9/11/2008 — Traffic Incident Management Plans in Southeast Michigan and Southeastern Wisconsin: Institutional and Technical Challenges to Managing Congestion and Improving Responder Safety
Q. What do you feel the role of the private sector should be in regards to the TIME Program, since incidents have such a big impact on travel time reliability, just in time delivery, etc.?
A. John Corbin: I think the presentations touched on the private sector in a number of regards. We've talked about, or actually, as evidenced by the participation in this webinar, certainly all the way from the program support level, where, for example, Steve and I have been working together across this public-private sector divide as partners in supporting the TIME Program and statewide efforts for a long time I guess.
Steve Cyra: We're getting old, John.
John Corbin: Fifteen years or more, and so I think that's one area in which contractor and consultant expertise and resources, and public sector leadership and collaboration certainly fit into program management. I think to hear about the private sector, as far as response, certainly in the towing and recovery side of things, the environmental clean up contractors, having them actively at the table, I know, has been instrumental in the success in Wisconsin and in other states. So on the response side, private sector is active as well. I think on the industry side, the industry partners' side, the freight and the trucking industry has one of the largest economic stakes in the success of traffic incident management. And I know the American Trucking Association, the American Transportation Research Institute (and Rebecca Brewster who's their executive director)—that's the research arm of the trucking industry—have been vital private sector partners in the development of the coalition. I would just plug and then defer to insights from other presenters, one development that I did not mention related to the coalition is the formation of the National Traffic Incident Management Foundation, which is specifically being established separate from the coalition to accommodate private sector vendor, consultant, freight industry, financial participation in the activities and involvements of the coalition as we move forward; for example, NUG implementation. So the private sector is by no means an after thought. In fact, private sector partners all the way from national and state program levels down to the response side are vital, in some cases central, partners.
Steve Cyra: Just to quickly add to that and build on what John has indicated: I kind of skipped over an element of talking about the Freeway Service Team in my presentation due to time. But also the private sector—we're seeing a much stronger opportunity and interest in sponsoring some of these highly visible programs like Freeway Service Patrols, like public safety messages through AAA, so that's another area that the private sector can really jump in and be a part of this.
Q. Was the cost/benefit ratio discussed for the Freeway Courtesy Patrol or the entire ITS Program?
Morrie Hoevel: I think I can probably answer that question in that it was, just for the Freeway Courtesy Patrol.
Q. How did SEMCOG go about developing the criteria for their levels of incidents?
Tom Bruff: This is something that we had worked on a number of years ago. I think we had done some research and borrowed some information that we had seen on some other documents. It wasn't something terribly new. If anybody knows me, I'm one to look around and see what others have done and use it if I think it looks good. The thing that's been difficult has been how do you then implement that? How do you get the stakeholders to use that? When we had a discussion and presented some of this information and one of our news stations traffic reporters, a helicopter pilot, saw this. He thought this was the greatest thing in the world, that if we could categorize these things and educate the public enough to give them a sense of the severity and the duration of the incidents using these levels it would be a good thing. Unfortunately, we really haven't taken it much further than what you see on the piece of paper. But if you're interested you can just email me, and I can provide you an expanded sheet, which actually breaks it down by the different first responders and what their duties might be, and some of the other severity levels of the incidents.
Q. Does SEMCOG cooperate with Canadian Authorities regarding incidents on border crossing bridges etc?
Tom Bruff: Well, we try our hardest to get all the stakeholders at the table. We do have representatives from some of the bridge and tunnel crossings in Canada. As far as getting representatives from Canada actually there, I don't think that we've really had a lot of success. But we do talk specifically with the bridges and the tunnels. We're talking with them about sharing video camera imaging, we're talking about sharing data regarding the bridge crossings, and as far as the time it takes and some of the delays that are going on and what those delays are. Again, some additional performance measures, but it's always a task to get other stakeholders like that. They've got a lot of operational issues going, so a lot of times they just can't afford the time to come to a meeting.
Q. Does the Detroit area Freeway Service Patrol receive federal funding for operations?
Morrie Hoevel: I think I can probably answer that and the answer is yes. CMAQ funds are used for funding the operations of the Freeway Courtesy Patrol.
Q. What is the relationship between AAA and the FCP?
Morrie Hoevel: I know that early on in the Detroit area, AAA was very much involved with the incident management programs. I think they actually were helping to fund some of the Freeway Courtesy Patrol vehicles early on. But since it turned over to federal funding, I don't think that's being done anymore. Tom, could you verify that or give a little bit more history?
Tom Bruff: AAA, the automobile insurance club, they were in on the early side of the Courtesy Patrol, and I think they did participate in providing some of the infrastructure, whether it was on vehicles or other things as part of that patrol. Later this was a DOT-run program. However, they put out a proposal for operating that program. AAA used to be one of the operators and now it falls under a different operator, but at the time they were running the service.
Q. How are TRU vehicles funded? Is it similar to the Road Ranger Program?
Steve Cyra: Yeah, and John feel free to jump in here, too. The vehicles themselves, the fully equipped vehicles, some of the initial equipment was funded through Wisconsin DOT with the agreement that the county highway maintenance departments, which are essentially under contract in Wisconsin to maintain the roadways, would operate them. Since that time I believe that the ongoing maintenance of the vehicles, the ongoing operations, the replenishment of supplies, is all done on a county basis, but that they receive funding through the DOT for highway maintenance, so that's where it comes from.
John Corbin: And the only thing I would add to that would—and all of Steve's response was accurate—the initial deployment of those units was supported in part by CMAQ funds. And it actually was a corollary to some of our early pilot freeway service patrol deployments, the Gateway Patrols, which are roving flatbed tow trucks under contract. So there were some federal funds involved in the initial procurement of some of the traffic response units. Subsequently, a lot of that has been deployed out of our operations budget, which is our maintenance budget. And, as Steve mentioned, the Wisconsin DOT has no maintenance field forces. We contract for those services with our 72 counties.
Q. For those people in our group who were unable to attend today, will this webinar be repeated at any time in the future? Will we be able to download the presentations?
Craig Austin: In the next few weeks the presentations, as well as a transcript of the questions and answers and a flash file of the webinar itself will be posted in the T3 Archives Page.
Q. What is CMAQ as it relates to federal funding?
Morrie Hoevel: CMAQ stands for Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality, and certain areas that, maybe Tom could provide a little bit more detail on that, but certain areas that have environmental issues, basically larger metropolitan areas that don't meet some thresholds get portions of that each year through the Federal Highway Administration. Want to add anything to that, Tom?
Tom Bruff: No, I think that's correct. This region receives CMAQ funding and we're able to spend that on projects like this or ITS projects or signal retiming projects, which again reduce congestion, reduce delay and improve flow, which theoretically improves air quality.
Q. How similar are TRU and the Road Ranger Program?
Steve Cyra: I could jump in on that real quick. TRU stands for Traffic Response Unit, and the main purpose for TRU is to provide emergency traffic control. I believe Road Ranger is a little bit more towards that traditional freeway service patrol model. However, as part of FHWA's efforts to reduce congestion in some of the major cities across the U.S., there's going to be a little bit more emphasis on providing full function service patrols, or freeway service patrols, that would have the capability of providing that emergency traffic control in addition to clearing a stalled vehicle or assisting in an incident clean up type of a thing. So that's basically the difference, and the similarities kind of stop there. But TRU is again just strictly for emergency traffic control.
Q. Is anyone familiar with legislation that addresses immunity for tow truck operators?
Morrie Hoevel: I know in the Detroit area we're trying to move towards some legislation, which we're calling Hold Harmless legislation, which would allow MDOT vehicles, as well as contracted vehicles through MDOT and other public agencies, to be held harmless if they should happen to damage a vehicle while they're trying to move it off a roadway. But perhaps somebody from Wisconsin, Steve or John, would have a little bit more information on that.
John Corbin: Well, I can take a stab at it, and Steve, you can correct me. In Wisconsin the statutory language basically incorporated reference to entities acting under the direction of the State of Wisconsin so that towing and recovery contractors that were operating under the authority, direction, or in concurrence with the State of Wisconsin, that their mitigation of liability in clearing and potentially damaging cargo or vehicles was accommodated, or their liability was mitigated. Steve, please chime in.
John Corbin: Yeah, that's accurate. There have been a variety of research scans on that topic to gather language, and if anybody out there is interested, feel free to email me. I think I can dust off some of the research that the TIME Program sponsored and provide you with some areas that do in fact have that language. And I see one statement came in that Georgia has a law that provides limited liability to towers, and we can certainly provide the wording from Wisconsin as well, and perhaps even other areas based on that research. But that's important. It's important to towers, because when they're talking about quick clearance, and if they know that they're okay with breaking the taillight on a Corvette or something like that in the spirit of getting it cleared quickly, but still responsibility, it's kind of a big deal. It helps the towers to get on board and help support the legislation for quick clearance.
Q. Is there a particular place that you can point to where you can look at successful Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) among emergency responders?
Steve Cyra: I could jump in. Back in the early days of the TIME Program, when it was first being established, there was a kind of a broad partnership agreement that was established that some of the executives and leaders of the various partnering organizations signed into, basically, a commitment to work together. I'd be happy to provide you with that language to maybe get started. MOUs are different, in my experience at least, some they're considered more a legal binding document and sometimes there's reluctance to sign into them without all sorts of legal reviews. And others it's kind of a slam dunk. So there's certain areas that have them and others that don't.
Tom Bruff: I think that with our memorandum of understanding or memorandum of regional cooperation it doesn't necessarily— is binding, but it does show that there's an urgency or a commitment to work together towards a common vision. And even though it might not be terribly binding, I think that it is a very important step in a lot of cases.
