Congestion Management Process

Overview

As the federally designated MPO for the Vancouver/Clark County region, RTC is required by federal law to maintain a CMP, which is a systematic process for managing congestion that provides information on transportation system performance and on alternative strategies to alleviate congestion and enhance the mobility of persons and goods.

Quality of life and economic prosperity in the region depends on efficient mobility for both people and goods. There is recognition that strategic expansion of capacity is needed at key bottlenecks. Capacity expansion should take place after lower cost efforts have been made to improve the operations of existing facilities. The CMP is intended to identify and manage congestion using performance measures to direct funding towards strategies that most effectively address congestion.

The CMP is implemented as part of the overall metropolitan planning process. The overall CMP process is displayed in the figure above.

What is Congestion?

Traffic congestion occurs where the volume of users on a facility exceeds the maximum number of vehicles a facility can accommodate. Traffic congestion is characterized by slower speeds, longer trip times, longer delay, travel time uncertainty, increased vehicular queueing, increased traffic collisions, and other congestion characteristics.

It is important to note that high traffic volumes that may result in congestion can also be a sign of economic vitality. While it may be impossible to totally remove all congestion, due to physical and financial constraints, congestion needs to be managed in order to improve throughput and reliability. The following video is an example of how managing the transportation system can maximize throughput and improve reliability:

Full Transcript...

**00:00:02**

[Music]

My name is Doug MacDonald. Part of my job every day is to listen to people talk about how much they hate traffic congestion. We hate traffic congestion too, and one of the things we're trying to do in the transportation business is figure out ways to make transportation congestion go away.

So we thought it would be helpful if we looked at traffic congestion in really simple ways that would help us gain insights into what the problem is. It was suggested to us, after we went and asked a lot of common-sense people how we could explain our dilemma, that this funnel and this rice would be a very good demonstration of what our problem is. If each of these little kernels of rice is a driver in a car, then every day we pour the rice into the freeway pretty much as people want to drive. Everybody goes whenever they want, wherever they want.

You'll notice everybody pretty much tries to go at the same time. All the rice gets stuck, and there you are right now, stuck in traffic, waiting for the traffic ahead of you to get through the funnel.

**00:01:35**

Sometimes it stops. We have to bring a tow truck in, but eventually everybody gets home. This is not very satisfactory.

Now, with the very same funnel, very same rice, very same drivers, and very same cars, everybody will realize that rice doesn't have to operate this way. We can pace the rice through the funnel.

So my capable assistant, Katherine Boyd, will now demonstrate that the same highway can carry the same amount of rice—no hidden tricks here—but Katherine is going to be the pacer for the cars. She's going to make sure that the cars only come onto the highway as fast as we can make sure they flow through.

So I'm the old highway, and Katherine is the new highway. Amazingly enough, by the time we're all still stuck on the old highway—everybody can get home. We'll do it again, Katherine. We can put twice as many people home in time.

Do you recognize yourself sitting in traffic? Would you like to move in traffic?

The most amazing thing I've learned in all of this is that our freeways, when they're backed up like this, only get half as many cars through them in the course of an hour as they were designed to carry. So we actually operate our freeways in the insane fashion of making them smaller by half when we need them most.

**00:03:06**

But once again, Katherine has poured through all the rice while those of us on the regular freeway are still stuck in traffic behind everybody else, trying to jostle our way home.

But the most intriguing possibility that this presents is that we would use an old-fashioned American idea called the law of supply and demand in order to match supply, which is the amount of funnel we have, with demand, which is the amount of rice that wants to go through the funnel.

By using price, if we have a lot of demand and a little supply, the price will go up. If we have a little demand and a lot of supply, the price goes down.

So what if we asked people to pay a price when they came onto the freeway, and we used the price that we set to make sure that they always were moving freely? So if it looked like it was about to clog up, we'd raise the price a little bit. If it looked like there was plenty of room for everybody, down could come the price.

This is actually being done on American roadways today. It's being done in California. It's being done in Minnesota. Other states, including ours, want to try the same thing.

But one of the problems we have is people say, "Why would I want to pay for using a road that is already built and which is already free?"

Well, there are many reasons to think that that's a good discussion, and many people are very concerned by that question. We have to get good answers to it before we, and the politicians we work for, and all the citizens, would come to agree that this is a good idea.

**00:05:10**

Do you like it?

If you like it, think about it. Think, when you're sitting in traffic, whether there might be a better way of doing this. Whether it's ramp meters, or quicker control of accidents, or even better driving by people so they don't cut in front of each other and cause traffic backups, think of all the ways we can make traffic move.

Because while we're still stuck in traffic, Katherine's highway can move all the traffic three or four times while we're stuck.

And that's the end of our demonstration.

If you'd like to know more about this, including how we invented this amazing demonstration, give us a call at our telephone number or be in touch with us through our website, and we will give you more information about traffic flow, rice, and how traffic flow and rice—and good traffic thinking—can help us solve traffic congestion.

**00:06:08**

Network

One of the early steps in this process is to identify the network. By identifying a network, the region can focus its efforts on corridors that are most likely to experience congestion. In our region the congestion management network includes major inter-regional and arterial corridors. These corridors form a subset of the Regional Transportation System, which includes thirty-one corridors, identified on the adjacent map.

Congestion Management Process Corridors map for the Vancouver, Washington metro area, April 2015.

Full text description of this image follows:

This is a color-coded transportation corridor map titled "Congestion Management Process Corridors", produced by the Regional Transportation Council in April 2015. It depicts the Vancouver, Washington metropolitan area, extending north to LaCenter and south to the Columbia River (the Washington–Oregon state line).
Geographic Context:
The map covers Clark County, Washington. Major communities labeled include LaCenter (north), Ridgefield (northwest), Felida, Salmon Creek, Hazel Dell (west-central), Battle Ground (northeast), Brush Prairie (east-central), Orchards (east), Vancouver (south-central), Cascade Park (southeast), Camas and Washougal (far east, shown in an inset). Vancouver Lake appears on the west side, and the Columbia River forms the southern boundary.
Corridor Legend:
Thirty-two named corridors are shown, each rendered in a distinct color or line style. They are listed in the map legend as follows:

136/137/138th Ave — light teal
139th/134th Street — olive/dark yellow
162nd/164th – North — dark blue
162nd/164th – South — orange
192nd Ave — light gray
28th/18th Street — bright green
78/76/Padden Pkwy — red (thick)
99th Street — dark navy
Andresen Rd – North — brown
Andresen Rd – South — purple
Fourth Plain – East — light pink
Fourth Plain – West — magenta/hot pink
I-205 – Central — bright green
I-205 – South — tan/khaki
I-5 – Central — teal/dark cyan
I-5 – North — medium blue-gray
I-5 – South — light gray-blue
La Center Road — dark olive green
Mill Plain – East — light purple/lavender
Mill Plain – West — light blue (pale)
SR-14 – Central — gold/yellow
SR-14 – East — medium blue
SR-14 – West — dark teal
SR-500 – West — dark maroon/wine
SR-500/Fourth Plain – Central — dark brown
SR-501 — peach/salmon
SR-501/Fourth Plain/Mill Plain — medium teal
SR-502 — medium blue
SR-503 – North — light aqua/mint
SR-503 – South — tan/brown
St. Johns/Ft. Vancouver — dark navy/indigo

Major Route Features:

I-5 runs north–south through the western portion of the map, connecting LaCenter through Ridgefield, Salmon Creek, Hazel Dell, and into Vancouver.
I-205 runs north–south through the eastern portion, passing through Orchards and Cascade Park.
SR-502 and SR-503 are shown as east–west routes in the northern/central portions of the map.
78/76/Padden Pkwy (shown in bold red) is a prominent east–west corridor crossing the central part of the map through Hazel Dell and Orchards.
SR-14 runs east–west along the southern edge of the map, parallel to the Columbia River, connecting into Camas and Washougal (detailed in an inset map in the upper right).
SR-500 and SR-501 are shown in the southern and southwestern areas near Vancouver and the Columbia River.
Fourth Plain corridors run east–west through the center of Vancouver.
Mill Plain corridors run east–west through the southern part of Vancouver toward Cascade Park.

Inset Map:
An inset in the upper-right corner shows an enlarged view of the SR-14 corridor between Camas and Washougal, along the Columbia River, with route marker 500 labeled.
Map Source:
The RTC (Regional Transportation Council) logo appears in the lower-left corner.

Monitoring

The monitoring element of the CMP is designed as an informational tool to be used within the decision-making process. It is also intended to provide an understanding of the transportation system’s operating conditions and deficiencies and to assess the impacts of improvement strategies.

The annual Congestion Monitoring Report provides a comprehensive set of data for monitoring the performance of the transportation system. The Congestion Monitoring Report provides profiles on the travel characteristics of the regional transportation corridors. The data is translated into tables and maps that help identify deficiencies. The annual monitoring report is available from the following links:

Congestion Management Process

Programs