ATIS-Incident: Advanced Travel Information System for Nonrecurrent Congestion--Case Study in Maryland

This paper is illustrative in nature, intending to present an ATIS-incident management system for freeway networks in Maryland, including all its principal modules and their interrelationships, the embedded estimation logics, and the interface with an example application. The proposed system, developed with the incident response record over the past five years from Maryland State Highway Administration, enables responsible traffic operators to project the duration of a detected incident, estimate the resulting delay as well as the maximum queue length. With such information en-route drivers can be informed in a timely manner with various means such as VMS, internet, or radios. Depending on the estimated impacted area, traffic control centers can also decide if some levels of detour operation should be activated or not. Despite the exploratory nature of the proposed ATIS-incident management, it offers an operational platform for traffic agencies to constantly update the embedded models with valuable data from day-to-day incident response operations, and to investigate how to best contend with the frequent non-recurrent congestion in the highway networks.