BACKGROUND
The Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) operates the Freeway Service Patrol (FSP) program in the Las Vegas and Reno metropolitan areas to mitigate traffic congestion on heavily traveled sections of freeways. According to the Federal Highway Administration, roadway incidents account for 25% of travel delays and for every minute a travel lane is blocked, the resulting congestion takes four minutes to dissipate with the probability of a secondary incident increasing by 2.8%.
NDOT’s FSP program aims to provide quick and safe clearance of traffic incidents including crashes, abandoned or disabled vehicles, debris, scene safety and other situations such as fires or hazardous spills in under 15 minutes. The program services are key to ensuring motorist safety and reducing costs caused by congestion such as travel delay hours, fuel consumption and emissions.
Vehicle Management Solutions (VMS) has managed the NDOT FPS contracts for Las Vegas and Reno continuously since October 2013.
SOLUTION
VMS provides fleet services including fully equipped patrol vehicles, Incident Response Vehicles (IRV), Multi-Use Response Vehicles (MRV), technicians, and traffic incident management and safety training, collaborating with other state agencies including the Nevada Highway Patrol and the Office of Traffic Safety. Since assuming management of NDOT’s FSP program, the number of centerline miles covered by VMS has increased by 10% to 129 miles and the number of mitigations carried out has increased by a CAGR of 10% to approximately 56,000 in fiscal 2021.
PROGRAM ENHANCEMENTS
Over the course of VMS’s management, the Company has implemented several enhancements to the FSP program including commercial sponsorship by State Farm and Geico to reduce program costs, the addition of flatbed and wheel lift tow MRVs capable of moving up to two vehicles simultaneously and the addition of Waycare, an advanced fleet management and predicative analytics software system. Patrol vehicles are outfitted with tablets running Waycare which improves tracking of performance measures and leverages machine learning to predict where incidents are likely to occur, allowing technicians to respond more proactively.
INCIDENT CLEARANCE TIMES
VMS has maintained consistent average incident clearance times with approximately 80% of all mitigations conducted in under 15 minutes. Crashes typically require the longest clearance times and have historically represented a higher percentage of all mitigations than those requiring more than 30 minutes clearance time.
