Simulation of freeway incident restoration operations

Incidents occurring on a highway decrease the number of lanes available to the through traffic, and cause congested situations, big delays, excess energy consumption and high air pollution. Non-recurring congestion becomes more pronounced during peak hour traffic. The main objective of this paper is to simulate the incident restoration operations and analyse their effects on the traffic flow in terms of travel delay and energy consumption. Various policies are tested, assuming different number of traffic restoring units, dispatching policies, and priority for service schemes. These policies are evaluated and a comparative analysis is incorporated to indicate the sensitivity of the various components against the selected restoration system