Are Incident Management Programs Effective? Findings from Washington State

The development of an incident response team (IRT) program has been touted to improve incident response and clearance times, as well as to improve interdisciplinary cooperation. To determine the effectiveness of its IRT program, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) commissioned a comprehensive study that considered both quantified and perceived benefits. The average duration of incidents to which the IRTs responded was reduced by 20.6 min from 1994 to 1995. The ability to statistically attribute this reduction in incident duration to the IRT was limited because only 2 years of data were available (i.e., reduction may be attributable to temporal variations in incident characteristics). Nonetheless, the implications of this reduction can be quantified. This reduction results in a monetary savings of $20,600 to $61,800 per incident and an annual savings of $3.09 million to $9.27 million in King County. Comparing these monetary benefits to the IRT program, costs in the Northwest Region result in a benefit-to-cost ratio of 4.3:1 to 12.9:1. Given these values, even minor reductions in incident duration attributable to IRTs can justify the program. Public support for WSDOT’s incident response team program was high, with 62 percent of the respondents thinking it is a good idea. IRT program support from other response personnel was also high. WSDOT’s IRT was viewed as an important service for improving scene accessibility and improving the safety of both the motoring public and the incident responders. Despite the positive feedback, inconsistency in operation among individual IRT members makes it difficult to draw conclusions as to the effectiveness of different operating styles, for other response personnel to work effectively with IRT members, and to build a positive consensus among the motoring public for continued program support.