SECTION 3: Kentucky's HFST Program

Kentucky, the FHWA, and other agencies have reported significant crash reductions at a number of high-crash sites where an HFST was applied and monitored. While HFST is yet to be known or understood by many practitioners in the United States, that should change in the future with the increased awareness and publicity of Kentucky's successful program. In addition, the American Traffic Safety Services Association (ATSSA) is undertaking an effort to promote a better understanding of the benefits of HFSTs.

This section describes the Kentucky program from inception to full deployment and provides insights into the benefits and challenges overcome during the deployment of Kentucky's HFST program.

3.1 KYTC Overall Safety Program

Kentucky's Strategic Highway Safety Plan 2011-2014⁴ has the following mission and goal:

• Mission – To reduce highway fatalities and serious injuries.
• Goal – To reduce the number of highway fatalities and serious injuries toward zero.

The KYTC recognized that it needed to apply improved safety treatments on horizontal curves throughout the State to reduce the number of roadway departure crashes experienced statewide. Nationally, roadway departure crashes account for 57 percent of fatalities; however, in Kentucky, roadway departure crashes have accounted for more than 70 percent of total fatalities since 2005. As a result, the Kentucky Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) adopted a goal of reducing the number of annual roadway fatalities to no more than 700 by the end of 2008. A tentative updated goal was to reduce fatalities from 2008 levels by a further 15 percent by 2012.

KYTC merged a data analysis package along with a set of roadway departure countermeasures to identify a set of cost effective countermeasures, deployment levels, and funds needed to achieve a 15 percent roadway departure fatality reduction goal. This information is documented in the April 2010 KYTC Roadway Departure Safety Implementation Plan. The data analysis indicated that the roadway departure goal could be achieved with the following enhancements to the safety program:

• The traditional approach of relying primarily on pursuing major improvements at high-crash roadway departure locations would need to be complemented by adopting: (1) a systematic approach that involves deploying large numbers of relatively low-cost, cost-effective countermeasures at many targeted high-crash roadway departure sections; and (2) a comprehensive approach that coordinates an engineering, education, and enforcement (3E) initiative on corridors and in urban areas with large numbers of severe roadway departure crashes.
  • The systematic improvement categories to be deployed included the following:
    • Sign and marking enhancements on curves with crash histories;
    • Centerline rumble strips on rural two lane highways;
    • Edge line rumble stripes and shoulder rumble strips, predominantly on rural two-lane highways; and
    • Selective rural tree removal program.
  • The systematic and comprehensive approaches generate a much larger number of roadway departure improvements statewide, and District personnel would need to be trained and take a more active role in identifying the appropriateness of systematic improvements within their Districts.
• The safety program would need to be expanded to incorporate low-cost, cost-effective countermeasures on other types of projects, such as resurfacing and surface transportation projects, when a crash history exists within the area of the work and the countermeasures can reduce future crash potential.
• The safety program would need to encompass cost-effective treatments on rural roads since a sizable portion of the statewide roadway departure crash problem occurred on rural roads.
• Additional countermeasures rarely or never used in Kentucky would need to be carefully and judiciously deployed on highway sections that had specific crash problems that these countermeasures could address. These countermeasures included:
  • Florescent yellow warning signs and inlaid pavement markings in advance of curves,
  • High friction surfaces,
  • Traffic calming, and
  • Use of edge line and shoulder rumble stripes/strips on narrow pavements.
• To achieve the roadway departure safety goal, it would take an investment of approximately $48 million over the 5-year period (or $10 million per year) for infrastructure improvements.
• In addition, a substantial pilot program would need to be initiated to improve safe driver behavior on selected corridors and cities that had significant numbers of severe roadway departure crashes. These pilots would involve highly visible active enforcement and, if successful in reducing severe crashes, would be applied to other corridors and cities that had similar crash histories.

The bottom line for a successful plan implementation was that, once fully implemented over a 10-year period, approximately 21,000 roadway departure crashes and almost 1,500 disabling injury crashes would be prevented, and more than 650 lives would be saved. Kentucky's HSIP Investment Plan is documented in a May 10, 2013, letter to FHWA and includes the following information:

"The Federal highway legislation, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) was enacted in 2012. MAP-21 continues the HSIP with an increase in funding for Kentucky from $22 million per year to $38 million per year to achieve a significant reduction in traffic fatalities and serious injuries on all public roads. Kentucky's HSIP focuses on three areas for improvement: Roadway Departures, Intersections, and Other Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) measures.

• Roadway Departures – Kentucky's HSIP planning for MAP-21 includes a significant investment in the reduction of roadway departure crashes–more than $25 million (66 percent of total HSIP funding) annually. HFSTs are included within this category and represent about $2 million, or 8 percent of the total funding level for the roadway departure plan. KYTC's field experience with HFST, which started in 2009, gave them the confidence to develop an HFST program of this magnitude.
• Intersections – Over the past 7 years, intersection-related crashes have accounted for nearly 14 percent of roadway fatalities and 25 percent of injury crashes. Thus, the Governor's Executive Committee on Highway Safety voted in September 2012 to include intersections as an emphasis area in Kentucky's SHSP. An investment of $6.5 million annually, or about 17 percent of the MAP-21 HSIP funding, was directed to intersections. HFSTs were initially not included in this category, but have since been used at selected intersections.
• Other HSIP Initiatives – The key component of these initiatives are opportunities to partner with KYTC District personnel and other shareholders to deliver data-driven safety solutions, advance safety culture throughout the KYTC, and obtain safety funding for projects of local importance while still utilizing a data driven approach. An annual investment of $6.5 million in MAP-21 HSIP funding is directed toward these activities. These funds provide for engineering activities to support key strategies within the SHSP..."

Source: Excerpt from the cover letter for the "KYTC HSIP MAP-21 Investment Plan" submitted by KYTC Secretary of Transportation Michael Hancock to FHWA Kentucky Division Administrator Jose Sepulveda, May 10, 2013.

3.2 HFST Program Conception and History

KYTC's first HFST installations were in 2009 at two locations on KY 22 in District 5 near Louisville. District engineers had assessed various safety countermeasures for reducing roadway departure crashes and selected HFST as a treatment to assess with field installations. Working with local law enforcement and transportation personnel, two locations were selected that had high crash rates. KYTC expected that these crash rates could be reduced if a high friction surface treatment was installed. District 5 engineers assessed the sites in the field and concurred that the locations were good candidates The HFST was applied, and the locations realized a significant reduction in crashes immediately. The two locations had 65 reported wet pavement crashes in the 3 years before the HFST treatment (average 21.7/year) and 15 (average 3.75/year) in the 4-year after period. This initial positive experience was significant in KYTC developing a HFST program.

In late 2009, KYTC conducted a data analysis that resulted in identifying the 30 highest crash sections that had the potential to benefit from HFST installation. Within this same time frame, KYTC collaborated with FHWA to develop the KYTC Roadway Departure Safety Implementation Plan (RwDIP). The RwDIP also included a data analysis process that resulted in identifying 159 sections that had the potential to benefit from HFST. Both of these data analysis processes are considered reactive since the analysis is driven by crash frequency.

To facilitate application of HFST on these sections and to reduce risk of poor construction practices, KYTC executed a "Master Agreement" contract (i.e., "on-call" contract) with one HFST contractor in 2010. This contracting mechanism allowed KYTC to direct the contractor to place HFST within a few weeks of the order. This contracting method enabled the agency and contractor to develop a strong partnership that led to a high level of satisfaction with product quality at the KYTC, a contractor that responded quickly to any remediation requests, and the foundation for clearer, more exact specifications in future HFST contracts. The Master Agreement has since expired, and KYTC now contracts for HFST installations in a competitive regional area contracting method. The agency's contracting and construction experiences will be detailed further in section six.