Performance Measures

Collection and tracking of incident information is essential to measuring the success of the TIM program, and addresses several of the Objectives adopted by the ME/NH TIM Committee listed below:

• Objective One – Increase responder safety by eliminating struck-by incidents, injuries, and fatalities
• Objective Two – Minimize impacts to the free flow of traffic
• Objective Three – Decrease incident clearance time
• Objective Four – Decrease secondary incident occurrences
• Objective Five – Improve inter-agency communication during incidents

The collection of performance measures information also fits into efforts on the State and Federal level.  In 2007, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) convened 11 states through its Focus States Initiative (FSI) to develop, implement and test TIM performance measures.  This two-year effort, completed in January 2009, resulted in three national-level TIM program objectives and supporting performance measures defined as follows:

• Reduce “roadway clearance” time: the time between the first recordable awareness of an incident (detection, notification or verification) by a responding agency and first confirmation that all lanes are available for traffic flow.

• Reduce “incident clearance” time: the time between the first recordable awareness of the incident and the time at which the last responder has left the scene.

• Reduce the number of secondary incidents: the number of unplanned incidents beginning with the time of detection of the primary incident where a collision occurs either a) within the incident scene or b) within the queue, including the opposite direction, resulting from the original incident.