Low Cost Safety Strategies for Unpaved Rural Roads

Unpaved roads make up the majority of roadway miles within the state of Iowa. As of the end of 2019, 62.4% of the roadway miles in Iowa are unpaved with the ownership of these mainly being counties. These unpaved roads have lower traffic volumes, but still are the sites of fatal and serious injury crashes throughout the state. As these crashes tend to be widespread and not clustered in single areas, to improve safety on these roads, low cost treatments are often used to treat larger portions of the roadway. Most research and guidance materials available related to low cost countermeasures relate to applications on paved roads. This project would help to address this gap by focusing on low cost safety improvements for unpaved roads. The proposed objectives are: (1) develop a toolbox of strategies for improving safety on unpaved rural roads based on available research and guidance; (2) demonstration projects for innovative (possibly untested) safety improvement concepts for unpaved roads; and (3) field research to develop crash modification factors or surrogate safety metrics to determine the effectiveness of various rural road safety strategies on unpaved rural roads.

• Record URL:
  https://ideas.iowadot.gov/subdomain/ideas-main/end/node/3560?qmzn=iKFrYf

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $191771
• Sponsor Organizations:

  Iowa Department of Transportation

  800 Lincoln Way
  Ames, IA  United States  50010
• Managing Organizations:

  Iowa State University, Ames

  Center for Transportation Research and Education
  2711 South Loop Drive, Suite 4700
  Ames, IA  United States  50010-8664
• Project Managers:

  Bjerke, Lee

• Performing Organizations:

  Iowa State University, Ames

  Center for Transportation Research and Education
  2711 South Loop Drive, Suite 4700
  Ames, IA  United States  50010-8664
• Principal Investigators:

  Hallmark, Shauna

• Start Date: 20230901
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 0

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Highway safety; Improvements; Rural highways; Unpaved roads
• Geographic Terms: Iowa
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01909009
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Iowa Department of Transportation
• Files: RIP, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Feb 20 2024 5:35PM