by Larry Copeland
Drivers frustrated by incidents that snarl rush-hour traffic - broken-down cars, fender benders, a tire or ladder in the roadway - are getting a break as states and cities launch aggressive campaigns to keep highways clear.
About one-fourth of all congestion on the nation's highways is related to incidents such as crashes, stalled or out-of-gas vehicles, or debris, says Jeffrey Paniati, assistant administrator for operations at the Federal Highway Administration (FHA). "Every time you have a lane blocked for one minute, it results in four minutes of delay," Paniati says.
The longer it takes to clear a wreck, the higher the risk of a "secondary crash," often caused by rubbernecking or frazzled drivers. These crashes account for about 15% of all accidents in metropolitan areas, Paniati says.
Where help is on the way:
•Oregon. The state Legislature passed a bill last month to require drivers in minor accidents to move their vehicles off the road or face a $180 fine. About half the states have similar "quick clearance" or "move it" laws. The Legislature also authorized state crews to immediately tow stalled or abandoned vehicles from the freeway shoulder. Previously, only vehicles left during rush hour could be towed right away; owners of other vehicles had to be given 24 hours' notice.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Interstate | Drivers | Emergency Response | FHA | David Hartgen
•Riverside County, Calif. Beginning next month, the county is adding two tow trucks on two of its busiest freeways: State Route 60 in Moreno Valley and Interstate 215 in Moreno Valley and Perris. The goal is to get broken-down or stalled vehicles off the freeway to prevent accidents or slowdowns.
•Houston. The city launched a program this month that is focused not on interstates but on major city roads. Members of the "Mobility Response Team," who are not police officers, will cruise roads on yellow Yamaha scooters looking for malfunctioning traffic signals, wrecks or construction that could cause slowdowns. They also can issue parking tickets and direct traffic around crashes.
•Indiana. Last month, the state Department of Transportation began installing about 40 signs that say "Fender Bender? Move Vehicles to Shoulder" along busy stretches of interstates around Indianapolis. The state's "Hoosiers Help" program has workers in vans cruise highways to help stranded motorists and remove road debris.
•Tennessee. The state Department of Safety operates 69 highway service trucks driven by certified first responders. They cruise interstates in Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville, providing gasoline to stranded motorists, directing traffic around wrecks and offering other services. In fiscal year 2006, the trucks responded to 10,534 accidents and 58,620 disabled vehicles.
"There are a lot of places that are doing these kinds of programs," says Kevin Balke, a transportation-research engineer at Texas Transportation Institute of Texas A&M University. "It's a way of looking at better utilizing your existing assets. It's like a business decision. If you can get the best use out of your system, the better off you are."
The aim is to increase the reliability of commutes. "People understand that if you live in a major city there's going to be some delay at rush hour," Paniati says. "What really makes people crazy is when there's some unexpected delay. It changes their 30-minute trip into an hour or an hour-and-a-half trip."
Learning by experience
Traffic-incident management strategies have come a long way in the past decade.
•Atlanta. The city's program began during the buildup to the 1996 Olympics. Fearing massive traffic backups in a region infamous for sprawl, the state Department of Transportation built a traffic management center and dispatched 10 HERO (Highway Emergency Response Operations) trucks to cover 37 miles of interstate, says Paul Marshall, a DOT spokesman.
"They couldn't add more roads. They couldn't build more highways," he says. "So they had to come up with an alternative. That's when they started this."
•Chicago. Illinois developed strategies to quickly clear highways after experiencing major problems with truck accidents, especially those hauling heavy cargo to and from steel plants in Chicago and northern Indiana, according to the FHA. One key part of the arsenal: procuring military surplus heavy-duty cranes to remove damaged vehicles from the roadway. It also set up a patrol of "Minuteman" vehicles to help stranded motorists on Chicago-area freeways.
Paniati says the effectiveness of these efforts has been proven by researchers.
But national transportation expert David Hartgen who headed a state-by-state study released last month on congestion in the USA, says they barely make a dent.
"It's important. It's necessary. But it won't be sufficient," he says. "Urban congestion is swamping our interstate system around the country, and most of these places have already taken some of these actions. Cities are increasing in population, and most are growing quite rapidly in the suburbs, particularly. There's no way to get around this problem except to provide more highway capacity."
The study by Hartgen, an emeritus professor of transportation studies at University of North Carolina-Charlotte, was based on 1984-2005 data and financed by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank based in Los Angeles.
Progress in Portland
Sam Adams, a city commissioner in Portland, Ore., who runs the city's transportation office, and researchers at Portland State University analyzed a non-injury accident he saw one morning driving to work. They found it took 55 minutes for a tow truck to arrive, 17 more minutes to clear the wreck and another 33 minutes for traffic flow to return to normal. In all, the crash paralyzed traffic for 105 minutes at an economic cost to other drivers of $150,000, according to the report, "Anatomy of a Crash."
Adams began working with other state and local transportation officials on ways to reduce congestion without more highways.
"We had to have a team approach to clearing up non-injury accidents quicker on the freeway without having to pour a single batch of concrete or buy" a new highway, Adams says. His lobbying led to approval of two bills last month requiring drivers to move their cars off the highway after non-injury crashes and relaxing rules on removing stalled vehicles.
Contributing: Stefanie Frith of The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, Calif.; Leon Alligood of The (Nashville) Tennessean; Tim Evans of TheIndianapolis Star;Dennis Wagner of The Arizona Republic; Dan Nakaso of The Honolulu Advertiser; Gwen Florio of the Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune and Maureen Milford of The News Journal of Wilmington, Del.