Initiated in the mid 1980's, as the "Reach the Beach" program, the Maryland State CHART highway incident management system has expanded to a statewide program. CHART is managed by the Maryland State Highway Administration. The system currently includes 375 miles of freeways and 170 miles of highway arterials. Most of the roadway network covered by the system is located in Baltimore, Annapolis, and Fredrick Maryland, and around the Washington D.C. Metro Area. The system is composed of traffic monitoring, incident response, traveler information, and traffic management components.



The study summarized in this report assessed the effectiveness of CHART's operations and components on the interstate freeways and major arterials.



Using data from the 2645 incidents that the incident management team responded to in 1997 and traffic simulation results from the CORSIM model, direct benefits related to delay, fuel consumption, and reduction in secondary incidents were estimated. Benefits were calculated from a sample of 183 incident cases in which average duration of incident response was 25.6 minutes and the 35 percent reduction on average in incident duration due to CHART operations.