Operation Data for Evaluating Benefits and Costs of Advanced Traffic Management Components

Economic measures are important to allow traffic management agencies to select between investment and operation alternatives based on the benefits and costs of these alternatives. However, previous studies have either evaluated the benefits and costs of the management systems as a whole, without considering their individual components, or focused on the evaluation of the service patrol programs. The use of a detailed intelligent transportation systems operation data set is illustrated in the evaluation of the economic effectiveness of the individual components of traffic management programs. The analyzed components include the service patrol program, closed circuit television (CCTV) camera subsystem, dynamic message sign system (DMS) and advanced traveler information subsystem (ATIS), and the severe incident response vehicle (SIRV) program. The results showed that for the evaluated system, the SIRV program provided the highest benefit-cost ratio, followed by the CCTV camera subsystem and service patrol program, followed by DMS-ATIS deployments. The use of the methods and parameters identified in the study allow better predeployment assessments of incident management systems by transportation agencies. The methods and parameters were used as part of a sketch planning tool that was integrated as part of a demand forecasting modeling environment.