The 'Traffic Management Center' monitors and controls traffic and the road network. It represents centers that manage a broad range of transportation facilities including freeway systems, rural and suburban highway systems, and urban and suburban traffic control systems. It communicates with ITS Roadway Equipment and Connected Vehicle Roadside Equipment (RSE) to monitor and manage traffic flow and monitor the condition of the roadway, surrounding environmental conditions, and field equipment status. It manages traffic and transportation resources to support allied agencies in responding to, and recovering from, incidents ranging from minor traffic incidents through major disasters.
'TMC Data Collection' collects and stores information that is created in the course of traffic operations performed by the Traffic Management Center. This data can be used directly by operations personnel or it can be made available to other data users and archives in the region.
'TMC Environmental Monitoring' assimilates current and forecast road conditions and surface weather information using a combination of weather service provider information, information collected by other centers such as the Maintenance and Construction Management Center, data collected from environmental sensors deployed on and about the roadway, and information collected from connected vehicles. The collected environmental information is monitored and presented to the operator. This information can be used to issue general traveler advisories and support location specific warnings to drivers.
'TMC Evacuation Support' supports development, coordination, and execution of special traffic management strategies during evacuation and subsequent reentry of a population in the vicinity of a disaster or major emergency. A traffic management strategy is developed based on anticipated demand, the capacity of the road network including access to and from the evacuation routes, and existing and forecast conditions. The strategy supports efficient evacuation and also protects and optimizes movement of response vehicles and other resources that are responding to the emergency.
'TMC Incident Detection' identifies and reports incidents to Traffic Operations Personnel. It remotely monitors and controls traffic sensor and surveillance systems that support incident detection and verification. It analyzes and reduces the collected sensor and surveillance data, external alerting and advisory and incident reporting systems, anticipated demand information from intermodal freight depots, border crossings, special event information, and identifies and reports incidents and hazardous conditions
'TMC Incident Dispatch Coordination' formulates and manages an incident response that takes into account the incident potential, incident impacts, and resources required for incident management. It provides information to support dispatch and routing of emergency response and service vehicles as well as coordination with other cooperating agencies. It provides access to traffic management resources that provide surveillance of the incident, traffic control in the surrounding area, and support for the incident response. It monitors the incident response and collects performance measures such as incident response and clearance times.
'TMC Multi-Modal Coordination' supports center-to-center coordination between the Traffic Management and Transit Management Centers. It monitors transit operations and provides traffic signal priority for transit vehicles on request from the Transit Management Center.
'TMC Regional Traffic Management' supports coordination between Traffic Management Centers in order to share traffic information between centers as well as control of traffic management field equipment. This coordination supports wide area optimization and regional coordination that spans jurisdictional boundaries; for example, coordinated signal control in a metropolitan area or coordination between freeway operations and arterial signal control within a corridor.
'TMC Traffic Information Dissemination' disseminates traffic and road conditions, closure and detour information, incident information, driver advisories, and other traffic-related data to other centers, the media, and driver information systems. It monitors and controls driver information system field equipment including dynamic message signs and highway advisory radio, managing dissemination of driver information through these systems.
'TMC Traffic Network Performance Evaluation' measures traffic network performance and predicts travel demand patterns to support traffic flow optimization, demand management, and incident management. It collects traffic data from sensors and surveillance equipment as well as input from other Traffic Management Centers, emissions management, transit operations, and event promoters and uses this information to measure traffic network performance. It collects route planning information from transportation information centers and integrates and uses this information to predict future traffic conditions. The planned control strategies can be passed back to the transportation information center so that the intended strategies can be reflected in future route planning.