Design and Benefit–Cost Analysis of Deploying Freeway Incident Response Units

Abstract

This study presents an optimization strategy for highway agencies to distribute incident response units effectively along freeway segments plagued by frequent incidents. The proposed method, based on the p-median model, convincingly outperforms three state-of-the-practice deployment strategies for performance evaluation with the incident data from 2006 to 2010 on I-495 (Capital Beltway) in the state of Maryland. A comprehensive benefit–cost analysis of deploying an incident response system with different response units is also presented. Findings from this research could serve as the basis for traffic managers to design and to deploy a benefit–cost incident management system.