METHODOLOGY TO QUANTIFY THE COST EFFECTIVENESS OF FREEWAY SERVICE PATROLS PROGRAMS.CASE STUDY - H.E.L.P. PROGRAM.

Abstract

Cost effectiveness of Freeway Service Patrol aims to construct a relationship between program operational characteristics, traffic conditions, and incident distribution. Due to existent interdependencies, benefits induced by implementing this low-cost strategy are hard to isolate and quantify. This thesis designs a methodology to accommodate variability of prevailing traffic conditions by means of micro-simulation. Its literature review presents main ramifications of incident related research, exploring operational aspects related to emergency response, non-recurrent congestion estimation and micro-simulation procedures. A CORSIM model is developed to account for incidents development, provide relevant output (i.e., delay, fuel consumption, emissions and occupancy values), and estimate a panel of benefit-cost ratios. Also, based on the feasible area created by shock waves a new procedure to determine the number of secondary incidents is developed. Compared with similar research, the current research provides relevant results in terms of warranted traffic conditions for freeway service patrols deployment.