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Alternative contracting approaches are becoming more widely used across the Nation. These methods can streamline Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) project delivery, save money, and increase the rate at which needed safety improvements are installed. In the case of IDIQ contracting, agencies are able to “bundle” low-cost safety projects under a single contract.
This document highlights Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) Rapid Response program (RR Program or RR team) and shows how the program takes a systemic approach to safety and aligns with the Safe System principles to achieve Vision Zero in Denver.
Prevailing practice in road safety management is generally reliant on crash reporting undertaken by responding law enforcement officers. While useful, this type of data has inherent limitations, not least of which being that it is reactive. Transportation agencies, for example, often only identify dangerous hot spots after years of crash reports indicate some kind of anomaly about the location.
The Vision Zero movement, with its goal to eliminate fatal and serious-injury collisions, encourages communities to build a future in which validated, data-driven preventive steps can be taken long before crashes, deaths, and serious injuries occur. One promising approach, traffic conflict analysis, leverages cloud computing, artificial intelligence and video analytics, and offers predictive insight into when, where, and why crashes are most likely to occur.
Work zone and worker safety are of vital concern to transportation agencies, the construction industry, and the motoring public. In Florida, speeding in work zone areas accounts for 31 percent of fatal work zone crashes. Despite this, limited smart work zone (SWZ) applications and studies to date have focused on arterials and other non-freeway locations.
To close this research and implementation gap, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) District 7 led and managed an innovative arterial work zone safety project in partnership with FDOT's safety team, the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR) at the University of South Florida, and the Florida Work Zone Safety Coalition.
US Highway 89 west of Browning, MT traverses the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and provides a key entrance to Glacier National Park, which typically sees 3 million visitors each year. The route, originally built in 1927, was narrow with sharp curves, few turnouts and heavy tourist traffic. To improve roadway safety and traffic flow while minimizing impacts to numerous Blackfeet cultural sites, adjacent wetlands, and area wildlife, the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) performed major road improvements along a 5.8-mile stretch. These included reconstruction of 21 substandard horizontal curves, shoulder widening, and provision of edge line rumble strips.
Local transportation agencies are vital in the effort to improve roadway safety in Florida, because they design, operate, and maintain their own roadways and assist the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) toward achieving our collective target of zero serious injuries and fatalities. FDOT uses its Florida Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) to improve the skills and increase the knowledge of local and transportation workforces on roadway safety via training and technical assistance.
The Village of Whitefish Bay is an active community near Milwaukee, WI with a population of approximately 14,000. Since 2010, the Village had been experiencing a trend of increasing crashes, including numerous right-angle collisions, run-off-the-road incidents, and many crashes involving non-motorists. In 2015, a woman was killed when a vehicle was rear-ended and pushed into a crosswalk.
Prior to the fatal crash, the Village had been evaluating safety improvement strategies. In 2015, many were set into motion. First, the Village implemented low-cost treatments to make an immediate impact on safety and change the driving culture to be more aware of the presence of—and need to yield to—pedestrians and bicyclists. Improvements included installing dynamic speed feedback signs, supplementing "yield here to pedestrian" signs with $250 fine plaques, and placing the "yield here" signs in advance of crosswalks.
Lane departure crashes are one of the most over-represented fatal and serious injury crash types on North Carolinas roadways. They comprise 55 percent of fatal and serious injury crashes in the state, with almost 14,000 such crashes occurring from 2015 to 2019. With over 80,000 miles of roadway under its jurisdiction, the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) is responsible for one of the nation's largest highway systems, and is proactively looking for low-cost and high-return safety solutions to prevent lane departure crashes and drive down fatal and serious injury trends.
To this end, NCDOT undertook an effort to investigate, install, and evaluate a promising low-cost solution on rural, two-lane roadways: long-life pavement markings. Designed to provide improved roadway delineation and motorist guidance, these markings are available in a variety of widths, media, and materials, so NCDOT sought to determine the safety return, longevity/durability, and cost-effectiveness implications of each type.
The Texas Transportation Commission has adopted a goal of zero fatalities on Texas roadways by 2050. Recognizing that new methods would be needed to reach this goal, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) retained the Texas A&M Transportation Institute to develop scoring tools that can be used to evaluate the effects of geometric, traffic control and roadside design elements on safety. The initial effort focused on two-lane and multi-lane rural roadway projects because a disproportionate number of fatalities and serious injuries occur on these roads.
The scoring tool incorporates quantified effects of changes in design parameters such as lane and shoulder width, horizontal and vertical curve geometry, rumble strips, and clearances to objects, thereby allowing project developers to examine the effects and tradeoffs involved in design decisions. Developed in a user-friendly, familiar spreadsheet format, the tool is not designed or intended to make decisions for the project developer, but rather to provide an objective, data-driven aid that allows the designer to assess and evaluate how changes in design parameters can affect safety. Feedback is provided through a visualization tornado-chart graph, dubbed the Vortex of Safety, which provides a proportional representation of the effect of design changes, and focuses the analyst on the primary means to improve safety in a project.