The Toolbox for Congestion Relief

Deployments of operations strategies have been shown to produce significant benefits in terms of reducing traffic congestion, especially when including Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) improvements. The U.S. DOT and numerous local agencies have launched initiatives to encourage deployment and integration of these systems in order to maximize their potential benefits. Cities of Tucson, Cincinnati, and Seattle were chosen as case studies, representing small, medium, and large metropolitan areas. Because complementary strategies to reduce traffic congestion yield the greatest benefit, detailed evaluations and modeling were conducted to determine opportunities for improvement in and cost-benefit of:
1. demand management (i.e. alternative traveling hrs, HOV lanes, telecommute, pricing)
2. Operational improvement (i.e. timing on metering lights, incident response)
3. Increase capacity (i.e. new roads, lanes)

The goals of the study was to assess the benefits of using multiple and systematic strategies to reduce traffic congestion in three metropolitan areas in the U.S.

Positive benefits were estimated for all three regions on all performance measures, including: delay reduction (15-18%), fatal crash reduction (7-9%), emissions reductions (10-25%), and fuel use reduction (11-24%).