Active Traffic Management: The Next Step in Congestion Management

The combination of continued travel growth and budget constraints makes it difficult for transportation agencies to provide sufficient roadway capacity in major metropolitan areas. The Federal Highway Administration, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and National Cooperative Highway Research Program sponsored a scanning study to examine congestion management programs and policies in Europe. The scan team observed that transportation agencies in Denmark, England, Germany, and the Netherlands, through the deployment of congestion management strategies, are able to optimize the investment in infrastructure to meet drivers’ needs. Strategies include speed harmonization, temporary shoulder use, and dynamic signing and rerouting. The team’s recommendations for U.S. implementation include promoting active traffic management to optimize existing infrastructure during recurrent and nonrecurrent congestion, emphasizing customer orientation, focusing on trip reliability, providing consistent messages to roadway users, and making operations a priority in planning, programming, and funding processes.