Initiated in the mid 1980's, as the "Reach the Beach" program, the Maryland State CHART highway incident management system has expanded to a statewide program. CHART is managed by the Maryland State Highway Administration. The system currently includes 375 miles of freeways and 170 miles of highway arterials. Most of the roadway network covered by the system is located in Baltimore, Annapolis, and Fredrick Maryland, and around the Washington D.C. Metro Area. The system is composed of traffic monitoring, incident response, traveler information, and traffic management components.

The study summarized in this report assessed the effectiveness of CHART's operations and components on the interstate freeways and major arterials.

Using data from the 2645 incidents that the incident management team responded to in 1997 and traffic simulation results from the CORSIM model, direct benefits related to delay, fuel consumption, and reduction in secondary incidents were estimated. Benefits were calculated from a sample of 183 incident cases in which average duration of incident response was 25.6 minutes and the 35 percent reduction on average in incident duration due to CHART operations.

Using those measures and other simulation results, it was estimated that the total delay reduction for 1997 due to CHART was approximately 15.6 million vehicle hours and fuel consumption was reduced by about 5.85 million gallons.

The reduction in secondary incidents was computed from Maryland State Police accident reports, and was found to be 337 secondary incidents in 1997.

Notes

See Also:

CHART Program Performance (2002)
CHART Program Performance (1999 and 2000)