This document focuses on freeway and incident management systems, a component of ITS. It aims to provide practical help for the transportation community with deploying freeway and incident management systems in an integrated, multimodal environment using the National ITS Architecture. ITS is the application of management strategies and technologies to increase the efficiency and safety of national, regional, and local surface transportation systems. This document covers the basics of freeway and incident management ITS applications, the role the National ITS Architecture can play in freeway and incident management system project development, the development process for a regional architecture, some challenges faced by transportation management agencies, and some best practices and lessons learned for developing and deploying advanced freeway and incident management systems.

Intended to assist agencies responsible for incident management activities on public roadways to improve their programs and operations.Organized into three major sections: Introduction to incident management; organizing, planning, designing and implementing an incident management program; operational and technical approaches to improving the incident management process.

Intelligent Freeway Transportation Systems: Functional Design focuses on the efficient use of resources in the design of ITS. It discusses the principles of top down design starting with objectives and requirements, and provides guidance for the development and evaluation of functional design alternatives according to cost effectiveness principles. It shows how transportation planning principles such as Wardrop’s Laws and traffic diversion principles relate to functional ITS device selections and equipment locations. Methodologies for translating objectives to functional device types are provided. Application factors to identify device deployment densities (e.g. number of detectors per mile) as a function of traffic conditions are provided, as are evaluation models for evaluating the benefits of design alternatives based on traffic conditions. Design guidance and benefits evaluation include the following functions: (1) Non-recurrent congestion – Improvement of incident clearance time, (2) Non recurrent congestion – Incident information to motorists, (3) Recurrent congestion – Information to motorists, (4) Ramp metering, (5) Motorist service patrols.