Integrated Corridor Management Concepts For A Medium Sized Urban Area - Lessons Learned From San Antonio

The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) has created the Integrated Corridor Management (ICM) initiative to promote the development of multi-modal and multinetwork tactics to provide improved mobility and reliability across the entire group of transportation systems within a corridor. San Antonio was chosen as one of the USDOT ICM “pioneers” to assist in the development of these multi-network strategies. This paper explores San Antonio’s experience and lessons learned in developing these tactics and documenting them in a Concept of Operations and System Requirements Specification. The San Antonio corridor includes a 15-mile expressway and arterial corridor along Interstate-10 from downtown San Antonio to the Loop interchange in northwest San Antonio, including several arterials: Fredericksburg, Vance Jackson, Northwest Military Highway, Babcock, and Bandera. Video surveillance, Dynamic Message Signs (DMSs), and Lane Control Signals (LCSs) are ubiquitous on all corridor expressway facilities. The expressway network is actively managed on a daily basis by the Texas Department of Transportation’s (TxDOT) TransGuide traffic management system. The authors conclude that moving forward to a corridor approach in transportation management has promise to improve reliability and reduce travel times for San Antonio’s traveling public. In the immediate near-term in San Antonio, there has been a rejuvenation of coordinated efforts between agencies to share costs and refine projects to provide benefit to as many agencies as possible. Additionally, efforts are in place to unify data collection and sharing of information in standard formats.