An Analysis of UDOT's Expanded Incident Management Team Program

Abstract: The Utah Department of Transportation’s (UDOT’s) Incident Management Team (IMT) program was expanded from 13 units in 2018 to 25 units in 2020. This study analyzes the benefits of the expansion on IMT performance measures, and the user impacts of crashes responded to by IMTs in 2018 and 2022. Data were obtained from the Utah Highway Patrol and UDOT to quantify the IMT performance measures of response time (RT), roadway clearance time (RCT), and incident clearance time (ICT) as well as the user impacts of the affected volume (AV), excess travel time (ETT), and excess user cost (EUC). Results indicate that the program expansion resulted in a significant decrease in IMT RT by 2.7 minutes, a 10 percent decrease in AV, and a 50 percent decrease in ETT and EUC. The variables that best explain IMT performance measures are the number of IMTs responding to a crash and the time-weighted number of lanes closed during the crash. User impacts are best explained by the total time for which the average traffic speed is reduced significantly below normal (T7-T0), and the number of lanes closed during the incident. A 10 percent increase in T7-T0 caused AV to increase by 9 percent; the same increase caused a 17-20 percent increase in ETT and EUC. For each added lane that was closed for any amount of time, ETT and EUC increased by 45 percent, while each added lane that was closed for the whole incident increased ETT and EUC by 65 percent.