Incident Management and Network Performance

This paper describes an investigation into the scope for reducing trip time variability associated with incidents (e.g. accidents), better incident management. The investigation involved using micro-simulation (S-Paramics) to model incident detection response in a part of the Auckland (New Zealand) network, which includes a motorway and adjacent parallel arterial roads. effect of blockages on the motorway or an adjacent arterial road, with and without mitigation (e.g. modifying the SCATS road signal coordination plan, using variable message signing and allowing motorway traffic to use the hard-shoulder), assessed. It was found that the reductions in the variability of trip times, as a result of implementing mitigation options, much larger than the reductions in mean trip times.