Benefit-cost analysis of ITS deployments in Michigan noted the independent operation of each of the three traffic operation centers.
Statewide, Michigan, United States
Costs and Benefits of MDOT Intelligent Transportation Systems Deployments
Summary Information
The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT)’s strategic plan for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) revolves around attaining key mobility, safety, productivity, energy and environment, and customer satisfaction benefits at a reasonable and sustainable level of investment. As of 2013, MDOT operates and maintains over 800 ITS devices on over 500 miles of highways. The research team was tasked with evaluating the return on investment of the newest major ITS construction projects, which have introduced a large number of new applications and devices. The evaluation collected data from the different traffic operations centers (TOCs), surveyed the public, and analyzed this information with statistical modeling, microsimulation, and a tiered cost-benefit analysis. In the process of evaluation, several lessons learned were identified.
The final estimated statewide MDOT ITS deployment BCR is 3.16:1, but the research team believes this estimate can be greatly improved on with the execution of a few recommendations based on both challenges faced throughout the duration of the study as well as insight gleaned from the overall analysis, as follows:
- Development, operation, and maintenance of a consistent statewide incident database shared between all three MDOT TOCs that will aid in communication between agencies and facilitate ease in cost and benefit estimation in future studies.
- Deployment of an FCP program in the WMTOC region, which is expected to result in similar incident duration reductions as in the SEMTOC region (up to 24.5 minute duration reduction).
- Future investment in DMS and CCTV installation, further study regarding additional deployment of MVDS given the developing Connected Vehicle technology.
