Impact of co-location of response agencies on the traffic incident timeline

Incident management agencies are reducing incident durations by introducing new strategies and improving the existing techniques. Co-location of response agencies is an incident management strategy that is not commonly applied or investigated as compared to other incident management measures. Incident timeline is affected by the co-location of incident responders but there is no existing literature on the magnitude of the effect. Since the effectiveness of the co-location strategy relies on improving communication between agencies, its performance is reflected by the incident response and verification durations. In Jacksonville, Florida, a new Regional Traffic Management Center (RTMC) was opened in the end of 2015 with the intention of improving incident management procedures by co-locating the response agencies. This strategy of co-locating response agencies was evaluated by comparing the response and verification duration of incidents before and after launching the new RTMC. This study analyzed factors that affect the verification and response duration of incidents by using hazard-based models. Results indicate that incident type, the percentage of lane closure, detection method, and day-of-the-week influence the verification and response durations for both the before- and after- periods. The before and after comparison of probabilities shows significant improvements in the response duration as a result of the co-location strategy.