Knowledge Resources

Actively manage incidents to improve safety and efficiency.

In the deployments studied, safety improvements such as reductions in secondary incidents, total number of incidents, and incident response time were clearly proven. TransGuide in San Antonio, TX, experienced a 15 percent reduction in injury related accident rates, and projected that the improvement would grow to 21 percent based on trends during the test period. It also achieved an overall reduction in time to detect, verify, and respond to incidents of 20 percent. The test achieved response times below 20 minutes for major and minor incidents, as measured by the San Antonio Police Department. In systems with well prepared diversion routes, the primary benefits from incident management seem to accrue not from diversion but from rapid detection, effective response, and timely clearance of incidents.

Share incident information between agencies to achieve additional benefits.

The most common relationships were between law enforcement, emergency services, traffic management, traffic control, and transit. In some cases this sharing was achieved by electronically transmitting the information between separate locations, by collocating personnel from different agencies in a single Transportation Management Center (TMC), or by other means such as voice communications, pager, or fax.