We're often at the mercy of unpredictable incidents on our roadways.
Especially severe ones that increase congestion and turn our highways into parking lots for hours.
When these events happen, a detour just isn't enough to absorb the impact and can often cause congestion on more than just that initial roadway.
Integrated Corridor Management or
ICM is an approach to transportation management where all existing modes and assets within a corridor work together
to manage atypical traffic congestion and give travelers options. When atypical traffic events occur a
holistic response is needed. All assets need to be involved to help resolve the issue and
get traffic moving again.
ICM is in the background,
monitoring to detect when conditions exist that are beyond the capability of traditional traffic management. And when an
extremely impacting event occurs,
ICM proactively
responds, sort of flexes the entire corridor to absorb the congestion event rather than just focusing on the vicinity of the event.
With ICM,
we have agencies working together
to manage a traffic incident in the whole region. And
so they are working together to respond to elements of the traffic incident outside of their own
jurisdictions. And when it comes to managing unplanned events,
ICM can help mitigate traffic congestion. Planned events include things like parades or
festivals, sporting events.
Agencies do weeks and months of planning in advance of these events.
They provide information to the public about alternate routes, about additional transit that they've set up.
None of this is possible when you have an unexpected event
like weather or a major severe traffic crash. And so
ICM is needed in those situations when you don't know the event in advance.
More than a decade ago,
integrated corridor management wouldn't have been possible.
But it is now. Traffic data, roadway data, statistical data, traffic models...the list goes on.
We now have so much data at our fingertips,
data that can be integrated and used to help with traffic congestion.
ICM uses a highly advanced computer driven system called a decision support system, or DSS,
to tie together the constant monitoring of traffic conditions, and the near
instantaneous response strategy to help mitigate a sudden event.
Two
USDOT ICM demonstration sites in San Diego and Dallas, successfully piloted the proof of concept for ICM.
13 other regions were awarded grants to enable their own ICM systems and several more sites across the country are pursuing their own
independent ICM programs.
In San Diego, the Interstate 15 corridor is a heavily traveled roadway, used by commuter and
commercial vehicles. During typical weekdays, demand on the interstate is high due to the limited number of alternative routes.
Integrated Corridor Management was thought for us a means to be able to better manage this asset and try to squeeze out the most
capacity that we could. And to try to ensure that the operations in the facility would be done
so in a very safe manner. And so those two underlying premises behind our interest in integrated corridor management was
improving congestion and trying to increase safety. Back in 2015,
we had a major delay
causing incident were three of the four
southbound lanes were closed to traffic because of this particular incident. And so the integrated corridor management system immediately
began to kick in and it tries to understand where the incident occurred and then begins to look at all the different
responses that might be able to be implemented and
how the system can be
coordinated in a way to begin to address that delay. And what it essentially did was it started to reroute traffic
off of the freeway upstream of the incident. And it did this by coordinating the traffic signal timing on all the local
arterials where the traffic was being rerouted. And this is all happening in
really in a matter of milliseconds behind the scenes.
By implementing integrated corridor management,
San Diego saw excellent results. You look at travel time savings, you look at fuel savings and you look at travel time
reliability. Those are the three benefits. And when we go through and calculate sort of the economic benefits,
we've determined that there's really sort of a ten to one benefit ratio.
So we invested around ten million dollars,
but the benefit that came to the region each year as a result of this was measured in the
magnitude of over a hundred million dollars of benefit as a result of integrated corridor management.
So, it's really got a great payback. The benefits of ICM are more than just monetary.
They also have real impacts on people's lives.
Traffic congestion keeps people from getting home on time. It affects our economy
ICM can provide solutions to help with all of those challenges.
ICM is not going to mitigate every potential ramifications of a severe crash.
There is no management strategy that can do that, but ICM can significantly
lessen the potential impacts of a crash.
So instead of a crash that
takes four hours to clear, perhaps a major severe crash would take half of that with ICM.
The way ICM is most beneficial to motorists and to customers in my area is
by reducing traffic queues, reducing drive time and
reducing the recovery time when an incident occurs. All of that helps reduce
secondary incidents, helps reduce stress for motorists, helps reduce resources used. And gets people to work
faster, gets people home to their families faster and safer.
How do you get started?
First, determine if you have a multi-modal corridor in your region
that would benefit from ICM by answering a few questions:
Is there significant congestion, when even a moderate to large
incident shuts down major highways. Is the infrastructure there?
Like arterial roads and transit routes that could absorb
multiple detours of traffic. Is transit available in the area? To also help mitigate these events.
Is there strong institutional support for ICM?
These are just a few of the questions
you'll want to ask yourself prior to implementing ICM in your area. Find out more by visiting the ICM website and
clicking on the "10 attributes of a successful ICM site" document. On the ICM website,
you'll find additional resources from the U-S Department of Transportation.
Guidance documents, training opportunities, conferences, webinars and the browseable ICM knowledgebase can be accessed here
or by contacting the Federal Highway Administration.
My suggestion to
agencies who are trying to develop an ICM program is just start talking to your counterparts. Start talking to the local entities in your area.
I just present them with a realistic idea that eventually
something will occur and we will be forced to close a freeway for that incident.
Once the freeway closes, I ask them if they want to be involved in helping mitigate that traffic and developing detour plans
or if they just want to let motorists find their own way.
So it makes it a pretty clear choice for them. Integrated corridor management is around people. It's around process. It's around technology.
But at the beginning it's people. It provides a platform for
operators of these, what are historically siloed systems,
local intersection management, freeway management, transit management
and so it brings people together around a common objective and that common objective is how do we move people more efficiently?
How do we reduce travel time? How do we increase safety?
When transportation agencies make effective connections,
travelers can plan predictable trips, get home to their families safely. Goods get to where they need to be on time.
And there's an increase in mobility and safety for everyone who travels the roadway.
Make the connections, get your team together and see if integrated corridor management can help manage congestion in your city.