term sustainability and continuous improvement. While technically

part of the third implementation phase, the consideration of measures actually

begins earlier when measures to track the program’s progress are defined. For

each objective developed in the concept phase, a set of measures should be

identified to track performance against the objective. These measures must be

jointly selected by all core stakeholders involved to ensure that the partners do

not interpret the objectives differently; that there is commitment to collecting,

analyzing, and acting upon the data; and that the chosen measures will assist all

partners in demonstrating to key internal decision makers the value of their

continued, active participation in the program.

The measures must have both local and national perspectives. They should

represent local needs in order to be relevant to the stakeholders. They should

also be consistent with successful practices from similar programs, thus avoiding

some of the mistakes made by other programs.

Some objectives are apparent and can be both directly measured and easily

related to positive benefits. Objectives such as reducing the number of

secondary incidents or decreasing average incident duration are examples of

these. Others will be more difficult to measure objectively and link to benefits

to the public.
5-16

There may be active objections to measuring performance against objectives.

While lack of measures makes it difficult to justify or improve performance, this

lack also makes it impossible to criticize declining performance. Further, there is

often concern about spending money on collection of data which “could be

better spent getting the job done”. This objection is often voiced when one

agency’s assistance is needed to collect data which supports not its own

information needs, but those of another agency.

For more detail on the process of developing performance measures, please refer

to Appendix A.

Develop an Incident Management Program Strategy and Plan

The development of a documented strategy and plan to develop the program is

the most critical and time-intensive step in this phase. In order to achieve the

far reaching task of creating a formal incident management program, it is

essential that the participants first understand and agree upon what they want

to achieve and how they will undertake this effort. It is far too easy to simply

continue incident management activity as it is currently being carried out,

considering the strategy development and planning efforts to be an

administrative exercise without merit. However, investing the effort to develop

the strategy can help in many ways. The strategy can:

• Define and provide a sense of the extent of the needs and problems that are

being addressed, and state what is presently being done to address them

• Outline a series of methods and approaches for formalizing the incident

management program

• Identify program functions and components, clarifying the full range of

stakeholders

• Outline an overall schedule, funding strategy, and leadership approach

• Provide a way of formally identifying and agreeing upon roles and

responsibilities of each partner

• Allow identification of needs and commitment of resources

• Provide a clear vision so that each partner can formulate realistic expectations

• Provide guidance on what actions are needed to move the program forward,

and a description of the destination toward which it is moving

• Identify risks that the program is likely to experience, and develop risk

mitigation approaches that can be put in place

• Provide context for the program, relative to the primary objectives of each

participant, and with respect to related types of activity

• Provide tools that can be shared with senior decision makers, participants, and

outside parties (such as the legislature) to understand the program’s purpose

and methods.

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The plan is a detailed blueprint for carrying out the strategy successfully and can

include the following components:

• Design plan for each incident management component (e.g., service patrols,

incident detection, etc.) with the partner agency or agencies that will develop

them

• Procurement plan and budget for each component with the appointment of

a specific partner as the procurement agency

• Program schedule with timelines and contingency measures

• Training program, with the need for specific training courses and related

material clearly identified

• Public relations plan and internal agency awareness strategies

• A list of early successes and small steps forward such as service patrols and

enhanced location reference marking

• Incorporation of incident management into the transportation planning process

— Tying incident management into the transportation plans’ primary goals

and objectives

— Incorporating incident management into both components of appropriate

budget elements and into stand-alone line items where appropriate

• Detailed budget for every component of the program with identified sources

for the amounts listed.

Developing a strategy and detailed plan involves support from all stakeholder

agencies/organizations and levels, and requires skills in various facets of incident

management, operations, cost estimating, management models, training, and

risk management. No one partner agency/organization is likely to have all these

skills and, even if these skills are available, their staff are often too busy to devote

the required levels of attention to developing a good plan. It is best if the

development of this strategy and plan is assigned to outside experts who work

closely with the stakeholders involved. A steering committee composed of

senior executives of the partner agencies could oversee the development of the

strategy. The strategy would benefit from their input, reflecting the perspectives

of the participants, and would have a high degree of commitment from senior

organizational leadership. The development of the plan could be overseen by a

program committee composed of mid-level and senior managers from the

stakeholder agencies.

Sharing “best practices” information from locations with established incident

management programs will be useful in developing a forward-looking strategy

that takes advantage of previous successes and failures. Touring a few of these

locations is useful for the program committee in order to make specific

recommendations for the plan.

The development of the strategy and plan consumes varying lengths of time,

depending on the size and scope of the program being developed. This plan

should be developed in phases so that the earlier phases can commence while
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the plan is being finalized. A period of about a half year, with some activity

commencing as early as three months, would be reasonable to complete the

strategy and plan. Any longer, and stakeholders run the risk of too much

planning and too little action, especially in the eyes of senior agency executives.

Maryland CHART Plans Provide Basis for Legislative Support

Early in the CHART program’s development, the MdSHA recognized the need for

both strategic and tactical guiding documents. These documents provided the

foundation for the CHART program, and served as an important tool for

communication with the state’s legislature. The plans are updated annually,

reflecting the program’s accomplishments and impact, its activities, and its

plans for the next several years.

The strategy and plan are not the only documents which will be required.

Incident management programs should be “mainstreamed” into the traditional

transportation planning process at an early stage. Properly integrating the

program’s budgetary and staffing needs into the transportation planning process

will constitute a major step toward a more secure funding position for

continuing operations, and towards the provision of access to the capital funds

necessary over time. This will also make it easier to identify the linkage between

overall highway operations and incident management, so actions necessitated

by changes in the transportation network are more easily identified and

accommodated.

Implement the Plan

The last activity in this phase is the implementation of the plan itself. This step

must be uniquely tailored to suit the needs, funds, and other constraints of the

program being developed, and to take advantage of activity already underway

and relationships and agreements that already exist between participating

organizations. These aspects should have been addressed during the plan

development. Often, transition to a full, formal program fails due to poor

planning or loss of funding. If the plan is developed to the satisfaction of the

stakeholders and their respective key senior executives, and the assumptions are

realistic, it is much more likely that the transition will be successful and on time.

It will be helpful to have an operations-oriented program committee

representing the key stakeholders lead the effort. This committee will be able to

closely monitor the program’s progress and results, and will be able to act

relatively quickly to redirect the efforts and keep the program on track.

Since multiple agencies will be involved in the procurement of systems,

personnel, and other aspects of the program, the partner agencies may find it

helpful to invest in program management services. If the incident management

program also involves numerous ITS installations and systems integration, the

need for a program manager becomes more critical as these components make

implementation prone to long delays and losses in functionality. Such a

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5-19

program manager should be able to provide both manpower and scarce

technical and management skills which can facilitate more rapid and smooth

program progression.

The length of time for transition to a formalized incident management program

could range anywhere from a few months to several years depending on the

scope and complexity of the program’s components. Generally, it is possible to

begin a functioning incident management effort with several basic features

within a half-year from the start of implementation.

Program growth and progression is an ongoing process in the sense that the plan

undergoes revisions. Goals and objectives (and therefore strategy) are reviewed

and revised, and new budgets are implemented annually. The program will

continue to evolve throughout its lifetime, reflecting new needs, participants,

technology, capabilities, political realities, and personalities. Once the program is

fully formalized, several tests can be applied to determine if it has progressed

from being primarily a series of activities occurring in parallel to being a fully

cohesive incident management program:

• Is the program ongoing and institutionalized?

• Is there a documented program plan? For more details on developing a

program plan, please refer to the Lessons Learned section.

• Is the program formalized, is it interjurisdictional, and does it have an

interorganizational structure?

• Is the program cross-functional and multidisciplinary, supporting all primary

partners as peers?

• Are there regular functions to facilitate communications and joint decision

making?

A list of documents on the operation of incident management programs is

presented in the References section of this document.

Phase III: Program Maintenance and Sustainability

Once an incident management program has begun, keeping it operating and

growing presents an additional set of challenges. Addressing these challenges

requires carrying forward the activities started during the Program Concept

phase. Continuing operation also requires an understanding of how well the

program is performing, and then modifying the direction which was initially

developed in order to ensure that the program most effectively provides the

benefits identified in the initial goals/objectives process.

The steps in Program Maintenance and Sustainability are:

• Solidify relationships with stakeholders

• Evaluate performance against every objective
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• Modify strategy and plan based on evaluation

• Leverage public support

• Use the transportation planning process to secure funding in the long term.

This third phase focuses on maintaining and sustaining the program. These

activities do not occur without deliberate effort, and are easily neglected when

the program’s leadership is heavily involved in day-to-day operations. Incident

management goals, objectives, and activities must be consistent with the overall

role of each agency since traffic incident management activities may be viewed

as being secondary to the overall goals of specific agencies. Without attention

and if not viewed as a critical component of the participating agencies’ missions,

the incident management effort can find itself in a very vulnerable position

when the annual funding cycle arrives, or when new resources are needed in

order to expand the mission or coverage area.

Incident management programs are highly dependent on operations funding

from their participating agencies. For traditionally construction-oriented

transportation departments and departments of public works, this form of

funding is often the most scarce. Historically, operations funding has had a

greater dependence on the state/local revenue base rather than the extensive

leverage received from federal matching funds. Public safety and emergency

services agencies face the reverse situation: their historical operations focus

means that their budgets are predominantly operations funding. Such agencies

may have significant difficulty in obtaining meaningful blocks of funding for

capital items, such as for interfaces between their radio systems and those of

partner agencies, to support the improved incident management program. In

most agencies, until incident management is viewed as a mainstream agency

activity area, it automatically has a lower priority for either new or continuing

funding.

A formal incident management program must address what can be done to

position itself to compete effectively for scarce funds from each partner

organization. Primary benefits of formalizing the program include providing

documentation of the need and the program’s vision for the legislative budgetmaking process, and raising the program’s visibility and stature to key

executives.

Program sustainability also refers to the program’s ability to weather a difficult

evolutionary path. Events such as loss of a program champion or a change in

administration can threaten the program’s existence, and therefore deserve

consideration in planning and preparation.

Solidify Relationships with Stakeholders

Relationships among stakeholders must never be taken for granted, even though

they might appear rock solid. Every possible effort must be made to

continuously strengthen these relationships even when it appears that things are

just fine. As with the earlier activity in building the relationships, it is important

Implementing an Incident Management Program
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5-21

to identify all appropriate departments and levels within the stakeholder

organizations, and to solidify relationships throughout the levels and

departments which are necessary to carry the incident management

program forward.

Solidifying the relationships will often combine two important elements:

constant and effective communication, and a message that will build continued

support. Constant and effective communication is often as simple as making

sure that stakeholders are informed of progress and successes, and are involved

in addressing issues and opportunities. Incident management programs,

particularly those that do not have major physical assets such as a transportation

management center, may be achieving very positive results, but with little

visibility. Thus, stakeholders may be unaware of the program’s activity until it is

highlighted in the media (unfortunately seldom in a positive light) or until the

annual budgetary cycle arrives. It is not beneficial to have stakeholders

questioning the value of the program, or their importance to it during such

times. Actively involving the stakeholders in the program, perhaps through

regular meetings and especially in program improvement activities such as

“after-action analyses,” will make them feel that they are an important part of a

valuable program, and that they can exert meaningful influence over its course.

Periodic updating of the incident management strategy is an excellent

opportunity to solicit input from senior executives, and to ask for their review

and approval of the program’s direction.

Even when the program has a name recognized separately from the stakeholder

agencies (such as Maryland’s CHART or Milwaukee’s Traffic Incident

Management Enhancement [TIME] program), it can be beneficial to recognize

the key participating entities. This is a particularly important component when

some portion of the program, such as the service patrol or the traveler

information program, is privatized. Continuing to show key agency and

organization logos on the visible assets builds public support and provides

recognition of the stakeholders’ important contributions.

As with the development of relationships, sustaining relationships may also call

for identifying ways that the partner organizations can support one another.

These are most commonly found in situations where agencies can assist one

another by jointly funding, procuring, or managing either staff or physical assets.

A situation where one partner agency funds the service patrol vehicles, but

another provides the personnel to dispatch and staff them or the fuel,

maintenance, and other resources to keep them operating, can be a powerful

component of the partnership in which each partner benefits from the resources

of the other(s).

Just as it was important while developing the goals and objectives, there may be

a benefit to periodically bringing stakeholders together in a retreat-type forum to

gather inputs, compare experiences, identify and address emerging issues, and

discuss performance to date and the direction in which the program is headed.
Evaluate Performance Against Every Objective

Tracking the program’s performance against each objective identified in the

concept phase is the only way to document changes in the overall program’s

performance. This is a critical need in light of continued budget shrinkage at

most public sector concerns. Conducting a detailed evaluation of the program

will allow managers to present program accomplishments as justification for

continued funding.

There are important considerations to focus on while conducting a program

evaluation. First, it has to be an objective and independent evaluation carried

out by a reputable organization that is not part of the program itself. Engaging

the services of an independent evaluator increases the credibility of the findings

in the eyes of stakeholders, politicians, and the traveling public. Second, it is

important to swiftly implement recommendations from any evaluation to alter

the program’s operation or future implementation plans (for scope expansion)

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Implementing an Incident Management Program

Evaluation of Seattle’s Incident Management Program

One of the most studied programs in the country is located in Seattle,

Washington. It was there that the Washington State Transportation Center

(TRAC) teamed up with the Washington State Department of Transportation

(WSDOT) to develop a series of evaluation documents on the regional

incident management programs in Washington State, paying particular

attention to the program in Seattle.

These documents included pre-program studies regarding the costs and

impacts of establishing an incident management program, program

evaluations of incident response teams, and case studies. These documents

have proven to be extremely useful in the evaluation and ongoing

improvement of the Washington program’s response and clearance times and

even have been used as a tool for generating additional financing for service

patrols and other program components.

Bringing Together the Key Stakeholders

Maryland’s CHART program’s board is chaired by the Maryland DOT’s Chief

Engineer, and includes as voting members district engineers from all CHART

districts, the director of the Office of Traffic, the director of the Office of

Maintenance, key contractors, and the Maryland Transportation Authority. All

other interested agencies are also welcome to participate.

Milwaukee’s Freeway Incident Management Team and steering committee

meetings include both large group and subgroup meetings (corridor incident

management, freeway, special events management and outreach/awareness).

Priorities for the Team are identifying issues, developing solutions, and

coordinating deployment of solutions.
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

based on the evaluation’s findings. Since the evaluation is linked directly to

program goals and objectives, the evaluation findings should provide a clear

indicator of whether the program is satisfying the needs that brought it into

being. Thus, modifications based on the findings should help steer the program

toward better satisfying the identified needs.

For a more extensive description of the evaluation process, please refer to

Appendix A.

Modify Strategy and Plan Based on Evaluation

The program’s strategy may need to be modified periodically to address the new

challenges the program is likely to encounter. Even though extensive planning

is performed, difficulties which have not been anticipated and risks whose full

impact was not foreseen in developing the risk mitigation plan may be

encountered. Most of these are institutional in nature.

The most common changes in strategy (with possible methodologies to counter

them) include:

• Working with a smaller budget, or with fewer or less-skilled personnel

— Perhaps by using less overtime, leasing rather than buying, privatizing,

using part-time staff, reducing coverage to priority corridors, or spreading

the cost across more partners

• Growing more slowly than had been planned

— Focusing on the most critical corridors, trading off capital for operating

expenses, combining some functions with those performed by existing

staff, or reducing the number of functions performed or the hours of

operation

• Changes in roles and responsibilities among the program participants, and

possibly withdrawal of participation or support by one or more participants

— Identifying alternate service providers, or seeking a more equitable or

acceptable balance of responsibilities

• Working with legal limitations on the types of activity the program can

perform

— Considering the need for legislation to remove such barriers, or perhaps

trading roles

• Complications in working across jurisdictional boundaries

— Identifying opportunities to provide benefits or to share resources with

partners across jurisdictional lines, or seeking special funding for crossborder integration

• Being tasked with greater responsibility than had been anticipated (more

functions, a more complex event such as the Olympic Games, or a larger

geographic area of coverage)

— Clearly understanding and documenting the requirements, identifying

5-23
potential additional sources of and methods of obtaining funding and

other resources, and participating in planning for such eventualities

• Being forced to regularly justify the existence of the program, explain the

program’s performance in an unusually difficult situation, or attempt to meet

unrealistic expectations

— Planning and implementing a thorough evaluation program, focused both

on how the program can improve and on the measures that are important

to key decision makers; also implementing regular and effective

communication with the media and with decision makers at

appropriate levels.

The best preparation for such eventualities is a combination of:

• Formalization of the program through various steps already described

• “Unification” of the program’s budget across the multiple participating

agencies

• Raising program visibility and stature

• Linking the program to the primary activity areas of each participating agency,

or succeeding in having it promoted to being viewed as one of these primary

activity areas

• Extensive and regular stakeholder involvement in program activity and

evolution

• Program evaluation and outreach

• Continuing awareness of other programs in order to learn from their

experiences

• Participation in incident management forums—such as the Institute for

Transportation Engineers (ITE) Traffic Incident Management Committee, or

the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Incident Management

Working Group P1512—in order to learn about the latest technologies and

management best practices

• Regular revisiting of the program’s strategy.

This last activity provides the opportunity to examine the assumptions and

conditions under which the program has been operating, as well as its actual

performance. Through such self examination, program managers can have

solutions in place as difficulties arise, rather than being forced into a reactive

mode of response. The strategy update should be conducted at the same

interval as the budget process (e.g., annually or biennially), but well in advance

of the budget submission. This schedule coordination supports timely

movement on and mutual support of requests for additional resources within the

partner agencies’ appropriations cycles or legislative sessions. The strategy

update will also provide the opportunity to examine (and, if appropriate, revise)

the existing goals and objectives, providing more realistic measures of program

performance, and perhaps setting better standards which the program can seek

to attain. Performance on those measures can also be assessed at this point

(and likely more often), and decisions made on what actions may be needed in

order to achieve desired levels of effectiveness.

Implementing an Incident Management Program

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The strategy update should periodically include a close look at the goals and

objectives which drive the program. As the program makes progress, objectives

will be achieved and new objectives will emerge. Other objectives may become

irrelevant as time passes and conditions change. Technological evolution may

also cause a need to make changes in the direction of the program. This review

will help ensure that the program continues to address the issues which its

partners face.

Leverage Public Support

It is important to communicate the benefits of the program to the stakeholders

and the public at large. This communication will help maintain the high levels

of support necessary to protect the program against budget cuts, and foster

improved relationships among the partner agencies.

The plan should contain a public relations component which addresses

maintaining support. The plan should consider the audiences which need to be

reached and the various methods of communication available to the agency.

This will likely combine regular efforts by the agency and taking advantage of

fortuitous occasions. For internal distribution, agency newsletters may be an

effective start with little cost. Critical to external relations is developing a strong

outreach and training program designed to incorporate several agencies, the

private sector, and the media.

The best programs across the country leverage good publicity. Successful

programs also take advantage of special events in their own operations by

involving key program supporters. Even small activities, such as “christening the

fleet” of new service patrol vehicles or ribbon cutting at the new TMC control

room, provide opportunities to make the senior executives feel a sense of

ownership. The executives, in turn, can demonstrate their support of the

program’s positive outcomes within the stakeholder organizations and to the

public.

Use the Transportation Planning Process to Secure Funding in the Long

Term.

While many operational staff find the traditional transportation planning process

to be overly bureaucratic and cumbersome, the benefits of developing plan

elements that support incident management and integrating these into the

transportation planning process far outweigh the negatives. It is through

avenues such as these that Intelligent Transportation Systems grew at such a

phenomenal rate, raising technology to the line-item level in both state and

national budgets. With the passage of legislation, such as the Intermodal

Surface Transportation and Efficiency Act (ISTEA) in 1991 and the Transportation

Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) in 1998, opportunities abound to secure

additional funding for incident management program activities. These

opportunities should not be ignored. It is necessary to have major projects

included in the Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) or Statewide

Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP).

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Implementing an Incident Management Program

5-26

Several successful programs are now seeking to separate both their incident

management operations and budget process from other divisions within the

same organization. The expectation is that the long-term benefits of securing

funding on an annual or biennial basis specifically for incident management

programs and services will help institutionalize the program at the

organizational level and reduce the risk of cutbacks or elimination.

Outreach From TransGuide Takes Many Forms

Outreach for some incident management programs has grown to include fulltime staff and/or dedicated contractor resources. The TransGuide program

began accessing services from the Texas DOT’s public affairs office over a year

before it went into operation. By the date of operation, it had a full-time

communications staff member assigned, with an office in the transportation

management center. That person’s efforts were supplemented by an outreach

component in the TransGuide implementation contract, which provided the

program with roadside signs, a logo, literature, videos, and display materials.

The program and implementation contractor staff dedicated many hours to

speaking to community groups, ranging from school groups to fraternal

organizations. The communications person also built on existing agency

relationships with the media, and built new ones. Program staff were regularly

interviewed, and even spoke on radio talk shows. As the program

implementation culminated in the system’s official opening, the local morning

newspaper ran a two-week series of editorial cartoons supporting the program!
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

(Integrating Intelligent Transportation Systems Within the Planning Process: An Interim Handbook,

FHWA, 1998)

Components of the Transportation Planning Process

There is a broad array of activities that ultimately result in a

set of recommended, fundable transportation projects and

programs. These activities feed information to the principal

products of the transportation planning process: the

transportation plan and TIP. The process varies from one

area to another and includes input from many agencies and

individuals. These transportation planning activities include

policy definition, corridor/sub-area studies, strategic

assessments, etc.

The plan is a primary product of the planning process. It is

prepared periodically by each state and metropolitan area.

The plan documents the policy direction for the region and

describes how transportation projects and programs will be

implemented over a 20-year (or longer) period. It has

sometimes been called the long-range plan, but it includes

the entire time period out to the horizon year, including

both short-range and long-range projects and programs.

Projects for ITS need to be included in this document.

A document that must be prepared periodically by each

state and metropolitan area that describes specific projects

to be constructed and/or operated over the next several

years (minimum three years; some areas include additional

years).

The actual implementation of the transportation plan

design, construction, and operation of the projects included

in the TIP.

Evaluation of the results achieved from the implementation

of the TIP, assessing its effectiveness and making

adjustments as necessary to both the transportation plan

and the TIP.

Transportation

Planning

Activities

Transportation

Plan

Transportation

Improvement

Plan

Performance

Evaluation

Implementation

5-27
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Implementing an Incident Management Program

CHART’s Approach to Developing Sustainable

Relationships Through Mutual Support

When Maryland’s CHART program was starting up, it was a challenge to

establish the relationships necessary between the participating agencies—

Maryland State Highway Administration, Maryland State Police (MSP), and

Maryland Transportation Authority (MdTA). As the nucleus agency, MdSHA

found it useful to build relationships with other key agencies by cooperatively

funding joint needs.

For example, MdSHA agreed to fund several necessary items for MSP, including

paint for outlining crash scenes, facilities improvements for the jointly-staffed

traffic operations centers, and fully equipped motorcycles that could be used for

reaching crash scenes during peak travel hours. In return, MSP has collocated

full-time staff at the statewide operations center (SOC).

Based on this success, CHART has extended the approach to outside

organizations, including the media. Agreements were developed that allow

local radio and television stations to be patched into live closed-circuit television

feeds from the SOC. In exchange, traffic helicopters owned and operated by

local stations provide real-time views of traffic incidents and delays to CHART.

Radio broadcasts are also shared between the organizations.
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Take advantage of attention focused on major events (international games,

weather events, earthquakes, etc.) to help organize and build support for a

formal incident management program.

While some of these events cannot be anticipated, it is important to set the

stage for success. Begin organizing interagency working groups and building

the case for a program prior to a major event or crisis. Then, once an event

occurs, take advantage of the media attention and public outcry to focus

attention and resources on organizing a coordinated incident management

program. In other words, strike while the iron is hot!

Taking Advantage of an Opportunity:

Georgia DOT and the Atlanta Olympics

“You cannot wait for a crisis or international event to occur before organizing

incident management agencies. Start the program and dialogue prior to any

event, and the event will help solidify those relationships.”—Steve Parks,

Deputy Commissioner, Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT).

In the 1970s the GDOT Commissioner tried and failed to organize an

interagency incident management program. It wasn’t until 1992 that the Chief

of Georgia’s Emergency Management Agency (GEMA) began to include law

enforcement and GDOT in emergency response.

However, it was the announcement that Atlanta would host the 1996 Summer

Olympics that was the real catalyst for mobilization. The GDOT Director of

Operations helped organize the program because of his experience and his

relationships within his agency.

Critical to the success of this effort was the identification of a “credible nucleus”

that recognized that many agencies had a role in managing incidents. In

Georgia, this was GEMA.

While it is important to understand that agencies cannot be forced to work

together, if a viable framework is in place, a major event can help mobilize and

solidify support for a coordinated interagency program.

Obtain and leverage political support when it is available.

Since transportation funding is often politically influenced and transportation

policy is an important item on political agendas, support of political leaders for

transportation projects is essential. Obtaining political support is particularly

important for incident management programs since they do not offer publicityPart 6: Lessons Learned in Implementing and

Sustaining Incident Management Programs

6-1
6-2

Lessons Learned in Implementing and Sustaining Incident Management Programs

laden opportunities such as ribbon-cutting ceremonies for new roads or bridges.

Obtaining political support is an important step for the success and sustainability

of any incident management program. This step requires informing leaders

about the benefits of incident management and convincing them of the need

for a formal program. It also can be accomplished by taking advantage of

scenarios such as the one in Houston.

Houston’s Mayor Catalyzes Incident Management and the

TranStar ITS Center

Mayor Lanier of Houston encountered severe traffic congestion on the way to a

Houston Oilers football game. He called his staff several times, but no one

could give him accurate information about what was happening or how long

the congestion might last. He reached the game close to half-time. The next

day he initiated action to ensure that his experience would not be repeated by

Houston area citizens.

Thus, the Houston area’s first incident management program and the Houston

TranStar ITS system were born. The mayor, a previous member of the State

Transportation Board, led an effort to gain the cooperation of the other

agencies in the Houston area. His efforts enabled TxDOT, Houston METRO, and

the Houston Police Department to gain top management buy-in for their

portions of the incident management program. The result was an incident

management program developed in a very short time. A new mayor is in office

now, but the programs still thrives, despite the loss of its initial champion.

Ongoing successes are important.

The program will need to have some ongoing, visible successes in order to

sustain interest by participants and to keep the funding flowing. It is important

to realize, however, that the full scope of benefits may not be immediately

visible or easily measured. Because of this, effort must be focused on keeping

the program moving forward and on identifying successes. Successes can

sometimes be derived from special circumstances, such as a service patrol

providing aid and comfort to a school bus full of stranded youngsters5. If there

are no visible winners, it will be difficult for some major participants to remain

involved.

The program needs involvement from the right organizational levels.

Key program committees will need to have someone attend from each key

stakeholder group who has adequate authority to speak for his/her organization.

These representatives should also have the ear of the senior executives at their

organizations. It is important to also involve middle and working level people in

the organizations who can serve as organizational champions for incident

5 Improving Mobility Saving Lives Safety Service Patrols, USDOT, 1999
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

management. It can be fatal to depend exclusively on the participation of very

senior people, as they will often not have the time to meet on a regular basis.

Procedures should not threaten the agencies’ own roles.

A sure way to alienate a key partner is to say that its involvement in incident

management will change its responsibilities at the incident scene. The key to

effective incident management is not shifting roles, but working together

effectively in a coordinated manner, and perhaps taking slightly different actions

which consider a broader set of goals than those of any single agency. Each

partner will continue to be held accountable (by its senior management, other

units of government, and the public) for its role in managing the incident, and

for addressing those components of an incident (public safety, safety of involved

personnel, safety of incident victims, environment, traffic flow) with which it is

charged. Incident management should allow each partner to perform its duty,

but with consideration for the duties of others and in coordination with them.

Identify realistic goals and make sure that expectations are met.

Formulating goals is always an exercise in balance. The goals must be

aggressive enough that they will foster enthusiasm, but not so aggressive as to

be unrealistic. They should create realizable expectations, whose achievement

can be measured and communicated. The risk of setting goals too high is that

the program may be perceived as a failure. Goals that cannot be measured may

be viewed as a sign that the participants have no confidence in the program.

Goals that are set too low may not be viewed as demonstrating a true value for

the community or justifying the investment. In each case, the interest will wane,

and participants are likely to withdraw their support.

Make the interagency incident management program a “win-win” for all

stakeholders involved.

Stakeholders must perceive that there is a benefit to changing the status quo.

Most organizations already perform some level of incident management and

may not see the potential benefits in working in a structured, coordinated

fashion with other agencies that do not share a common goal.

The first step in gaining buy-in from all stakeholders is to develop a common

program goal that recognizes the different priorities among agencies. For

example, DOTs may be more interested in the safe and efficient restoration of

traffic flow, while fire departments may focus more on the individual safety of

their personnel while clearing an incident. This difference of interests can create

institutional and physical bottlenecks when the two organizations try working

together to clear an incident from the roadway. By working together in an

atmosphere of mutual respect and trust, several regions have been able to come

to new agreements about how to meet each agency’s goals while working

toward a common goal of public safety and service.

6-3
6-4

Resolve internal conflicts first.

Prior to working with outside agencies to develop a program, organizations

must look inside their own walls to resolve potential conflicts between

departments. Often, new programs create divides with regard to funding and

chain of command that can jeopardize the success of a program. Sometimes a

strong leader with enough power to force organizational change is enough to

ensure implementation and sustainability. More often than not, however,

program leaders come from mid- and lower-level management and must build a

credible incident management effort before senior executives will endorse

incident management and consistently promote it as an agency priority.

Once internal implementation challenges have been overcome, agencies

involved in incident management can focus on developing their external

relationships with one another, as well as with the private sector, elected

officials, and the public at-large. There are several options for developing longterm sustainable external relations. Good public relations are key to raising

public awareness for a product or service which will ensure funding year

after year.

Overcoming Internal Challenges: Implementation in WSDOT

The Washington State Department of Transportation piloted its modest but

highly successful service patrol under the leadership of its Engineering division,

but decided to develop its full incident management program under its

Maintenance division. Placing the program under Maintenance was

complicated by Maintenance staff’s perception that an engineer had forced the

implementation of an unnecessary program. Eventually, incident management

was assigned to Traffic Operations, and funded as a separate line item in the

Traffic Operations budget.

An individual from the Maintenance division was later named to head Seattle’s

Incident Management program. The combination of removing Incident

Management from Maintenance and hiring a Maintenance person to lead the

program has alleviated many of the problems that existed in the program’s

early years.

Sharing resources to overcome shortfalls can help build and solidify relationships among organizations.

When just starting off, agencies should look at how scarce resources can be

shared to help distribute the burden of implementing a new program. As in the

CHART example earlier, the DOT may be able to purchase for the law

enforcement agency special equipment which speeds crash scene response.

Oftentimes, benefits beyond the incident management program can be

identified from such an agreement. This practice can continue to yield benefits

as a regular practice as the incident management program grows and matures;

it is not limited to the program’s early phases.

Lessons Learned in Implementing and Sustaining Incident Management Programs
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

Create dependencies to ensure program sustainability.

Developing a clear ‘dependency’ on the program and its offerings is one way to

ensure its visibility and stability for the long term. Public leaders and travelers

come to expect the services and improved conditions that result from the

program. Thus, it becomes part of the budget baseline, rather than an optional

item. The Atlanta case clearly illustrates success of this approach. Other

locations have also employed this approach with success.

Atlanta’s Highly Popular HERO Service Patrol

Sustaining interest and support (both financial and popular) is one of the

toughest challenges any incident management program faces after its initial

success. Atlanta has isolated its HEROs (Highway Emergency Response

Operators) freeway service patrol from political and financial vulnerabilities by

cultivating dependency on its services.

The HEROs are a highly visible arm of the incident management program.

GDOT is deluged with letters of appreciation for their service. “Our public and

our partners could not imagine living without our HEROs”, says Marion Waters

of GDOT. “They are dependent on them on a daily basis.” The positive

responses and publicity that the Atlanta program receives puts the pressure on

politicians and policymakers to sustain and grow the program. This provides

the best protection from any threats to the entire incident management

program, even the less visible operations that are most vulnerable to

budget cuts.

Prepare for the possibility that a leader might leave.

Successful leaders are difficult to retain in any organization, and particularly

difficult to retain in the public sector. Often they are promoted internally or

hired away by the private sector, leaving a leadership “vacuum” if no one has

been designated as a successor. This lack of clearly-defined leadership following

loss of a successful champion

can cause incident

management to lose

momentum, sometimes

causing the eventual

breakdown of interagency

relationships which had been

established at a person-toperson level.

Overcoming the loss of a champion requires the consideration of a leadership

succession model. This model should consist of the identification and

preparation of one or more additional persons who participate in the incident

management program who can be prepared to assume leadership

Future leaders should be chosen not

simply for their management

experience, but because they exhibit

qualities that would allow them to

build and sustain an interagency team

of incident management professionals.

6-5
6-6

responsibilities should the current champion leave. Such preparation will likely

be informal and performed within the incident management program, rather

than part of an individual’s career development program within his or her home

agency. Ideally, each agency will see its incident management focal point as a

key individual, and will take steps to ensure that a successor is identified and

prepared in advance of such a departure.

Critical to the success of this model is its early implementation. If there is no

effort to begin preparing a qualified, capable, and recognized successor until the

current leader gives notice, it is unlikely that the new leader will have the

understanding necessary to succeed.

Coordinate across jurisdictions/regions for technology and infrastructure

planning.

By coordinating technology and infrastructure plans regionally rather than

locally, benefits related to interoperability of technology and infrastructure

management can be addressed prior to implementation, helping to reduce

future costs and delays. This technique is often employed for ITS, but too

frequently neglected by incident management leaders. Several regional

programs exist in the United States that employ the regional planning method,

including the Gary-Chicago-Milwaukee Corridor and the I-95 Corridor Coalition.

Commit to administrative support of an ongoing interorganizational

structure and communication and decision-making events and meetings.

Any undertaking as complex as an incident management program requires some

level of administrative support, and a regular forum (or forums) at which

performance is reviewed, issues are raised, information is shared, and program

change and evolution are discussed and approved. An incident management

program will require this type of support and activity in order to function

effectively. It is important, however, to arrive at a level of activity acceptable to

all partners, some of whom may have difficulty justifying extended absences

from the workplace to attend meetings. This is particularly true if the program

has a steering committee composed of senior executives from participating

organizations. Obtaining a significant commitment of time from such officials is

often difficult or impossible. A much better plan is to ask for a realistic time

commitment and to carry out a larger portion of the work in subordinate

committees.

Lessons Learned in Implementing and Sustaining Incident Management Programs
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

The traffic impact of incidents on the nation’s roadways is a major drain on

productivity, causes increased stress to motorists, harms air quality, and is often

the source of additional incidents. The nature of the incident scene presents

numerous hazards to those involved in incidents and to those responding to the

incident. Planned, organized regional incident management programs offer the

promise of minimizing these negative consequences. Transforming incident

management from simply a series of parallel activities into a formal, organized,

coordinated, and well-documented program—and sustaining such programs—is

a complex process, often involving a variety of organizations and multiple units

and levels within some organizations. The differences in focus and approach by

the different organizations requires that this joint undertaking be planned,

implemented, and operated in a highly coordinated manner, with ongoing,

effective communication at many organizational levels. This communication, as

well as a thorough understanding of each agency’s procedures and motivations,

cultivates trusting relationships between involved individuals. Formalizing the

program is essential to its success, but is much more easily done wrong than

right, with possibly highly negative effects.

This document has presented a framework for organizing, implementing, and

sustaining a regional incident management program. It has provided a step-bystep process broken into three phases, which should assist agencies in

transitioning from existing incident management efforts to a formal incident

management program. Although the framework is divided into discrete steps, it

is much more likely that readers who implement these steps will experience a

program that:

• Has a starting point with some elements already accomplished or in process

• Will evolve gradually rather than experience major demarcations between

steps

• Will experience periods with several steps in process, as well as those with

gaps in time between one step and the next.

The focus is institutional, rather than technical, and is based on:

• Understanding needs

• Defining the program

• Building and maintaining support

• Assessing the program’s effectiveness

• Revising its approach to better address the needs.

The document has also provided lessons from the practical experiences of major

incident management around the country. Through these experiences, it is

hoped that new programs, or those undergoing stress and change, can avoid

some of the challenges faced by early implementers, or can find the basis of

workable solutions from the actions of those implementers.

Part 7: Conclusion

7-1
7-2

Conclusion

The document’s appendix provides more detail on two important steps:

developing a strategy, and evaluating results.

Based on experiences from around the country, incident management programs

can have a clear, positive effect. Particularly in areas suffering from significant

recurrent congestion, incident management is a tool which can have highly

visible positive results, generating public support and laudable benefit/cost ratios

(such as Maryland’s 5.6:1). Such programs deserve consideration, and it is

hoped that this document, and its companion brochures, cross-cutting study,

and handbook will be of value to organizations ready to begin their own

incident management program.
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

Continual monitoring and evaluation are critical to the sustained success of any

incident management program. Based on the findings of the evaluation,

changes to strategic plans should be made. This continual improvement will

result in a dynamic program that meets the public’s changing needs. It is

important that the evaluation be both independent and objective. Many times

an outside vendor, such as a consulting firm or university, can perform a

thorough and authoritative evaluation within a reasonable time period at a

competitive rate.

At a minimum, assessments should be performed on response and clearance

times over a period of a year or more. A thorough cost/benefit analysis on

technology, equipment, and services should also be included as part of a

comprehensive evaluation. This information is essential to developing a viable

business plan that can be submitted as part of the transportation planning

process.

A typical evaluation of an incident management program should include, at a

minimum, the following steps and components:

• Develop Evaluation Goals and Measurable Objectives

For the evaluation to be useful, the qualities to be measured must relate to the

program’s goals and objectives. Further, they must be measurable, so that the

evaluation represents facts, rather than the evaluator’s subjective opinion. The

following example illustrates the process of breaking down each evaluation

goal into its component objectives, and then beginning consideration of

where the necessary data may be obtained.

Appendix A: Incident Management Monitoring,

Evaluation, and Reporting of Benefits/Influence

A-1

Goal Objective Source

1.1 Assess the effectiveness of 1.1.1 Compare pre- and post-program DOT

the incident management response and clearance times.

program in terms of decreasing Safety Patrols

traffic and increasing safety.

1.1.2 Compare the number of pre- DOT

and post-program secondary

incidents. State Police

Figure A-1: Sample Evaluation Goals and Objectives Table
A-2

Figure A-2: Sample Questionnaire

A. Incident Notification

1. Who do you notify when you learn of an incident?

2. How are they notified?

3. In what order are notifications made?

4. What information is provided to each recipient?

5. How many get the same information?

6. How often are updates made to the notification?

7. How often do you receive requests for additional or updated

information?

8. How often do you receive requests for information from parties who

are not ordinarily notified?

• Collect Data

Once the evaluators identify the source of information to measure each

objective, they have a number of tools at their disposal to collect the data.

Tools may include using written surveys, making a phone call to the head of a

division, holding a meeting with operational managers, or looking at the

computer logs from TMC systems.

The means of collecting data are critical, and only appropriate tools (such as the

partial interview guide below) should be used. For example, it may not be

prudent to send a written survey to the commissioner of a department of

transportation. However, if the evaluators keep their audience in mind, identify

the right information and sources, and are flexible and persistent when

gathering information, data collection can run smoothly and efficiently.

Appendix A

• Analyze Data

Once a sufficient amount of information is gathered according to the criteria

established in the evaluation goals and objectives table, evaluators should

begin analyzing the data to verify the outcome of the identified

evaluation goals.
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

A-3

Objective Analysis of Data Conclusion

1.1.1 Compare pre- and Response times decreased Program had positive

post-program response by 30 percent. impact on response and

and clearance times. clearance times.

Clearance times decreased

by 20 percent.

1.1.2 Compare the number of Secondary incidents Incident management

pre- and post-program decreased by 42 percent. program (especially

secondary incidents. shortened response and

clearance times) contributed

to the significant drop in

secondary incidents.

• Develop Report

Several interim reports to program stakeholders may be required but, in the

end, one final report should be developed that documents the incident

management program goals, the evaluation strategy, and the outcome of the

evaluation.

• Make Recommendations

Recommendations may be included as part of the final report or be presented

as a separate document. Recommendations should be prioritized according

to areas of greatest need and ranked according to their feasibility. A

recommendation that cannot be implemented because of seemingly

insurmountable obstacles should not be included as part of a final report

unless it includes a strategy for overcoming these obstacles.

In the same vein, a timeline for implementing the recommendations should

be included for illustrative purposes so that sequencing and dependencies are

obvious to the audience.

Figure A-4: Sample Implementation of Recommendations Timeline

Figure A-3: Sample Table for Analysis of Data

J F MAMJ J AS ON

ADD 12 VEHICLES TO SAFETY PATROLS: EXPAND PATROLS

DEVELOP INVENTORY OF RESOURCES AT ALL PARTNER AGENCIES

TRAIN 160 NEW STATE POLICE OFFICERS PRESENTATIONS AT 46 FIRE COMPANIES

COMMENCE MONTHLY INCIDENT MANAGEMENT NEEDS & BENEFITS BRIEFINGS TO STATE LEGISLATORS & OTHER ELECTED OFFICIALS
The report authors would like to thank all the people and organizations that

contributed to this study, many of whom provided their time and guidance to

make this effort a success.

In Maryland, we would like to extend our gratitude to the CHART program staff,

including Alvin Marquess, Dale Lineweaver, and Dan Hering.

We would also like to thank the staff at the Georgia DOT, especially Deputy

Commissioner Steve Parks, Marion Waters, and Joe Stapleton.

In Seattle, Sergeant Leslie Young of the State Police, Jerry Althauser, Bill Legg at

TRAC, Roger Steinert, and David Berg allowed us to interrupt their busy work

days at WSDOT.

In Milwaukee, Les Fafard, John Corbin, and Steve Young of the Wisconsin DOT,

Inspector Stacey Black of the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department, and

Deputy Commander Patti Hansen of the Wisconsin State Patrol were extremely

helpful.

Captain Tim Kelly and Felix Vara of Houston METRO provided insights on the

Houston Incident Management Program. We also would like to thank Doug

Wiersig of the City of Houston, Ric Sadler of Harris County, Chief Tom Lambert

of Houston METRO, and Jannete Rash of the Towers Association for spending

time with us to share their views.

Finally, we would like to acknowledge the warm response we received from the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, (IEEE) Traffic Incident

Management Working Group in developing the scope and content of this

document. Many of its members contributed practical insight that shaped the

look and feel of this document.

Acknowledgments
Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

References

Colorado DOT, Business Plan & Marketing Strategy, 1996

FHWA, Assessment of ITS Deployment: Review of Metropolitan Areas,

Discussions of Crosscutting Issues, 1996

FHWA, Freeway Management Handbook (on CD), 1998

FHWA, Incorporating ITS Into Transportation Planning: Phase 1 Final Report,

1997

FHWA, Integrating Intelligent Transportation Systems Within the Planning

Process: An Interim Handbook, 1998

Gary-Chicago-Milwaukee ITS Priority Corridor, GCM Program Plan Update, July

1997

Georgia DOT, Incident Management Handbook, 1996

Houston TranStar, Freeway Incident Management Plan and Procedures, 1996

I-95 Corridor Coalition, Business Plan, 1998

ITS America, Strategic Plan for IVHS in the United States, 1992

Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, I-65 Freeway Incident Management Study,

1995

Koehne, J., F. Mannering, M. Hallenbeck, J. Nee, Washington State

Transportation Commission (DOT), Framework for Developing Incident

Management Systems (Revised), 1995

Metro Detroit Incident Management Coordinating Committee, Blueprint for

Action, 1993

Mitretek for FHWA, Developing Freeway & Incident Management Systems

Using the National ITS Architecture, 1998

Mitretek for USDOT, Intelligent Transportation Systems Benefits—1999 Update,

1999

Rush, J, (Parsons Brinkerhoff), M. Penic (SAIC), Integrating ITS and Traditional

Planning—Lessons Learned I-64 Corridor MIS, 1998

TransCore (SAIC) for FHWA, Integrating ITS within Transportation Planning

Process (Handbook), 1998

Virginia DOT, Smart Travel Program Activities in VDOT, 1997

Virginia DOT, VDOT Smart Travel Business Plan 1997-2006, 1997

Virginia Transportation Research Council & Old Dominion University, Final

Report: Evaluation of the ITS Planning Process, 1995

Washington State DOT/ Washington State Patrol, WSDOT/WSP Interagency

Joint Operation Policy Statement (DRAFT), November 1998

Wisconsin DOT/FHWA, 90/94 ITS Inter-city Corridor Study: Strategic

Deployment Plan, 1996
Federal Highway Administration Resource Centers

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Regional Traffic Incident Management Programs

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