Incident Management Assistance Patrols (IMAP) are vital in dealing with traffic, benefiting the public in terms of motorist assistance/customer satisfaction, incident management, reduction in incident-induced delay, reduction in secondary incidents, higher throughput, improved safety, lower energy use and lower emissions. IMAP have been implemented in many large urban areas including Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston, with benefit-cost ratios that range from 3:1 to 23:1. They have also been implemented in 5 North Carolina contexts, including the Triangle and Charlotte. While the system in Charlotte is reported (in 1993) to have benefit-cost ratios between 3:1 and 7:1, there is a need to quantify benefits of existing IMAPs and identify potential for other North Carolina IMAP expansion and implementation. North Carolina has close to 200,000 police-reported crashes yearly and many more non-crash incidents e.g., vehicles run out of gas, stall or are hindered by debris on road. Presently, the 5 IMAP programs in NC cover only a fraction of these crashes and incidents, e.g., that made about 45,000 stops across the state - and over 50% including assisting disabled motorists. There are many NC areas that may present good IMAP deployment opportunities, allowing us to move towards implementing intelligent transportation systems. However, there is a need to identify which of the potential sites should receive the highest priority for IMAP implementation. This study will therefore:Review service patrols benefit-cost literature and synthesize their finding to explore implications for North Carolina.Develop criteria to identify IMAP expansion opportunities within NC, i.e., IMAP should be expanded to cities or counties that will benefit the most. These are perhaps those experiencing higher incident/crash frequency, more traffic on roadways, more injurious crashes (i.e., higher total K & A injury crashes and higher K& A crashes per million vehicle miles), longer incident detection times, longer response times and clearance times, low levels of motorists assistance, poor incident management, and worsening air quality; we will inventory incident and crash data that can help identify opportunities for expanding IMAP to ""high-impact"" areas within NC.Utilize detailed NC data on traffic demand, capacity, incidents and hypothetical IMAP attributes (miles patrolled per day, number of IMAP vehicles, number of incident responses per day and response times) in the ""high-impact"" areas, along with a traffic model (FREEVAL) to assess the benefits of IMAPs.
Based on the North Carolina Highway Safety Information System (HSIS) crash data and inventory data (which includes geometric information and daily traffic) and other data sources, we will explore IMAP program opportunities in geographical areas such as cities and counties. In addition, we will review the field date requirements and relevant products (e.g., hardware and software) that will be appropriate for NC. We will obtain cost estimates from the federally maintained benefit-cost database.
The primary objectives of the research study are to:
- Quantify benefits and costs of existing IMAPs in North Carolina.
- Identify opportunities for IMAP initiation and expansion in North Carolina.
- Identify the field data requirements for incident management and relevant hardware/software.
NCDOT will be able to use this research to:Quantify the benefits and costs of existing IMAPs to better manage incidents, assist travelers, and reduce incident-induced congestion and derive associated benefits.Identify IMAP expansion opportunities in North Carolina.Assess what IMAP data and technologies will be needed for future record keeping and planning.The products will help NCDOT make more informed and educated decisions about resource allocation and program funding.
