ITS AND INCIDENT MANAGEMENT : IT'S NOT JUST FOR LARGE CITIES!

Policy makers at both the federal and state levels need to review their ITS programs to answer the following questions: Do smaller urban areas experience significant traffic congestion? Can they benefit from traffic management/incident management programs? If so, how can they afford the capital outlay an ongoing operations cost necessary to provide such services? This paper suggests that traffic problems in small- to medium-sized urban areas is real; the principles of incident management are universal; and there is great potential to economize technology investments for system operations, while still realizing substantial benefits