Transportation Management Center Concepts of Operations

Initiate Revise Cancelnow apply some form of flow monitoring and incident detection algorithm orinformation gathered from E911 calls to automatically report suspectedincidents or recurring congestion to operators. Once an incident is confirmed(again, the selection and preliminary aiming of the camera may be automatedor performed manually), then the development of an incident resolutionscenario can be performed with various levels of automation. This may rangefrom a totally manual approach of selecting various devices (variable messagesigns, lane control signals, ramp meters) and then manually creating andtransmitting messages or commands to each, through selection of messagesfrom a library of prepared messages, to selection of a coordinated set ofmessages and commands from a database. Alternately, it may be based on anincident "template," substituting the names of the actual incident site locationsinto slots in the template. Although various claims have been put forward, therehas thus far not been a truly "expert system" or other artificial intelligencesolution demonstrated for incident scenario preparation, although theoreticallysuch a system would be possible.In Toronto’s COMPASS TMC, the system automatically calculates travel timesfor both express and local routes, and places travel time messages on the blankvariable message signs.In San Antonio’s TransGuide TMC, the system automatically recommendstailored incident solution “scenarios”, providing specific variable message signmessages by sign and location, as well as other actions which can mitigateincidents and congestion.ATSAC Center, in the City of Los Angeles, relies on the traffic response feature forplanned events minimizing the need for operator intervention. Optimum timingstrategies are developed and made available to the system representative ofvarious event sizes—light, heavy, and no event. However, the management ofheavy events still requires operator intervention to identify optimum responseplans and duration—before, during and after the event. The events aremanaged based on a traffic management plan that identifies routes andassociated restricted/blocked movements.Other activities to be addressed in decisions on the degree of automationinclude such things as the degree of automatic logging of information andactions by the system, and the amount of information manually added to theincident log based upon operator observation.4-6