Every day, highway incidents impede mobility on urban, suburban, and rural highways. As a result, it costs substantially more for the traveling public to use these roads under incident conditions. Millions of dollars are lost every year by commuters and other travelers caught in traffic jams associated with highway incidents. To date, little emphasis has been placed on planning for incident management under work or maintenance zone activities. For most construction/maintenance zone activities, incident management planning can be instrumental in maintaining acceptable traffic operations along currently congested highways. In these cases, planning steps can be conducted to assure a program of incident management is addressed for the project's needs. These steps may involve the review of highway conditions under the work activity, the identification of anticipated traffic operations, and the selection of feasible and cost-effective solutions aimed at reducing the traffic impacts to the public. The end result will be more favorable traffic operations under highway construction/maintenance activities. (A)
Abstract