CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTED RESEARCH

CONCLUSIONS

ATM offers the ability to manage recurrent and nonrecurrent congestion—both dynamically and proactively—on an entire facility based on real-time or predicted traffic conditions. Focusing on trip reliability, ATM strategies maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of a facility while increasing throughput and enhancing safety. ATM strategies rely on the use of integrated systems with new technologies, including comprehensive sensor systems, real-time data collection and analysis, and automated dynamic deployment to optimize system performance quickly and, in some cases, without the delay that occurs when operators must deploy operational strategies manually.

Agencies need beneficial information and guidelines related to ATM in all areas and levels of transportation planning. They need resources that directly link the transportation planning and programming process with operations to assess which operational strategies they might include in regional transportation planning that have the potential to provide the most benefit to the regional transportation network. Furthermore, agencies need resources that highlight the major attributes of candidate corridors that help determine if any ATM strategy or combination of strategies is suitable and appropriate, as well as how they can help an agency best respond to the mobility, safety, and environmental needs of the corridor and the broader community. The intent of the guide is to deliver such resources to maximize the potential positive impacts of ATM across the country.

The intended audiences for this guide include planning, design, and operations practitioners primarily involved in implementing and operating ATM strategies on freeways and arterial streets. Specific agencies include but are not limited to federal, state, and local planning and implementing agencies; metropolitan planning organizations; state DOTs; state, local, and regional toll and mobility agencies; transit agencies; municipalities; enforcement entities; maintenance and maintenance service entities; consultants; and any other stakeholder groups in a region who have a vested interested in the safety and mobility of the traveling public.

SUGGESTED RESEARCH

The research team identified areas of further research that would provide additional benefit to this topic area. The following list provides a summary of suggested future research related to ATM operational strategies (the order in which the topics are presented does not represent a priority or emphasis.

• Workforce issues: ATM strategies can introduce unique workforce challenges concerning operations and maintenance that might depart from more traditional ITS or TSMO workforce needs. Unique ATM workforce issues include:
  • Staffing needs and skill sets for ATM planning, operations, maintenance, and analysis which can build on TSMO workforce development and staff roles but which identify unique skills/requirements for ATM operations.
  • Best practices for developing ATM standard operating procedures.
  • Options for the types of applicable ATM-related training for planners, designers, system operations, and system maintenance, including an understanding of how

consultants and contractors train in-house staff for regions that have ATM operational strategies.

• Best approaches for integrating staff into complex ATM projects, particularly when addressing staffing turnover at the operating agency and/or any partnering agencies.
• Recruitment, workforce development needs, and effective tools for recruiting workers.
• Technology and tool comparisons: Agencies can benefit from example processes for evaluating different technologies and data management tools. Agencies may have a gap in understanding how new technology may be beneficial to ATM. They may also need to understand how new technology and/or new devices will integrate with existing systems and processes and what type of training may be needed for staff. It can be challenging to develop systems engineering documentation or cost estimates for concepts, technology, and systems that are unfamiliar to agency staff.
• ATM systems engineering templates: There is a need for foundational model requirements documents, similar to what FHWA has provided for adaptive signal control technology, DMSs, and closed-circuit television technology. These documents are valuable for agencies to use as a starting point and then tailor to specific needs. Potential examples include decision support systems, adaptive metering, transit signal priority, etc. These documents can also incorporate considerations for multiple data sources and types.
• Performance analysis/management: Agencies need appropriate tools and processes to support ATM performance analysis, including strategies for “before” assessments. Agencies will benefit from additional guidelines on how to develop a performance management strategy. Key needs include developing a data acquisition strategy, developing standards for collecting data, and establishing best practices and standards for integrating multiagency data and multimodal data for ATM analysis. Methodologies to support analysis are another need.
• Nontraditional data sources: Best practices/real-world examples of how agencies are using nontraditional data sources to support ATM operations and analysis is an area that would benefit highway, arterial, and multimodal agencies. Examples of nontraditional data to support ATM can include crowd-sourced data, CV data, high-definition signal data, and mobile sensor data. Agencies need to know the point at which CV data becomes useful for ATM operations. Furthermore, with the abundance of available data, agencies need to understand how best to use that data and how to validate it for meaningful interpretation and use.
• Performance measures: Performance measures that incorporate non-vehicular data, such as pedestrian, bike, and transit occupancy – most of this data comes from other agencies (transit, local agencies) and is likely not real-time. There is a need to understand how this data can be acquired, harnessed, and used – what agreements may be needed, what processes may be needed, and roles/responsibilities for data storage, governance, and use. There is a need for research to help support new focus areas for performance measures, such as equity, sustainability, and resiliency. Standard definitions do not exist and there is a lack of clarity on how to structure measures to support these concepts and goals.

• Preferential users: The concept of ATM is not yet widely used in the arterial context. For many local and regional agencies (including transit), the term ATM often refers to programs and policies that strive to increase more active modes of transportation, such as biking and walking, or addressing connectivity among modes such as transit and bike.
  • There is a gap in linking ATM to arterial operations where the focus has traditionally centered on traffic signal operations.
  • While adaptive signal operations is used by many agencies throughout the country, but there is limited awareness of other strategies such as dynamic lane use, innovative signal priority strategies, curb management strategies, dynamic parking, variable speed limits, and coordinated freeway/arterial operations.
  • Additional focus, including a more robust compendium of case studies, benefits, and best practices can help to address this needed linkage.
  • A community of practice can help foster peer relationships and facilitate knowledge transfer among local and regional agencies to help advance awareness of ATM strategies and benefits for arterials.
  • Agencies need to know how to effectively integrate bicycle and pedestrian facilities with ATM strategies in both arterial and freeway environments. Examples include better integration with the local communities for such operational strategies as all-way crossing for pedestrians, dynamic transit operations, curb management, etc.
• Crash modification factors (CMF) for ATM: The CMF clearinghouse only includes a small number of ATM strategies; expanding the CMFs to accommodate all ATM strategies would be beneficial. (FHWA 2023b).
• Enhancement of Tool for Operations Benefits Cost Analysis (TOPS-BC): Expansion of the TOPS-BC for all ATM strategies would benefit practitioners. Updated information related to data sources beyond loop detectors, including the nontraditional data sources referenced above, would improve the usefulness of the tool. A revised version of this document could also inform the performance analysis and performance measures challenges agencies continue to face. (Sallman et al. 2012).
• Highway Capacity Manual additions: The Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) only includes a few ATM strategies in its analysis. Expansion of the HCM to include all ATM strategies across a variety of implementation scenarios would enable implementing agencies to gain a broader understanding of the potential capacity benefits of ATM during recurring and nonrecurring congestion events. (HCM 2022).
• Proactive operation: True proactive operations continue to be expensive, technology-dependent, and an overall challenge in the United States. Some of the challenges are more cultural in nature. Questions remain regarding the point at which the technology cost and affordability of data make truly proactive operations possible.
• Best practices for traffic management center (TMC) operations in an ATM environment: Agencies considering implementing ATM strategies could benefit from a comprehensive synthesis of implementation examples, success stories, and standard operating procedures for TMCs for various ATM strategies. Having this

information would benefit these agencies in that they would have to start from ground zero to understand how to integrate ATM into an existing TMC.

• Role of local agencies in ATM operations: Local agencies frequently struggle to see their role in the implementation and benefits of ATM operational strategies. A synthesis documenting ATM operational practices that involve local agencies and which include freeway and arterial operational strategies and the role that local agencies play in these deployments can be valuable in advancing ATM.
• Estimation of surrogate safety measures: ATM has the potential to improve safety, but the assessment of safety benefits is not always ideal because of the length of time needed for robust safety analyses. Research related to surrogate safety measures (e.g., time to collision, near misses, hard braking, hard acceleration, speed differential, etc.) and their potential to become their own lexicon can be explored, particularly with the availability of drone and video processing and other advancements that can help identify and quantify these surrogates.
• Methodology for lifecycle cost and return on investment (ROI) estimation: Part of the challenge associated with securing funding for operational strategy investments is the difficulty with assessing the lifecycle cost and ROI for technology associated with ATM. These estimates are more difficult to calculate than that of infrastructure investments because of rapid technology obsolescence. Research is needed to develop a methodology and guidelines on how to easily calculate these estimates and how to assess risk to better compete for against capital improvement projects for grants, funding, and budgets for operational investments.
• System reliability of a 24/7 real-time data driven response system: Research is needed to identify ideal long-term reliability of the ATM operational/technology system and its components (as opposed to the reliability of the transportation system). Agencies need to understand what operational maintenance is needed to ensure the reliability of the system to support operations to optimize transportation network performance.