Summary from Assessment of Local Road Safety Funding, Training, and Technical Assistance: Benefit/Cost Tool and Local Road Safety Manual

Background

The Tennessee DOT (TDOT) Local Roads Safety Initiative (LRSI) was created in 2010 to assist with improving safety on local roads. TDOT created the initiative to assist its counties with road safety improvements. The initiative provides basic signing, striping upgrades, signage for curves, guardrail, and approaches to guard rails. Most counties have limited support staff and very few counties have staff with the needed engineering expertise. Only 6 of 95 county chief administrative officers are licensed engineers. The LRSI was developed by a partnership between the Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) and safety projects coordinator, State traffic engineer, assistant chief of operations, incident management division director, and the Tennessee FHWA Division. TDOT developed a consultant contract and hired two consultants to conduct local road safety analysis in Tennessee's 95 counties.

Benefit

The TDOT Local Road Safety Initiative has successfully conducted Road Safety Audit Reviews (RSARs) through the draft stage for 45 counties and 21 projects have been let to bid and awarded since the program's inception.

Contact

FHWA Office of Safety staff contacts by safety function