Collection, Analysis, and Reporting of Kentucky Traffic Incident Management Performance

Abstract

Traffic incidents remain all too common. They negatively affect the safety of the traveling public and emergency responders and cause significant traffic delays. Congestion associated with incidents can instigate secondary crashes, exacerbating safety risks and economic costs. Traffic incident management (TIM) provides an effective approach for managing highway incidents and reducing their occurrence and impacts. The paper discusses the establishment and methods of calculation for five TIM performance measures that are used by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) to improve incident response. The measures are: roadway clearance time, incident clearance time, secondary crashes, first responder vehicle crashes, and commercial motor vehicle crashes. Ongoing tracking and analysis of these metrics aid the KYTC in its efforts to comprehensively evaluate its TIM program and make continuous improvements. As part of this effort, a fully interactive TIM dashboard was developed using the Microsoft Power BI platform. Dashboard users can apply various spatial and temporal filters to identify trends at the state, district, county, and agency level. The dashboard also supports dynamic visualizations such as time-series plots and choropleth maps. With the TIM dashboard in place, KYTC personnel, as well as staff at other transportation agencies, can identify the strengths and weaknesses of their incident management strategies and revise practices accordingly.