摘要: |
The need to implement an effective Incident Management System (IMS) has received increasing attention from general public, media and policy makers, that in turn has required transportation agencies to perform a rigorous evaluation over any implemented plan. Since 1996, the Maryland State Highway Administration (MSHA) has conducted a comprehensive evaluation of its incident response and management program, named Coordinated Highways Action Response Team (CHART). The evaluation consists of analysis of incident characteristics, evaluation of system efficiency and effectiveness, and estimation of benefits to the users. This paper is focused on presenting the results for the year 2000 CHART evaluation. CHART is the highway incident management program of the Maryland State Highway Administration (MSHA). Initiated in the mid 80' as "Reach the Beach", it has been extended to a statewide program headquartered in Hanover, Maryland where the Statewide Operations Center (SOC) is located. The SOC is also supported by three satellite traffic operations centers (TOC), where TOC-3 is based in Washington D.C. region, TOC-4 in Baltimore, MD, and TOC-5 being seasonal. The current network as shown in Figure 1 covered by CHART consists of both statewide freeways and major arterials with a total length of about 450 miles (~700 km). |