April 10, 2018

CoSSaR Director Mark Haselkorn selected to lead new Seattle interagency mobility partnership

Seattle-area law enforcement and transportation agencies are working together even more closely to jointly improve mobility in the wake of major traffic incidents in the I-5 corridor.

One outcome of the research done by Mark Haselkorn and CoSSaR last year, six regional agencies—Washington State Department of Transportation, Seattle Department of Transportation, Seattle Fire Department, Seattle Police Department, Washington State Patrol, and King County Metro—have formally agreed to work together as the Seattle Area Joint Operations Group (SAJOG). All have signed on to a charter establishing the Seattle area interagency working group, and a meeting of the six executives on March 21 set the new group into motion.

The SAJOG will work to design and implement a regional strategy for enhancing mobility and reducing impact when a major incident drastically reduces capacity along the Seattle I-5 corrdior.  Last year alone, four extraordinary traffic incidents impacted the Seattle I-5 corridor, each taking more than 6 hours to clear. For every minute a highway lane is blocked, four to ten minutes of traffic congestion results, costing the region millions of dollars in lost economic value. These incidents also lead to secondary collisions, increased fuel consumption, and air pollution.

In April 2018, the newly formed group selected CoSSaR Director Mark Haselkorn to chair SAJOG, for the remainder of 2018. SAJOG will begin to define a regional framework for joint operations, information sharing, shared technology, and policies that enable an expanded response to major incidents.