SD3 - A Report on the Statewide Traffic Incident Management Committee (SJR 277, 2013)


Executive Summary:
During the 2013 Session of the General Assembly, Senate Joint Resolution 277 was enacted, formally establishing the Statewide Traffic Incident Management (TIMs) Committee which had been in existence in an informal capacity since December 2010. The Committee is made up of representatives from all traffic incident management disciplines and chaired by the Superintendent of State Police.

The Committee met twice during 2013, in May and then again in November. The Committee quickly determined the need to perform detailed reviews of complex TIMS related topics, and subsequently began the process of creating workgroups to achieve this. The work groups are smaller and have the capability to meet more often and ultimately provide detailed recommendations to the full TIMs Committee. The workgroups were established to review topics related to the following subjects:

• TIMs Best Practices
• Responder Safety
• Responder Communications

Membership of the workgroups was established after the May Statewide Committee meeting and received their charge during the November Statewide Committee meeting. These groups have received topics for review and will begin reporting back to the full Committee in 2014.

During the inaugural meeting in May 2013, the Statewide Committee adopted the following ongoing traffic incident management initiatives:

• Creation of a Statewide Traffic Incident Management Plan which establishes a framework for effective traffic incident management through the promotion of the National Unified Goals for traffic incident management. The plan also provides much needed clarification of responder roles and classification of traffic incidents. The Statewide TIMs Plan was drafted, reviewed, adopted and ultimately promulgated by the Statewide TIMs Committee in August 2013.

• Development of a uniform training initiative for all TIMs stakeholders to provide our first responders common goals with which to work highway incidents. Subsequently, the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRPII) for TIMs Training was adopted and training began in January 2013. This training will help Virginia first responders to mitigate incidents as an effective team instead of as divided groups with individual goals, policies and agendas.

• Develop a structure which will allow the Statewide TIMs Committee to communicate with and effectively disseminate training, best practices and information to all TIMs stakeholders. The Statewide TIMs Committee determined the most effective way to accomplish this is by connecting the Statewide Committee with existing local traffic incident management committees and groups which routinely meet throughout the Commonwealth. This is currently being accomplished using Virginia State Police field supervisors to attend and transfer information between the Statewide Committee and the local TIMs groups. The Statewide TIMs Committee will continue to look at creative ways to improve this process and develop the relationship between the Statewide and local TIMs Committees.