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Incident Management Activities Houston-Galveston Area Council 1/12/2015 10:36:43 AMProject Narrative
The Houston-Galveston region needs to continue its support to fund, enhance, and expand incident management activities on freeways throughout the Houston-Galveston region. The region’s freeway system handles nearly 58 million vehicle miles of traffic daily, resulting often in serious congestion, especially during the morning and afternoon commutes. A traffic incident, ranging from a stalled vehicle to a fatality, can drastically impact the system’s performance, potentially bringing traffic to a standstill. It is estimated that half of the region’s congestion is caused by non-recurring incidents, such as stalls, crashes, debris, construction, and weather. These incidents lead to costly travel delays, secondary crashes, increased safety risks to responders and motorists, wasted fuel, and increased emissions. To reduce the impacts of these incidents, it is critical to have a system in place to ensure that incidents are identified, addressed, and cleared as fast as possible to rapidly restore mobility and to enhance the safety of the system and its users. While it may appear that a freeway incident impacts only those involved, the costs are far greater and have regional impact. A number of studies have indicated that for every minute a freeway lane is blocked due to an incident conservatively creates four minutes of travel delay. These impacts have negative economic and other implications regionally: • Lost productivity and personal time sitting in traffic, for employees and for the delivery of goods. • The law enforcement, fire and other emergency responder costs related to incident response. • The risk of multiple secondary crashes from the resulting backup or distraction • Fuel is wasted by vehicles sitting in traffic, ranging from 0.25 to 1.2 gallons per hour An effective traffic incident management (TIM) program for Houston’s freeway system will provide a standardized and significantly more-coordinated approach to quickly and safely removing incidents that have regional impacts. By ensuring that the resources are available and are working in tandem, as a team, traffic flow can be returned to normal, minimizing disruptions in commerce and worker productivity, improving safety, reducing the amount of fuel wasted, and reducing harmful emissions into the air we all breathe. The funding will be used to conduct the following activities: • Law enforcement will have a presence on the TranStar floor to monitor the freeway system for incidents. This allows for initial identification, verification, and dispatch of appropriate resources to an incident. In addition, it allows for law enforcement to remotely approve the towing of disabled vehicles without having to physically go to the scene. • The towing community will respond to incidents and quickly remove disabled vehicles not involved in crashes from the system to restore the flow of traffic and rapidly relocate freeway patrons from an unsafe situation. • Law enforcement will be dedicated to patrolling freeways and serve as first responder to address incidents, conduct scene management, and process crashes as they occur. • Funding will also be used to administer the program with its various components. The program will operate on the freeway system throughout the TMA. The program will be phased in geographically based on the availability of surveillance capabilities, the timing of counties to implement the program, as well as the availability of additional funding to increase the three aspects of the program. The initially identified freeway segments for the program include: • IH 10 - Brazos River to SH 146 • IH 45 - Walker County Line to Galveston Island • US 59 - Spur 10 in Rosenberg to Splendora • US 90 - IH 10 to FM 2100 • US 290 - IH 610 to SH 99 • SH 288 - Downtown Houston to SH 6 • SH 225 - IH 610 to SH 146 • IH 610 - The entire loop • SH 249 - BW 8 to the Montgomery County Line • US 90A - IH 610 to US 59 • SH 146 - Spur 330 to Port Rd. Program geography may be altered due to changes in traffic and incident activity. This project should be considered as an operational alternative to freeway construction. The ability to remove an incident in a quick manner is part of reclaiming capacity.Project Narrative
No Categorical Exclusion (CE) (c)(27) Highway safety or traffic operations improvement project which meets constraints in paragraph (e) No 07/01/2015 No No Not applicable No There will be a public outreach campaign involved in the implementation of the program so motorists will know what exactly the program provides, the rights of patrons when their vehicle breaks down, and the nature of the partnership. Attached is the concept of operations for the regional incident management program. H-GAC is in the process of funding surveillance personnel on the floor of TranStar to monitor the system and approve qualifying quick clearance tows of non-crash incidents. HPD had its last court case regarding the SAFEClear program dismissed, allowing for the subsidizing of tows to occur. HPD will be reprocuring tow operators over the summer. HCSO will begin its procurement process most likely in the fall since the program is new to them and staffing is not in place. A potential pilot for law enforcement field presence is expected to start in FY 16.Map/Location
Project Budget
Incident Management - Project Budget.xlsx
Yes YesScreening Questions
Yes The lifespan of the program is contingent on the availability of funding beyond the five-year period.Evalutation Questions - ITS Projects
Benefit /Cost Methodology
H-GAC to conduct analysis based on the GIS/map project location and project scope information provided above.
Congestion Safety
Incident/Event Management
Yes; The funding will continue the freeway incident management program for the region. The program consists of the following components for conducting incident management: • Freeway Surveillance – Law enforcement will have a presence on the TranStar floor to monitor the freeway system for incidents. This allows for initial identification, verification, and dispatch of appropriate resources to an incident. In addition, it allows for law enforcement to remotely approve the towing of disabled vehicles without having to physically go to the scene. Due to its physical size, the amount of freeway system, and the corresponding traffic, The Houston Police Department, Harris County Sheriff’s Department and METRO Police Department will handle surveillance for Harris County. In adjacent counties, with fewer freeway miles to monitor, it is recommended that the Texas Department of Public Safety employ a couple deputies to conduct the required surveillance activities from TranStar for these counties. • Quick Clearance via the SAFEClear Concept – Utilizing the SAFEClear concept introduced by the City of Houston, the program will partner with and fund the towing industry to respond to incidents and quickly remove disabled vehicles not involved in crashes from the system to restore the flow of traffic and rapidly relocate freeway patrons from an unsafe situation. Tows for disabled vehicles not involved in crashes on the freeway will be subsidized by the program at no cost to the traveling public. Unlike the City’s program, which subsidized only tows from the freeway shoulder, the new program will also subsidize tows from moving lanes in order to reduce confusion for the public, prevent potential altercations with stranded patrons, and to restore mobility to the system in a rapid manner. • Increased Law Enforcement Field Presence – It is recommended that dedicated patrols, specifically trained in incident management and processing, be established strictly for monitoring freeway operations and conduct TIM response. This force will be dedicated to patrolling the freeway and serve as first responder to address incidents, conduct scene management, and process crashes as they occur. To streamline operational and administrative issues, it is recommended that the respective County Sheriff be the responsible agency for freeway patrol for each county. Due to its size, number of freeways, and geopolitical setup, Harris County patrols will consist of HPD covering within the City, HCSO covering segments outside of Houston, and METRO PD covering the HOV/HOT lane system. ; Yes; The program serves the regional freeway system, which is part of the NHS.; Yes; All freeway incidents are tracked at Houston TranStar in the Regional Incident Management System (RIMS), which serves not only as the incident database, but also provides incident information to the traveling public via the Houston TranStar website. This information also feeds the DMS signs on the freeway. In addition, TranStar does provide alerts via text regarding freeway incidents.; Yes; Part of the funding for this program is to enhance first responder presence on the freeway system so it can access incidents in a more timely manner to begin traffic control and scene management activities.; No; Not applicable to the project.; No; None of these technologies will be in place at the time of deployment of the program.;Coordination
System Migration/Expandability
No; This is more of a labor-based operation. Expansion of the communications network will be a part of expanding the program as a whole.; Yes; This program is set up such that there will be a level of consistency in incident management operations throughout the region. Other counties that become a part of the program will be expected to operate under the same set of guidelines.;Integration and Information Sharing
AND, System ties into another agency’s systems to allow for the sharing of data; Operations of the Incident Management program will be predominantly managed out of TranStar, which will provide information feeds. In addition, program staff will be providing information into the TranStar system. IP access will allow for agencies outside of Harris County to access video and information feeds for their counties without requiring physical staffing at TranStar.; Yes; The Regional Incident Management System (RIMS) will be the central data collection system for the program. Information about incidents in the database will be transmitted to the traveling public via website, text, and DMS.; Yes; The RIMS system being utilized collects data on incidents including incident notification, incident detection and verification, dispatch notification, scene arrival, and scene clearance. This provides a comprehensive look at how long it takes for incidents to be responded to and cleared.;Asset Mgmt/Efficient Operations
Continuity Operations
Yes; This is not a traditional ITS project, so the response will not be consistent with ITS project submittals. The purpose of the program is to address disruptions on the freeway to allow for the continuity of freeway operations. If Houston TranStar's systems are to go out and remote visual identification is not possible, the secondary approach to be taken will be the need for law enforcement to physically go to the incident location to address the incident and relay the information back to TranStar for inclusion in the RIMS system.; Yes; Due to the various systems feeding into TranStar, and the IP access capabilities, the program can operate in a manner that if an agency loses visual capabilities, another agency can assume surveillance and monitoring capabilities. In addition, because law enforcement officers are allowed to operate outside of their assigned jurisdiction in order to preserve safety, other agencies can assume roles in the process. There will be an interagency agreement with participating agencies to ensure this level of operation when needed.; Yes; A number of studies have indicated that for every minute a freeway lane is blocked due to an incident conservatively creates four minutes of travel delay. These impacts have negative economic and other implications regionally: • Commuters lose productivity and personal time sitting in traffic, potentially resulting in being late to work, missing appointments, and returning home late. • Businesses lose productivity and potential revenue while their workers and products are stuck in traffic, especially those that utilize a just-in-time business approach. • Municipalities bear law enforcement, fire and other emergency responder costs related to incident response. • Primary incidents increase the risk of multiple secondary crashes from the resulting backup or distraction, including those that put the incident responder’s safety at risk. • Fuel is wasted by vehicles sitting in traffic, ranging from 0.25 to 1.2 gallons per hour based on the size of the car. • Emissions increase while cars sit at idle or travel at very slow speeds. Having a program that decreases the amount of time that an incident holds up traffic increases the system's reliability.;