Maryland motor carrier program performance enhancement.

PDFTech ReportMD-14- SP708B4DSP708B4DMotor carriersInspectionResource allocationTrucking safetyCommercial vehiclesTraffic law enforcementTraffic violationsTrend (Statistics)MarylandMaryland. State Highway AdministrationShin, HyeonshicBapana, SanjayBuddharaju, RameshMorgan State UniversityUnited States. Dept. of Transportation. Research and Innovative Technology AdministrationUS Transportation CollectionUsing the inspection summary data (24-1 reports) from SHA for years 2006 to 2010 and inspection and violationfiles of Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS) for the same years, the Maryland State Police(MSP) and Maryland Transportation Authority Police (MdTAP) roadside inspections were evaluated. Thecomparison with peer states and the national trend found that the roadside inspections of Maryland are effective.Specifically, Maryland conducted more inspections than many other states in terms of the absolute number ofinspections and the number of inspections normalized by population and VMT. In addition, reduction in violations inMaryland was noticeable during these study years, a larger drop than the national average. This trend analysissuggests that population of safe trucks in Maryland has been increasing gradually, at rates higher than the nationalaverages. This population of safe trucks may be the result of the effectiveness of prior inspection programs in thestate and nationally. The Integer Programming resource allocation model successfully reallocated existing resourcesin a way to maximize benefits from avoided crashes. The modeling findings suggest that the current level ofinspections, i.e. without resource reallocation, are quite effective and generate significant benefits to Marylandcitizens. With resource reallocation, the benefits would increase significantly. Depending on scenarios, thepercentage increase of additional benefits gained by resource reallocation ranges between 14.58% and 28.18% forthe MSP roadside inspection program, and between 9.01% and 22.62% for the MdTAP roadside inspection program.A budget increase scenario was also considered. A budget increase of 10% using current inspection capacity, andassuming a 40% crash reduction coefficient, would result in MSP and MdTAP increasing benefits by 2.22% and7.23% respectively. At the disaggregated level, the model recommends TWIS to conduct more level I and level IIinspections, and fewer level III inspections. On the other hand, for MdTAP and MSP Roving County, an increase inlevel III inspections would have a significant impact on capturing potentially dangerous drivers who avoid fixedinspection locations on purpose