3/13/2014
Reed Hollinshead
ITD Communication
208-334-8881
reed.hollinshead@itd.idaho.gov
Incident Response truck: 330,000 miles and plenty of unusual stops
BOISE - Nine years and 330,000 miles is the short answer to the question – “what happened to the last Incident Response truck?” The longer answer involves more than 50,000 incidents since the truck first started serving Treasure Valley drivers in the summer of 2005.
ITD’s Incident Response just "retired" the truck when the transmission and other parts started to give out after extensive use. For the next few months while a new unit is ordered, Incident Response will be operating with one full-size truck in place of the retired vehicle, and one of the usual greenish-yellow vans.
Click here for Picture 1, Picture 2, Picture 3, Picture 4, Picture 5, and Picture 6.
Putting gas in an empty tank to get a stranded driver to a service station for a fill-up; pushing or pulling disabled vehicles, especially after slide-offs; providing water for over-heated radiators; changing flat tires; calling wreckers to tow a disabled vehicle; putting extinguishing car fires; and providing traffic control at crash scenes to allow state and local law enforcement to investigate – these are routine for the Incident Response traveler services team.
Nick Jones, the driver of that Incident Response truck for most of those 330,000 miles, said he and the truck were a part of several unusual incidents over the years. Among them:
- Rescuing an injured hawk from the side of the freeway last summer and delivering it to a bird rehabilitation center;
- Removing a Christmas tree from eastbound I-84 a few years ago;
- Providing traffic control at multiple fuel spills and capturing the fuel in a plastic kiddie swimming pool;
- Escorting bus loads of Special Olympians headed to Boise from Eastern Idaho;
- Investigating a bomb threat in Mountain Home;
- Putting out a fire in front of St Luke’s;
- Blocking off I-84 for the Life Flight helicopter to land and fly victims to the hospital;
- Escorting the vice president of the United States;
- Performing numerous duck/duckling rescues;
- Rescuing a lost wedding dress from the freeway and reuniting it with its owner;
- Chasing cows back into their enclosure and then repairing the fence;
- Responding to roadside wildfires;
- Saving a dog with a dislocated or broken hip and taking it to an animal hospital; and
- Cleaning up spilled cow entrails that were so slick they had to be pushed off the road with high-powered water hoses from the fire department.
During weekday morning and evening commuting hours, the Incident Response team offers assistance on the heavily traveled stretch of I-84 between Caldwell and east Boise and on the Connector. The service has operated in the Treasure Valley since 1995. The team is dispatched by Idaho State Police, or comes upon a situation while driving and pulls to the side of the road to offer assistance.
They are incredibly efficient in maintaining good traffic flow, their primary function. ISP, which dispatches them and also depends on them to provide traffic control at crash scenes, calls them invaluable.
Click here for a sound bite from ISP Capt. Bill Gardiner.
The total operating budget of $207,000 equals the economic costs represented by just 3.5 hours of traffic delay within the corridor. In other words, if Incident Response clears up only 3.5 hours worth of delay over the course of a year, the service has paid for itself. They do that each and every month.
Lost work productivity, secondary crashes, greater fuel consumption and increased vehicle emissions add to the economic cost of traffic delay.
“It is easy to demonstrate the worth of Incident Response to the everyday driver,” said Dave Jones, ITD administrator for the Division of Engineering Products and Plans. “High traffic volumes and the sheer number of incidents and breakdowns on the urban interstate in the Treasure Valley make this program an essential part of our highway operations.”