2019 Traffic Incident Management Capability Maturity Self-Assessment National Analysis Report

Chapter 3. Strategic

The 28 questions in the Strategic section are grouped into three subsections:

1. Formal Traffic Incident Management (TIM) Programs.
2. TIM Training and After-Action Reports.
3. TIM Performance Measures.

The Strategic section typically receives the lowest score of the three sections; this has traditionally been the result of low scores on the TIM Performance Measures subsection. The 2019 Traffic Incident Management Capability Maturity Self-Assessment (TIM CM SA) is no exception, with the Strategic section achieving a score of 68.5 percent compared to 77.5 percent in Tactical and 74.0 percent in Support. This year's Strategic score represents a 5.4 percent increase from the 2018 score of 65.0 percent.

Across the three subsections in the Strategic section, the highest average score was in Formal TIM Programs, indicating a strong framework for advancing TIM. The average score for the Formal TIM Program questions (#1-11) was 3.16, compared to 2.82 for TIM Training and After- Action Reports (Questions #12-16) and 2.32 for TIM Performance Measures (Questions #17-28). Key to the success of a Formal TIM program is regularly meeting and among 2019 TIM CM SA participants, 50 percent indicate that their TIM program meets as least four times per year if not more frequently.

Question 13 in the TIM Training and After-Action Reports subsection asks about the percentage of TIM responders completing the 4-Hour TIM Responder Training provided through the second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2). The scoring guidance for this question, shown in table 2, has been updated since 2015 to reflect the increasing numbers of responders completing the training nationally. According to Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) data, as of September 25, 2019, over 431,000 individuals have received the training, which represents 37.3 percent of the total responders to be trained.³

Table 2. Scoring guidance for traffic incident management training question #13.

Scoring Guidance	2015	2019
Score 1 if:	Less than 5%	Less than 15%
Score 2 if:	Between 6-7%	Between 16-30%
Score 3 if:	Between 8-9%	Between 31-45%
Score 4 if:	Over 10%	Over 45%

As shown in table 3, despite the increased thresholds in the scoring guidance for Question #13, the 2019 average score is now just 1.4 percent below the baseline established in 2015.⁴ More than 30 percent of the 2019 TIM CM SA locations scored Question #13 a 4 — indicating that 45 percent or more of their responders have received the training.

In addition to the SHRP2 training, other specific types of training cited by respondents include mock disaster drills, Incident Command System (ICS)/National Incident Management System (NIMS), livestock handling, Severe Incident Response Vehicle (SIRV), Rapid Incident Scene Clearance (RISC), and Towing and Recovery Incentive Program (TRIP).

In 2017, the TIM Performance Measures (TIM PM) questions were changed to query respondents on the three TIM PM—Roadway Clearance Time (RCT), Incident Clearance Time (ICT) and Secondary Crashes—in individual questions that only asked about one of the three TIM PM per question rather than combining the TIM PM in one question as had been done previously.

This was implemented to provide a more granular analysis on how TIM programs are addressing each of the three TIM PM individually. In 2019, all of the questions in the TIM PM subsection experienced an increase in average score from the 2018 TIM CM SA. However, two of the TIM PM questions remain below their Baseline score as shown in table 4.

As shown in table 5, where TIM programs are generally more advanced and have resources available for TIM PM collection and analysis, scores across those questions are, for the most part, higher.

Scores for Question #8 in the Strategic section corroborate that the top 40 metropolitan areas typically have better resourced TIM programs capable of collecting and analyzing TIM PM data (table 6).

Scores on the TIM PM questions have traditionally been among the lowest in each year's TIM CM SA, and 2019 is no exception. As shown in table 7, the five lowest scoring questions in the 2019 TIM CM SA are all in the TIM PM subsection.

Given the low Baseline scores overall in the TIM PM subsection combined with FHWA's 10+ year focus on advancing TIM PM, this is also where the largest percentage change from Baseline has occurred in the TIM CM SA. Six of the 12 TIM PM questions have more than doubled their score over Baseline (see the Appendix).

The TIM CM SA analysis identifies the percentage of programs that score each question a 3 or 4, indicating high levels of success in achieving that program element. In the Strategic section, the range of percentages is 90.4 (Question #6: Are the TIM response roles and responsibilities of public and private sector TIM stakeholders mutually understood?) on the high end to 12.8 percent (Question #27: Has the TIM program established performance targets for a reduction in the number of Secondary Crashes?) on the low end. See the Appendix for the complete listing of questions and their corresponding percent scoring 3 or higher.

Table 8 lists alphabetically the TIM programs that achieved the highest scores in the Strategic section.

Table 8. Highest scoring – Strategic.

Traffic Incident Management (TIM) Program
Atlanta, GA
Cincinnati, OH
Columbus, OH
Louisville, KY
Miami – Dade, FL