Highway 401 in Metropolitan Toronto, Canada is one of North America's busiest urban freeways. COMPASS, a state-of-the-art Freeway Traffic Management System (FTMS) was implemented in 1991 to reduce congestion and increase safety levels on the highway. Since its initial implementation, COMPASS has been continuously monitored, enhanced and expanded. This paper presents the results and methodologies followed to undertake an evaluation of the effectiveness of COMPASS in meeting its objectives. A series of five measures of effectiveness were selected to evaluate the performance of the initial portion of the COMPASS system: incident duration, vehicular delay, secondary accident rate, quality of traffic flow, and driver response to Changeable Message Signs (CMS's).
Samenvatting