An economic evaluation of freeway service patrols

Highway assistance services, also called the freeway service patrols (FSPs), are one of the main approaches used by incident management programs. The objective of this study was to investigate the factors that contribute to people choosing to rely on the highway assistance services (FSP) in comparison to private assistance services such as the Automobile Association of America (AAA). Further the effectiveness of the Freeway Service Patrol was studied by carrying out a benefit-cost analysis using Los Angeles as a test case. The results indicate that the probability that an individual would choose to depend on the highway assistance services depends on the key attributes like the annual fee of the program, the fee at the time of assistance, the time of waiting for assistance and cost of breakdown. The B/C ratio for the Los Angeles FSP was calculated to be 5.91.