Integrating Safety into the Transportation Planning Process

The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century requires metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to incorporate safety and security into the transportation planning process as one of the seven planning factors. The Hampton Roads Planning District Commission (HRPDC) is the designated MPO for Southeastern Virginia. In 2001, as part of its congestion management system (CMS) program, the HRPDC staff initiated a comprehensive regional safety study, which included collecting comprehensive crash data and creating a regional database for 151 Interstate segments and 13,000 intersections. The crash severity method was used to analyze, rank, and determine the top high-crash locations for Interstate segments as well as the CMS intersections. This regional safety study was designed to help local communities understand safety-related problems and issues. Congestion, failure to yield the right-of-way, following too closely, driver inattention, and disregarding traffic signals were found to be the main causes of traffic crashes in Hampton Roads between 1998 and 2000. Rear-ends and right angles were the predominant crash types during the period. The study analyzed and recommended a series of safety-related countermeasures and solutions for the top-10 high-crash locations throughout the region. Some common countermeasures that were recommended were adding roadway capacity, adding turn lanes at intersections, improving signal timing, improving signage, increasing enforcement, and providing additional driver education.

Identifying Pedestrian High-Crash Locations as Part of Florida’s Highway Safety Improvement Program: A Systematic Approach

From 1997 to 2001, pedestrian fatalities represented 25.9% (2,065 fatalities) of all traffic fatalities in Florida. The latest available statewide crash data from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles reveals 8,487 pedestrian crashes, resulting in 510 deaths and 7,894 injuries, in 2001. However, a methodology is not currently available to identify pedestrian high-crash locations in Florida as part of the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP). A study was conducted to provide the framework for the systematic identification of pedestrian high-crash locations on the state highway system as part of the HSIP. The study methodology uses the Poisson distribution to determine abnormally high pedestrian crash frequencies in a year for 1-mi roadway segments. Four-lane and six-lane divided roadways with continuous sidewalks on both sides of the road in Miami-Dade County were included. The crash data, the latest available from the crash database of the Florida Department of Transportation, correspond to the years 1997, 1998, and 1999. A χ2 goodness-of-fit test was performed to determine how well the data could be modeled by a Poisson process. The goodness-of-fit test was significant at the 2.5% level for the 1999 data, at the 10% level for the 1998 data, and less than 1% for the 1997 data. With a confidence level of at least 90%, a pedestrian crash frequency of three crashes in a 1-mi segment was found to be abnormally high for the fourlane divided facilities. For the six-lane divided facilities, four pedestrian crashes per 1-mi segment were established as the threshold value. From these threshold values, 22 1-mi segments were identified as pedestrian high-crash locations in Miami-Dade County for 1999.