Urban Transportation Infrastructure and Cyclist and Pedestrian Safety

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has designated eight cities in Region 6 as Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Focus Cities to highlight the need for improved safety for the most vulnerable road users in these cities. Moreover, FHWA’s Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) safety performance measures call for state and regional targets to help minimize highway fatalities and injuries, including those involving pedestrian and cyclists. The purpose of this research is to compile crash and operational data and perform a comprehensive assessment of the risk factors and root causes of crashes involving pedestrians and bicycles in the city of San Antonio, prioritize the risk factors, identify hot spot corridors, identify and evaluate safety countermeasures, and recommend the most effective, low-cost safety countermeasures. The analysis will include review of crash narratives and diagrams, and pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists movements and actions prior to a crash, as well as the common environment characteristics that contribute to unsafe actions and conditions. This information can be used to develop educational programs needed to prevent such crashes. The countermeasures to be developed will address regional and state targets to reduce deaths and injuries, and to achieve the FHWA goal to reach zero deaths within the next two decades. In order to provide an efficient and quick solution to the problem, the research team aims to carry out the tasks outlined below: 1. The research team will first undertake a thorough review of the available literature. Available past research and reports of a related nature, from Texas, Region 6, across the nation, and internationally, will be reviewed. Some of these resources will be listed and individually described elsewhere in this proposal. A major focus of the research team will be identification and prioritizing of risk factors associated with crashes involving bicyclists and pedestrians and the effectiveness of engineering/educational countermeasures to improve safety. 2. The research team will download operational and safety data from sources such as Crash Records Information System (CRIS), the Fatality Analysis and Reporting System (FARS), which has far more specialized detail on bicyclist and pedestrian crashes, Texas Department of State Health Services records, and crash narratives as well as site visits. 3. The research team will use data mining to examine spatio-temporal indicators that may reveal information about the correlation between crash numbers and traffic volumes, common characteristics of the built environment that contribute to unsafe actions and conditions, and other factors. This will include development of methods to trace locations of individual bicyclist/pedestrian crashes through time and examine the impacts of safety countermeasures. 4. The research team will use different data collection techniques to understand road user’s behavior and review crash narratives and diagrams. These observations will not only be helpful in the analysis of risk factors, but also provide a framework that guides decision-making throughout the entire process, from identifying a problem to implementing a countermeasure. 5. The research team will provide accurate information on the expected benefits of engineering and educational countermeasures in terms of crash rate reductions, as well as the costs of the countermeasures and how long they are expected to provide a benefit. The research team will provide a technical brief to the city officials and an educational presentation targeting affected road users and communities.

• Record URL:
  https://transet.lsu.edu/research-in-progress/
• Supplemental Notes:
  • 20SAUTSA35

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $ 100000
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3551747106

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Transportation Consortium of South-Central States (Tran-SET)

  Louisiana State University
  Baton Rouge, LA  United States  70803
• Project Managers:

  Mousa, Momen

• Performing Organizations:

  University of Texas at San Antonio

  One UTSA Circle
  San Antonio, TX  United States  78249
• Principal Investigators:

  Sharif, Hatim

• Start Date: 20200801
• Expected Completion Date: 20220201
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Countermeasures; Crash causes; Cyclists; High risk locations; Pedestrian safety; Pedestrian vehicle crashes; Risk assessment; Urban areas
• Geographic Terms: San Antonio (Texas)
• Subject Areas: Highways; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01757541
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Transportation Consortium of South-Central States (Tran-SET)
• Contract Numbers: 69A3551747106
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Nov 11 2020 9:20AM