Background Development and Concept of Operations for a Real-Time Performance Measurment Monitoring System

Recognition and response to incidents on a freeway is a vital function of freeway management. When an incident occurs, an established response mechanism seeks to return the freeway to normal conditions as rapidly as possible. The state-of-the-practice in current systems focuses on identification of the incident and rapid implementation of the established recovery plan. This is one example of an operational strategy used to monitor and improve conditions on the roadways. What is missing from these systems is systematic feedback on how the plan actually worked and a consistent basis for refining the plan to achieve better results, if possible. The use of a feedback system provides a quantitative basis for assessing the impacts of various operational strategies. That basis is known in other disciplines as system performance measures. While performance measures have been applied in transportation, the area of transportation operations has lagged behind in implementation. This research proposes an experimental design for a real-time performance measures system as well as a concept of operations for utilizing the information.