Transportation Safety Planning: Forecasting the Safety Impacts of Socio-Demographic Changes and Safety Investments

Analytical tools are needed to enable states and transportation authorities to effectively forecast the safety impacts of socio-demographic changes and safety investments in the transportation planning process. The tools will be applied in a multidisciplinary environment that includes stakeholders from state agencies including metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), departments of transportation (DOTs), Governors' highway safety offices (GHSOs), and departments of public safety (DPS) to name a few key stakeholders. Currently, state and metropolitan transportation planning processes are hampered by not being able to accurately forecast safety characteristics and their impacts. Projecting current crash frequencies or rates into the future is not acceptable for planning purposes because forecasts need to account for at least two independent and critical concerns: socio-demographic changes and safety countermeasure investments. Although there is a significant need to predict future safety (i.e., crashes of various types) at the planning level, there is a dearth of tools available for making such predictions, and most currently available tools are appropriate at the corridor and project levels. NCHRP Project 8-44 resulted in a forecasting tool for addressing socio-demographic changes; however, the tool does not cover a sufficient variety of forecasting conditions nor is the tool user-friendly at present. There is a need for methods and techniques for planning-level safety analysis. These methods and techniques need to be appropriate for predicting aggregate-level safety performance at the planning or traffic analysis zone (TAZ) level and higher. The primary objective of this research will be to develop safety forecasting software and accompanying guidance that independently forecasts changes in socio-demographics and safety investments (engineering and behavioral).

• Record URL:
  http://www.trb.org/TRBNet/ProjectDisplay.asp?ProjectID=919

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $400000.00
• Contract Numbers:

  Project 8-44(02)

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Federal Highway Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590

  American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)

  444 North Capitol Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001

  National Cooperative Highway Research Program

  Transportation Research Board
  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Project Managers:

  Niessner, Charles

• Performing Organizations:

  Arizona State University, Tempe

  Tempe, AZ  United States 
• Principal Investigators:

  Washington, Simon

• Start Date: 20061027
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 20100331
• Source Data: RiP Project 11060

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Forecasting; Metropolitan planning organizations; Safety; Socioeconomic development; State departments of transportation; Transportation planning
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01463025
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: National Cooperative Highway Research Program
• Contract Numbers: Project 8-44(02)
• Files: RIP, USDOT
• Created Date: Jan 3 2013 2:15PM