California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology

This report describes activities surrounding the design, building, deployment, operation, and evaluation of an innovative corridor management (ICM) system aiming to improve mobility within the Interstate 15 (I-15) corridor in San Diego, California, by integrating the operations of the I-15 freeway with the surrounding arterials and transit systems. Systems engineering principles were applied to support the development of the demonstration ICM system and the systems engineering process was credited by the project team with having contributed significantly to the success of the project. While full system evaluations were not yet available when this report was written, the deployed I-15 ICM system had already demonstrated its ability to identify incidents and unusual congestion events, to develop traffic management strategies integrating freeway, arterial, and transit operational elements, and to implement recommended strategies either automatically or following approval by relevant system operators. The system has also demonstrated the feasibility of using a microscopic traffic simulation model in a real-time operational environment to forecast corridor operations under alternative scenarios. Simulation evaluations have further consistently shown operational benefits exceeding deployment costs.