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Service Patrol Handbook

This FHWA Handbook provides an overview of the Full-Function Service Patrol (FFSP) for traffic incident response and management and describes desired program characteristics from the viewpoint of an agency that is responsible for funding, managing, and operating the services.

It provides guidelines and rules of thumb for operational characteristics, sponsorship, level of service, number of vehicles needed, vehicle types and equipment, patrol frequency, operator and manager training, and services provided.

The primary audience for the Handbook comprises department of transportation decision-makers, managers, operators, and practitioners who are responsible for, or are considering, implementing or upgrading an FFSP program as part of a strategy to reduce congestion.

Available online or PDF download (3.1 MB)

(Publication Number: FHWA-HOP-08-031, July 2008)

Who is on first?

The influence of policy and institutional issues which influence day-to-day operations, also drive the choices of technology used in the sequence of events that make up incident response and can be a barrier to success.

Optimising capacity of a road network through traffic incident management is a key strategy to managing congestion. With the realisation that it is not feasible or affordable to build our way out of congestion has come an interest in finding smarter ways of maintaining a given level of service.

However, congestion management may not be a core issue for all organisations involved in network operations and incident management. Public safety agencies are concerned about collecting evidence and fire and rescue cultures have a strong worker safety bias - and getting traffic moving is not a primary objective.

Evolving roles
Many road and traffic agencies are evolving from being solely a road asset manager, to becoming a network operator and taking on responsibility for traffic management, with the specific aims of improving journey time reliability and safety and reducing the impact of roads on the environment.

Previously, that meant most of the investment tended to go into improving the asset, not how it was operated, now there is renewed interest in investments in procedural or network operational areas. Incident management also involves multi-agency stakeholders.

This requires the alignment of stakeholder priorities and responsibilities, aiming to embed business drivers to ensure a common direction. An example is the adoption of an open roads or quick clearance policy a regional level. Then responders within diverse stakeholder organisations need to be fully aware of both their roles and those of others.

Incidents and congestion
A large proportion of congestion (see Cost of Traffic Incidents), particularly non-recurrent congestion, is incident-related. Faster, more effective incident response can therefore have a major impact on improving journey reliability.

In the event of a serious collision police will want to investigate thoroughly just what has gone on as there may be a potential criminal investigation, and the longer the investigation takes the worse the congestion which results can be.

There is technology available which can significantly reduce the time taken to carry out crash investigations and re-open the road, but there is little incentive for the police to invest in it because it doesn’t align with their key objectives.

In a number of jurisdictions the road agency has taken a lead role in championing new technology and procedures, advocating the benefits and assisting with funding or building the case for shared funding.

Quick clearance is the key to success in incident management but each organisation involved in managing and operating roads needs to be clear as to what its responsibilities are and what the others are doing.

For traffic incident management to be successful involves policy and institutional alignment:

1. alignment of responder agency core objectives
2. having incentives to drive organisational behaviour, such as key performance measures that are regularly reported and
3. a clear understanding by all on the benefits of quick clearance.

Cost of Traffic Incidents

Large urban areas are facing an increasing challenge of mobility (congestion), safety and environmental impacts due to traffic incidents.

Traffic incidents are estimated to account for about 25% of traffic congestion and bad weather another 15% (FHWA 2007). Hence congestion due to traffic incidents and bad weather can be as much as 40% of the total congestion.

Traffic incidents can have significant impacts on road users and the community. Injured people need to be recovered quickly from crashes and the potential for secondary incidents needs to be avoided. The safety or emergency responders and traffic controllers are at risk in moving traffic conditions.

Traffic delays result in lost time, schedule disruptions for public transport, financial costs for freight operators and local businesses and increases in vehicle emissions due to idling traffic.

While people can factor in “normal” congestion as part of their commute, unexpected congestion can make people late for work, meetings, appointments, or other activities.

Alternatively, people may choose to leave early in case they run into unexpected traffic, meaning they also may arrive earlier than necessary. A reduction of one minute of travel time under unexpectedly congested conditions is valued at over 2.5 times the value of one minute of time under normal condition (Small et al 1999).

Typical Impacts of Traffic Incidents

• Regional Impacts: Diminished cost competitiveness and market growth opportunities lead to a reduced ability to retain, grow, and attract business. Increased emissions and energy use.
  
  
• Freight Impacts: Longer travel times and less reliable delivery times. To compensate typically add vehicles and drivers and extend their hours of operation, eventually passing the extra costs along to consumers.
  
  
• Business Impacts: Increased cost of delivering goods and services, costs of spoilage for time-sensitive, perishable deliveries and maintaining greater inventory to cover the undependability of deliveries.
  
  
• Household Impacts: As travel time and vehicle operating costs increase and reliability and mobility decrease, then the quality of life is diminished.
  
  
• Agency Impacts: Additional cost of responders, equipment and materials – overtime, equipment hire, clean up etc (opportunity cost). Increased exposure to occupational health and safety hazards from passing traffic, hazardous materials, etc
  
  
• Road User Impacts: Exposure to secondary incidents from end of queue (high speed differentials), distraction (especially at speed), etc

Quick clearance of traffic incidents can greatly assist in the reduction of traffic congestion through minimising traffic delays, reducing the number of secondary crashes that occur and decreasing vehicle emissions.

References:
FHWA (2007) Traffic Congestion and Reliability: Trends and Advanced Strategies for Congestion Mitigation Strategy to Reduce Congestion, Federal Highways Administration, Washington DC.

Small K, Noland R, Chu X and Lewis D (1999) Valuation of Travel Time Savings and Predictability in Congested Conditions for Highway User-Cost Estimation, National Cooperative Highway Research Program Report 431, Transportation Research Board, Washington.

Are we there yet?

Looking back ten years or so, and reflecting on what has transpired over the intervening years, amazing changes have taken place – many we could not have imagined, in terms of changes in society, developments in technology and economic growth – including the growth in duration and extent of traffic congestion.

However, much of what we thought was emerging in terms of highway agencies becoming road system managers and more active traffic managers has developed much slower than expected. The trend for road agencies to move from being an asset manager, focussed on building and maintaining roads, to becoming managers of traffic on the road network, has been talked about for some time, but in reality still has a long way to go.

To be successful in that transition, in my view, requires satisfaction of the critical success factors of Knowledge, Means and Will:

• Knowledge – we can answer these questions: what are the problems? what needs to be done? what can be done? how do we fix it?
• Means – do we have quality data, appropriate technology, adequate systems and structures in place and skills, capability and funding available?
• Will – is the prevailing organisational culture, management priorities and political will aligned, with adequate accountability structures in place to independently evaluate and report performance?

Knowledge
Discussions on congestion are very topical in transport circles. In the UK the Stern and Eddington reports in 2006 indicated that delays and unreliability on the network have direct costs to people and businesses. In the US, the Texas Transportation Institute regularly reports on mobility and congestion and the Department of Transportation published the National Strategy to Reduce Congestion on America's Transportation Network. In Australia, the Council of Australian Governments published their review of the trends, impacts and solutions for urban congestion in late 2006.

So governments know the problems. We also have a toolbox of measures we can use to mitigate the impact of traffic congestion. Improved management of incidents, roadwork zones and special events, improved traffic control on freeways and high traffic arterials, better traveller information and pricing are among the primary strategies being promoted.

Advanced adaptive traffic signals can improve traffic flows by detecting real-time demand, continuously adjusting signal timings on intersections, corridors or area-wide basis. Variable speed limits, ramp metering and priority for transit and emergency vehicles can also be effective in managing congested traffic and ensuring safety during adverse conditions.

Improvements in detection and probe vehicle technologies and using algorithms, will enable likely congestion and incidents to be predicted, allowing pre-emptive action across the network (including multi-modal actions) and provision of accurate and timely advice to road users.

Road network operations currently have limited relationships with road users, except in the cases of priced roads. The emerging trend is a move to a customer service orientation. The customer will need access to real-time traffic information to make informed travel choices and consider options along their journey.

As ‘user-pays’ increases, the focus on customer service must also increase, with increased attention to current and expected service levels, such as clearance times for incidents, waiting times at traffic signals and accuracy of information provided.

Active management of congested networks must become the normal operating process, to provide better real-time and predictive information and improve trip time reliability and advice on expected levels of service at different times, risk of delays, route and mode options and potentially costs and user charges, for different routes.

A market-driven approach provides a road network that drivers and freight operators are willing to pay for.

Means
Technology is available or can be readily developed for most of what needs to be done to mitigate congestion. Systems and structures are being progressively implemented to manage traffic on a regional basis and across jurisdictions.

A critical aspect of being able to utilise advanced operational strategies is having appropriate, quality data, to enable real-time adjustments and provide performance monitoring. This is improving, but a much greater focus is needed on specific information to actively manage the road network. Sophisticated traffic management capability is also very limited and capacity needs to be actively developed.

The other challenge is obtaining the needed funding – not easy with shrinking transport budgets and traditional evaluation processes which favour capital projects. Road user charging schemes are being seen as one new source of funding.

Will
The biggest challenge to be faced is the will to actively manage traffic. The rhetoric is there, but with a few exceptions, not much is actually happening (when measured in terms of resources devoted to congestion mitigation). Maybe the problems are not seen as severe enough yet.

The prevailing culture in most road agencies is still focussed on big projects, adding new infrastructure. Politicians prefer to be seen delivering large capital projects, rather than the more difficult to market ‘service improvements’.

The UK Highways Agency is one example of a road agency pushing the boundaries in this regard with their Active Traffic Management trials and rolling out Traffic Officers to aggressively manage incidents across their network. The I95 Coalition in the US is a good example of multi-jurisdictional innovation, with directed research and development – how well the new practices are implemented becomes the challenge, although Maryland and Florida are states leading the charge.

In Australia as series of Austroads reports were published on traffic management tools and operational changes to improve the performance of the road network under congested conditions – so the technical aspects are being progressed.

The will to address traffic congestion is growing.

Are we there yet? Soon, real soon.

Why have a quick clearance policy?

In high traffic congested areas rapid clearance of incidents results in positive perceptions by road users and engenders support from government, especially in relation to funding traffic operations.

Quick clearance is the practice of rapidly and safely removing temporary obstructions from the roadway. To find out more see the Transportation Research Board synthesis in 2003 titled Safe and Quick Clearance of Traffic Incidents.

Having a policy that places an emphasis on safe, quick clearance of incidents provides a focus for key responders, facilitating a coordinated cooperative response and results in quicker clearance, reduced congestion and safer responders.

These policies are best set up at regional or state level between key responder agencies – usually between the road and traffic agency and police service.

For example the Washington State Joint Operations Policy Statement (JOPS) is an agreement between Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) and the Washington State Patrol (WSP) establishing a policy position on cooperation on a number of issues, including a goal of clearing all incidents within 90 minutes.

WSDOT and WSP have a history of cooperatively managing traffic incidents in the Seattle metropolitan area and statewide and JOPS has evolved from the first joint policy position in 1999, with the fourth edition being produced in 2006.

Accountability is evident in the quarterly WSP and WSDOT progress reports on meeting the 90-minute goal to the Governor.

Similarly, open roads policies commit agencies such as the Florida Department of Transportation and the Florida Highway Patrol to clear all incidents within 90 minutes of the arrival of the first responding officer (Florida Open Roads Policy).

JOPS : http://www.watimcoalition.org/pdf/JOPS.pdf [0.6MB]

Dunn, W M & Latoski, S P (2003) Safe and Quick Clearance of Traffic Incidents (NCHRP Synthesis 318). Transportation Research Board. http://trb.org/news/blurb_detail.asp?id=1868 [8.2MB]

Florida Open Roads Policy http://www.dot.state.fl.us/TrafficOperations/Traf_Incident/pdf/Open_Roads_Policy_FDOT_FHP.pdf [0.2MB]

Traffic Detector Handbook

Managing traffic requires being able to detect a variety of vehicles characteristics in different circumstances, for different purposes: traffic flows, volumes, speeds and vehicle types for planning and design; detecting incidents for emergency response; flows on ramps for metering; vehicle volumes approaching intersections for signal timing and control; and traffic conditions for traveller information are some examples.

The updated third edition of the FHWA Traffic Detector Handbook published in 2006 a two-volume, comprehensive reference on sensors for traffic management on surface streets, arterials, and freeways. The Handbook provides a comprehensive reference document to aid the practicing traffic engineer or technician in selecting, designing, installing and maintaining traffic sensors for signalised intersections and freeways.

Topics covered include sensor technology, sensor applications, in-roadway sensor design, sensor installation techniques and sensor maintenance.

The sensor technology chapter discusses the operation and uses of inductive loop detectors, magnetic sensors and detectors, video image processors, microwave radar sensors, laser radars, passive infrared and passive acoustic array sensors, and ultrasonic sensors, plus combinations of sensor technologies. One of the more recent types is the wireless magnetometer, a reliable accurate device, which can be quickly and cheaply installed in the roadway.

Sensor application topics include safety, operation, multimodal issues, and physical and economic factors that affect installation and performance.

The appendixes include a variety of research, background papers, and implementation guidance. The information contained in the Handbook is based on the latest research on available treatments and best practices in use by jurisdictions across the United States and elsewhere. References are provided for the student, practitioner, researcher, or decisionmaker who wishes to learn more about a particular subject.

The third edition is published in two volumes: the online version (and PDF download of the Handbook) http://www.tfhrc.gov/its/pubs/06108/
Also see the Vehicle Detector Clearinghouse http://www.nmsu.edu/~traffic/