The advancements in transportation demand forecasting models and the integration of these models with geographic information systems make them attractive environments for the implementations of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) evaluation/sketch planning tools. Compared to using sketch planning tools that act as post processors to demand models, such implementations allow more consistency between the sketch planning procedures and the demand modeling algorithms and eliminate the work required to transform the demand forecasting output for use as inputs to the sketch planning tools This study investigates the implementation of an evaluation methodology for the combined effects of incident management and dynamic message sign deployments as part of regional demand modeling environment. The implemented methodology has a number of advantages compared to the methodologies currently used in the most widely used ITS sketch planning tool. These improvements include the incorporation of incident type, duration, and frequency in the delay calculations; consideration of secondary accident reduction; better estimation of fuel consumption and emissions based on queue length, and better estimations of the number of DMS activations and diversion rates based on incident and traffic conditions. The benefit/cost analysis presented for two case studies in the paper indicate that the Enhanced Methodology can provide a better estimation of ITS impacts. It is recommended that the enhanced methodology is considered for implementation in IDAS and other sketch planning tools.
Abstract