Integrated Corridor Management (ICM) Program: Major Achievements, Key Findings, and Outlook

Executive Summary

Integrated Corridor Management (ICM) offers improvements in the efficient movement of people and goods through institutional collaboration and aggressive, proactive integration of existing infrastructure and systems along major corridors. This report is an executive level synopsis of the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) ICM demonstration projects (specifically) and program in general, including an explanation of the ICM concept and program structure, key accomplishments and findings, future needs, and the outlook for national deployment. This report can also double as a starting point if you are considering ICM deployment in your region. This report references key considerations, documentation, evaluation findings, and other resources that are useful for ICM planning, deployment, and operations. Some of the key takeaways for ICM are as follows:

• It is important to differentiate that ICM is not traditional “detouring,” but rather, a holistic approach to enable the corridor, and not just a route, to absorb the impact of an atypical event (e.g., an hours-long shutdown or newsworthy major event, and not just a local fender bender).

• ICM fosters communication, collaboration, and trust among network operators that is leveraged to provide event response far beyond what corridors had initially.

• A full scale Integrated Corridor Management System (ICMS) deployment is not needed to initiate ICM in a corridor. Corridor stakeholders should not be afraid to plan big but deploy incrementally as resources become available.

• Improved ICM data sets are useful to identify trends in corridor events. Those event trends coupled with improved coordination among corridor network operators are proving helpful to identify planning needs for corridors and gain funding support for needed capital improvements.

Highlighted in this report are the two ICM demonstration sites; the I-15 corridor in San Diego, California, and the U.S. 75 corridor in Dallas, Texas; both began operational implementation circa 2013. An evaluation¹ of these projects found that the improved interagency cooperation and coordination brought about by going through the ICM process was a big success. Both San Diego and Dallas created a fundamental paradigm shift in the management of their respective corridors by creating strong multi-jurisdictional partnerships that set the foundation for a regional corridor management mindset — based on a platform of strong institutional, technical, and operational integration. Key findings that emerged from the evaluation of these demonstrations include the following benefits:

• Regional operations awareness of corridor congestion and incidents improved significantly through regional data sharing.

• Incident reporting details improved substantially in both regions.

• Corridor operators reported better situational awareness of corridor operating conditions, although there were opportunities to improve.

• Incident and congestion specific traveler information provision improved.

• While employing different levels of human involvement, the Decision Support System (DSS) at both sites proved to be valuable for better situational awareness, decision-making, and response coordination.

The evaluation team faced several challenges in capturing and validating actual ICM impacts. Several other regional improvement projects, including infrastructure capacity expansion projects, were implemented in parallel with the ICM projects in both regions. Thus, it is to be expected that there were broader impacts and improvements that changed the dynamics of the corridor operations before and after ICM. The mobility analysis was driven primarily from the results of the post-deployment modeling and simulation activity, since a before-after analysis using field data was not pursued due to lack of sufficient ICMS activations and the lack of comparable incidents representing before and after ICM deployment. In addition, the modeling tools used in San Diego and Dallas were different from each other, making it difficult to draw a comparison between the two sites. This report also highlights several challenges in applying benefits and costs analysis to an ICMS relating to the potential tendency to underestimate ICM benefits and overestimate ICM costs. Agencies should understand these evaluation challenges as they move forward with ICM planning and implementation efforts.

Further insights and lessons learned are also captured from thirteen (13) ICM Deployment Planning Grant sites that were awarded pre-implementation grants circa 2015. Several other important outcomes of the ICM program are indicative of its success, including the emergence of locally-funded ICM planning and deployment efforts and the sponsorship of additional ICM research activity (for example, NCHRP projects or State DOT research not specifically funded by USDOT). These activities provide another indication that the ICM concept is becoming more accepted as good practice. While national deployment of ICM is far from complete, motivation to deploy ICM has been established and embraced among many regional mobility managers across the country and there is considerable effort to include ICM in Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) planning.

This report also discusses the current state of the practice in ICM and conveys how ICM deployments can help to lay a foundation for future transportation advancements. Finally, next steps are described that include Knowledge and Technology Transfer (KTT) activities to support mainstream deployment informed by today’s ICM practitioners.