Plan diversion routes carefully to avoid negative consequences on designated alternate routes.

National experience with route diversion for incident management.

Date Posted
09/16/2005
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Identifier
2005-L00029

Intelligent Transportation Systems Field Operational Test Cross-Cutting Study: Incident Management: Detection, Verification, and Traffic Management

Summary Information

In 1991, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) initiated a new program to address the needs of the emerging ITS field. This program solicited and funded projects, called Field Operational Tests (FOTs). The tests were sponsored and supported by several administrations of the Department, including the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). FHWA has prepared several "crosscutting" studies that compare or synthesize the findings of multiple tests within a particular area of interest.

This report presents the results of nine FHWA ITS FOTs and the ITS deployment in Georgia for the 1996 Summer Olympics, and discusses the possible implications of these findings for further deployment of incident detection, verification, and traffic management services, and communications to improve the Incident Management capabilities of transportation and public safety officials. The service will help these officials to quickly and accurately identify a variety of incidents, and to implement a set of actions to minimize the effects of those incidents.

Lessons Learned

Plan diversion routes carefully to avoid negative consequences.

Although concerns often arise over the impact of diverting traffic from major roadways onto surface streets, no test has yet demonstrated any substantial negative impact from such diversions. Projects that included planned diversions carefully prepared incident management solutions, such as San Antonio TransGuide's "scenarios" which were tailored to each potential incident type and location. Both DIVERT (St. Paul, MN) and TransGuide developed these solutions in consensus with agencies responsible for transportation throughout the affected area. This careful preparation has thus far prevented the floods of high-speed traffic through residential areas that were once feared.



Other key components of responsibly planning to prevent such negative impact have been:

 

  • Perform a careful traffic engineering analysis of the alternate route.

 

  • Identify and implement improvements to the diversion route (such as signage, lane marking, and geometrics).
  • Effectively coordinate of the diversion route’s traffic control system to accommodate the increased volume generated when it is in use as a diversion route.



Together, these and other measures have prevented situations that could have created a significant public outcry against the use of diversion routing as a component in incident management.

Goal Areas

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