The Dallas area is currently populated by 6 million people, and is growing by 1 million every 7 years. Travel demand and congestion in this area continue to grow. Dallas' US-75 ICM Corridor is the highest volume and most critical transportation corridor in the region. It has major employment centers and while there is no room for expansion of the corridor, it will be impacted by major construction planned in the surrounding area.

Transit availability and capacity are being increased in this region to accommodate expected growth, and other ongoing improvements including enhanced, park-and-ride facilities and deployment of intelligent transportation system (ITS) elements are being deployed in the field. Dallas will also add HOV and HOT lanes and be exploring value-pricing strategies.

The Dallas ICM Pioneer Site covers the US, 75 corridor from downtown Dallas to SH 121 with the North Dallas Toll Way to the west and DART and various arterials to the east as their corridor. The Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Authority is the lead agency, accompanied by the City of Dallas, the City of Richardson, the City of Plano, the City of University Park, the Town of Highland Park, the North Central Texas Council of Governments, the North Texas Tollway Authority, and the TxDOT Dallas District.

Concept of Operations and System Requirements

• Concept of Operations for the US-75 Integrated Corridor in Dallas, Texas
• High-Level Requirements for the US-75 Integrated Corridor in Dallas, Texas

ITS Assets and ICM Strategy

The following are ITS assets that the Dallas ICM Pioneer Site will leverage in their ICMS:

• On the Freeway Network:
  • US 75 Corridor fully instrumented in 2009
  • DalTrans Transportation Management Center
    • The TMC integrates TxDOT, DART and Dallas County Sheriff’s Dept.
  • CCTV Cameras
  • Detection Systems
  • Dynamic Message Signs with posted travel times
  • Mobility Assistance Patrol
• On the Arterial Network:
• Traffic Signals Connected
• 911 Integration with traffic signal system
• Surveillance cameras that are tied into wrecker services
• Arterial DMS
• Traffic Signal Priority

Dallas plans to evaluate the following ICM strategies in the US-75 corridor:

• HOV/HOT lane strategy
• With the option to open to SOV during incidents
• Earlier Dissemination of traveler information
• Route Diversion Strategy (for minor incidents)
• Diverts traffic to parallel frontage roads
• Route Diversion Strategy (for major incidents)
• Diverts traffic to frontage road and strategic arterials.
• This requires signal retiming along the arterials.
• Mode Diversion Strategy (for major incidents)
• Diverts travelers to Red Line LRT
• Combined Route and Mode Diversion Strategy
• Diverts travelers to frontage roads, strategic arterials, and Red Line LRT
• LRT smart parking system
• Add parking and valet system

Analysis, Modeling, and Simulation Overview

The USDOT developed the ICM AMS methodology to help transportation decision-makers identify the best ICM strategies for their needs under different conditions (such as planned special events, high traffic congestion, or major incidents). The AMS approach was designed to leverage the strengths of various analysis tools, such as travel demand models. The ICM AMS methodology can support corridor management planning, design, and operations by integrating macro-, meso- and microscopic simulation tool types and combining their capabilities.

In order to evaluate the benefits of the proposed ICMS that Dallas developed, the Dallas Pioneer Site used three modeling tools to look at how the ICMS would work in the real world under simulated conditions. By integrating the results of the travel demand modeling, the meso-scopic simulation model, and the micro-scopic simulation model, Dallas has been able to look at where bottlenecks could occur and where travel times are unacceptable.

ICM Scenarios Modeled:

• Daily Operations (No Incident)
• High Demand
• Medium Demand
• Low Demand
• Major Incident Freeway
• High Demand
• Medium Demand
• Low Demand
• Minor Incident Freeway
• High Demand
• Medium Demand
• Low Demand

In order to determine the effectiveness of each of these strategies, Dallas is using the following performance measures:

• Travel Time Reliability
• Increase Corridor Throughput
• Improve Incident Management
• Enable Intermodal Travel Decisions

Related Links:

• Modeling US-75 Integrated Corridor Management in Dallas, Texas Presentation from 2009 Integrated Corridor System Management Modeling Best Practices Workshop
• Integrated Corridor Management Presentation from ITS Texas Annual Meeting 2006
• Integrated Corridor Management Presentation from TexITE Fort Worth Section Workshop 2008

Demonstration Overview

The ICM demonstration will showcase the application of institutional, operational and technical integration approaches in the field and document implementation issues and operational benefits in order to show the benefits of ICM through improvement in corridor performance using realistic and useful metrics and to provide the documentation necessary to transfer the ICM concepts from successful ICMS deployments to future ICM adopters.  Data from the demonstrations will be used to refine the AMS models and methodology.

ICM Strategies Planned for Demonstration

• Real-time traveler information about traffic and travel times, public transit, and parking availability will facilitate traveler decision making
• Detectors will collect information on the current travel conditions on freeways, frontage roads, arterial streets, light-rail Red Line, Red Line park-and-ride lots, and High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes in the corridor.
• A decision support system (DSS) will help operators select the appropriate combination of ICM strategies to apply to different operational conditions.