2010 Annual Report - Maryland State Highway Administration

Million Vehicle Hours Saved
User cost savings (millions of $)
IV
Mobility and Congestion Relief
CHART representatives continued making presentations on its traffic incident
management program at more than nine regional fire department workshops.
SHA hosted an I-95 Corridor Coalition incident management conference for
multiple agencies, and hosted an I-95 Corridor Coalition-sponsored Quick
Clearance workshop with the state police on March 18, 2010. Throughout the
year, SHA and MDTA continued to work together to integrate their traffic
management centers by region and to establish a unified command structure.
The CHART program yielded a reduction in delay of 32.43 million vehicle-hours,
which corresponds to an annual user cost savings of $1.01 billion. This is an
increase from last year's amount of $0.98 billion. Although the user cost savings
reflects positive results for CHART during last year, cuts to the CHART
operations program resulted in reduced services to motorists. During the
evaluation period for 2009, the average incident duration increased by more
than three minutes.
38
36
34
32
30
28
Savings due to CHART Incident
Management $1,150
$1,100
$1,050
$1,000
$950
$900
2006 2007 2008 2009
Calendar Year
Million Vehicle Hours Saved
User Cost Savings
Winter Storm Traffic Management Response
Maryland’s record-breaking winter weather from December 2009 through
February 2010 greatly tested resources within all response agencies, including
SHA’s CHART responders.
CHART responded to more than 400 incidents and provided more than 180
assists during December’s snowstorm; this represents close to 20 percent
of CHART responses for the month of December in a three-day period;
CHART responded to more than 1,100 incidents and provided more than
500 assists during February’s snowstorms; following a similar comparison as
above, the seven-day response output from CHART represents a staggering
51 percent of the monthly responses for February.
Public use of the Internet to obtain information concerning incidents, weather
closures and counties declaring snow emergencies set all-time records for
utilization:
CHART received more than three million website hits during the three-day
December snowstorm;
For the first time ever, CHART website hits exceeded two million in one day
during the February snowstorm; for the two snowstorms, which spanned
the week of February 5 to February 11, 2010, CHART received more than 10
million website hits. To put this in perspective, nearly two-thirds of the
month’s website hits occurred in a seven-day period.
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STATE HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION | FY 2010 Annual Report