Traffic Incident Management (TIM) programs aim to reduce the duration and impact of incidents and improve safety for motorists, crash victims, and incident responders. Their top priorities are to ensure the safety of first responders, roadside workers, and motorists. In addition, TIM prioritizes effective mitigation practices to return roadways back to normal flow of traffic. These programs are based on systematic, planned, and coordinated use of human, institutional, mechanical, and technical resources. While advances have been made, challenges to safe, quick, clearance remain and often more prevalent in the rural environments.

Battelle (lead) and WTI (sub) are teaming to support FHWA activities related to Traffic Incident Management (TIM). The focus of the work  will be to identify and promote elements of TIM that are most effective in rural environments. Specific objectives include:

• Conduct research into the unique challenges, good practices and opportunities necessary to assist rural responders and motorists to improve safety and incident mitigation of rural roadways. The research shall consider the incident scene and operations such a Traffic Management Center (TMC) and Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) Centers as well as Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) infrastructure that support all aspects of the Incident Time Line as described in the National Responder Training.
• Conduct a broad review of current practices, tools, including an inventory of available Intelligent Transportation Systems and other technology, and approaches to identify and mitigate rural and remote roadway incidents.
• Develop a State of the Practice report on current and emerging approaches, technologies and techniques to improve the safe quick clearance of rural roadway incidents.
• Develop training framework and learning objectives.
• Conduct training, marketing and outreach of good practices.
• Prepare an update of the FHWA TIM Program Roadmap to include a rural element.