Validating the Cost-Effectiveness Model for California’s Freeway Incident Management Program

Freeway service patrol (FSP) is a widely used incident management measure designed to assist disabled vehicles along congested freeway segments and reduce nonrecurring congestion through quick response to accidents and other incidents on freeways. An FSP beat performance evaluation model has been developed and used to analyze the cost-effectiveness of providing FSP service on selected freeway corridors and to assess the overall cost-effectiveness of California’s FSP program. The FSP beat evaluation model estimates traffic delay savings, fuel savings, and emissions reductions per assisted incident as a result of FSP using deterministic queuing techniques. This paper presents 1) a method of using real-world traffic and incident data to validate the FSP performance evaluation (FSPE) model; and 2) the model validation results. The paper also presents key findings about the reliability freeway performance measures, like vehicle miles traveled, vehicle hours traveled, and traffic delays, estimated using the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) Performance Measurement System (PeMS) stationary loop data and INRIX Analytics probe vehicle data.