Integrated Corridor Management: Operational Strategies under Interstate Diversion Scenarios

This thesis looks at operational strategies to increase capacity within the context of Integrated Corridor Management (ICM) under a non-recurring Interstate incident scenario. This incident scenario creates lengthy queues and increased delay and travel times on the Interstate, forcing a portion of Interstate traffic to utilize alternate routes throughout the corridor, changing the network traffic patterns. Particular operational strategies are tested under this premise to qualify and mildly quantify the benefits of relaying incident and diversion routing information to corridor drivers, mimicking ITS information dissemination elements such as changeable message signs, highway advisory radio, in vehicle navigation systems and etc. This thesis assumes idealized institutional ICM aspects, data-sharing, and technology integration.

The experimental analysis for the corridor network was conducted in VISSIM microsimulation, with its NEMA signal interface, also making use of VISUM macrosimulation, and Synchro 6 signal timing optimization. Based upon the results of this analysis, it was concluded that for the study area, implementing ICM strategies pertaining to advance driver warning and routing information pertaining to an incident can mildly reduce travel time and delay at the entire network-level, but travel time and delay do increase on the incident roadway corridor level when compared to a do nothing scenario during the off-peak period. This research also successfully validates the ability to convert a regional planning-level model into a working microsimulation, operations-level model.