STANDARDIZING AND SIMPLIFYING SAFETY SERVICE PATROL BENEFIT-COST RATIO ESTIMATION

Abstract

Safety Service Patrol (SSP) programs operate nationwide with the aim of mitigating the impact of traffic incidents, especially along urban freeways. The central mission of the SPP programs is to reduce incident duration thereby reducing congestion related travel delays, fuel consumption, emission pollutants, and the likelihood of secondary incidents. The SSP-BC Tool was developed herein to fill the need for a standardized benefit-cost ratio estimation methodology for SSP programs with wide applicability and substantiated and needed updatable monetary conversion rates. The developed tool is designed to capture characteristics of incident, traffic, roadway geometry, and weather particular to the state area. VISSIM, a traffic microsimulation platform, was used to develop several multiple regression models with R-square values of 0.7 to 0.9 to assess the impact of travel delay, fuel consumption, and emission pollutants. Separate approaches were employed to estimate the savings in secondary incidents. In addition, a comprehensive method to compute fuel consumption and emissions is presented.