Analysis, Modeling, and Simulation for Traffic Incident Management Applications

Traffic incidents are a major source of congestion in both urban and rural areas. Nationally, roughly 25% of total congestion is due to traffic incidents. Further, traffic incidents create unexpected congestion — congestion that occurs in times and places where travelers don’t expect to be delayed — and are therefore a major source of frustration for travelers. Implementing Traffic Incident Management (TIM) strategies has proven to be a highly cost-effective way of treating congestion problems. However, a strong need exists to be able to predict what the impacts of TIM strategies will be at the planning stage of project development and to monitor the effects of TIM programs. To support modeling and evaluation of TIM strategies, this document provides a synthesis of analysis, modeling, and simulation (AMS) methods for incident impacts. The focus is on incidents effects on congestion and reliability as well as secondary incidents, for the purpose of estimating benefits and evaluating programs and proposed strategies. This document covers several specific topics including: a synthesis of AMS methods for incidents, TIM AMS application areas, data required to undertake modeling and evaluations of TIM strategies, and identification of future improvements to TIM AMS applications.