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21st Century Operations Using 21st Century Technologies
Table of Contents

Build Smart, Build Steady: Winning Strategies for Building Integrated Corridor Management Over Time

Executive Summary

Integrated Corridor Management (ICM) is a concept that brings together multimodal elements of a modern surface transportation system that are typically managed independently (e.g., freeway, arterial, transit) to make overall system operations more productive and cost-effective during sudden events. ICM helps mitigate the worst sudden breakdowns, surges, or accidents that would otherwise bring an already fragile region to a standstill. While ICM may be utilized for top-end peak surges, it is typically not used for day-to-day management of nominal conditions.

The vision of Integrated Corridor Management (ICM) is that for sudden events, transportation networks will realize significant improvements in the efficient movement of people and goods through institutional collaboration and aggressive, proactive integration of existing infrastructure along major corridors. Through an ICM approach, transportation professionals manage the corridor as a multimodal system and make operational decisions for the benefit of the corridor as a whole, and not just for the singular facility.

— Derived from the USDOT Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office - Integrated Corridor Management homepage.(1)

Events that benefit from ICM are above and beyond the nominal traffic congestion and management, even if that management already includes intelligent systems, like ramp metering, peak-hour shoulder use, lane priorities (e.g., High Occupancy Vehicle [HOV] lanes, High Occupancy Toll [HOT] lanes), pricing, dynamic messaging, and peak-hour signal algorithms and management. The ICM concept is best applied in corridors with multiple parallel facilities, stakeholders, and modes (i.e., roadway and transit) that experience severe irregular congestion resulting from high travel demand, incidents, and severe weather (or some combinations of the three). The resulting travel conditions under these operational conditions are problematic beyond the underlying congestion: there are longer delays and even more unpredictable travel times. Unreliable travel conditions may have serious implications for regional economic competitiveness and erodes the quality of life for frequent travelers. Coordinated action among the agencies responsible for managing the sub-elements of the system can reduce delays, improve travel time reliability, and improve the economic competitiveness of the surrounding region.

Surface transportation systems are not managed holistically as a default. Individual agencies and jurisdictions plan and operate facilities based on institutional and funding mechanisms independent from their peers. There is typically no over-arching entity responsible for co-management of all corridor activity, i.e., all modes and routes working as one. ICM enables the coordinated action of all agencies and stakeholders, such that the system is managed holistically.

ICM can be most effective when agencies periodically assess the corridor's performance, emerging threats and issues, changes in user needs and demand patterns, and incorporate the benefits of emerging technologies to address the evolving needs of the corridor. An ICM system that is deployed as a static solution for today's problems, may become ineffective, obsolete, and be eventually abandoned in favor of other more relevant solutions aligned with the corridor's evolving issues and concerns.

Key Considerations for Building Smart, Building Steady Towards a Successful ICM:

  • Funding for building or enhancing ICM capabilities is usually incremental.
  • Time is needed to build relationships among ICM stakeholders.
  • Time is needed to understand the system dynamics and corridor performance — and to sort out what "good" looks like from a shared collective viewpoint.
  • ICM can be usefully pursued as a crawl-walk-run proposition, leveraging a set of relatively lightweight near-term early wins to create momentum.

The over-arching goal of this primer is to help ICM stakeholders, regardless of ICM maturity, be successful in meeting their ICM goals. This primer provides guidance to agencies on how to:

  • Deploy incrementally ICM and supporting Decision Support Systems (DSS).
  • Adapt the ICM deployment and associated organizational form over time.
  • Achieve long-term ICM financial sustainability.

The primer offers a process, which is intended to be used in an active and consistent way — with suggested exercises for ICM stakeholders to conduct throughout the ICM maturity spectrum.

In Step 1, ICM stakeholders conduct an ICM Capability Maturity Model (CMM) assessment, annually. The ICM-CMM enables agencies to not only assess their ability to deploy ICM but also to strategically identify areas for improvement. Agencies can use the ICM-CMM, coupled with corridor performance measurement, to decide rationally and effectively on where to invest and make progress.

In Step 2, the ICM stakeholders participate in periodic ITS Strategic Planning meetings to actively and adaptively identify a set of high-priority strategic actions needed to move the ICM deployment forward, evolving to a new state aligned with the ICM vision. The primer provides structured activities that are specific to the maturity level of the ICM deployment, identified in Step 1.

In Step 3, the ICM stakeholders use the results of the Step 2 exercises (and attendant strategic actions) to update and adapt the arrangements among ICM stakeholders that define the institutional, technical, and operational roles and actions of all ICM deployment participants. Utilizing the process laid out in this document over time, enables ICM deployments to maintain forward evolutionary momentum — building smart and steady towards a more complete and effective ICM capability.

The primer also presents key challenges observed for ICM deployments in various states of maturity across the country and suggested actions to mitigate them. Failure to address these challenges can result in a loss of ICM momentum. For each of these challenges, we offer a suggested action to limit, mitigate, or overcome the challenge.

Overcoming Key ICM Deployment Challenges:

  1. Getting an early ICM win: Focus on the conditions that make it obvious that ICM has value — major incidents, special events, severe weather.
  2. Key stakeholder(s) will not participate: Appeal to the notion that all stakeholders are dependent on corridor performance and keeping the region/corridor competitive.
  3. Zero-sum mentality among stakeholders: Good corridor management is win-win, not win-lose — and reflected in the institutional arrangements made among stakeholders.
  4. No ICM owner results in no ICM momentum: Build an ICM coalition that is both broad (number of organizations) and deep (multiple persons within key organizations).
  5. ICM benefits not clear on day-to-day basis: ICM delivers highest value when corridor conditions are most challenging — individually infrequent but collectively not uncommon.
  6. ICM value proposition may be difficult to demonstrate: More predictable congestion patterns are highly valued for the quality of life for frequent corridor travelers.
  7. Champion attrition: Advance from person-to-person trust relationships to written agreements among stakeholder agencies.
  8. Traditional revenue models are in decline: Financial sustainability may be a strong motivator to consider a more transformative third-party model.
  9. Public indifference: Set aside resources to explain how ICM helps everyone who uses the corridor and enhances region/corridor economic competitiveness.
  10. Perception of ICM as paid-for capability: Focus attention on corridor performance and relate to the press and the public what ICM does to improve that performance.

1 USDOT Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office - Integrated Corridor Management. https://www.its.dot.gov/research_archives/icms/index.htm. Accessed April 11, 2019. [ Return to 1 ]

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