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Project Highlights (continued)
Study Develops Comprehensive Transportation Safety Evaluation Program in Wyoming
The University of Wyoming is conducting a safety study with funding from MPC and the Wyoming Department of Transportation. The research will result in a program that can help counties identify high-risk rural locations and develop a strategy to obtain funding to reduce crashes and fatalities on rural roads statewide. Most of Wyoming's road network is rural in nature and rural roads nationwide have a significant highway safety problem. Close to 80 percent of the nation's roadway miles are in rural areas and over 58 percent of the total fatalities occur in rural areas. The fatality rate for rural areas (per 100 million vehicles miles of travel) is more than twice that of urban areas.
SAFETEA-LU requires state department of transportation agencies to address safety on local and rural roads. "It is important for state, county, and city officials to cooperate in producing a comprehensive safety plan to improve safety statewide," notes Khaled Ksaibati, MPC program director at the University of Wyoming. "This legislation provides an opportunity to implement a more cohesive and comprehensive approach to local road safety in Wyoming."
As part of this study, a Local Road Safety Advisory Group (LRSAG) has been established. This group includes representatives from WYDOT, Wyoming LTAP, Wyoming Association of County Engineers and Road Superintendents (WACERS), Wyoming Association of Municipalities (WAM), and FHWA. Three Wyoming counties, Carbon, Laramie, and Johnson, are included in the pilot phase of this study.
A five-step procedure has been developed as a result of this study. These steps are:
- Crash data analysis based on historical crash 1. data provided by WYDOT. This analysis will help in identifying one-mile segments in each county with high number of crashes.
- Level I field evaluation. This evaluation is 2. performed on sections identified as high-risk locations based on the crash data evaluation. It consists of ranking each one-mile segment in five categories on a scale of 0 to 10.
- Combined ranking to identify potential high 3. risk locations based on steps 1 and 2.
- Level II field evaluation. This comprehensive 4. evaluation is similar to conducting road safety audits. The objective of this evaluation is to identify appropriate safety countermeasures on the roadway sections which were identified as high risk locations based on the crash evaluation and the level I field evaluation.
- Benefit/cost analysis. This analysis will 5. help identify the most cost-effective safety countermeasures. The counties can then develop a plan to fund these countermeasures from the High Risk Rural Road Program (HRRR) or any other county funding sources.
The Local Road Safety Advisory Group has approved the procedure developed in this study to improve safety on rural roads in Wyoming. The University of Wyoming will provide technical help and training to counties interested in implementing this program. This program will help Wyoming counties in identifying high risk locations and then develop a strategy for funding safety improvements. The Wyoming DOT will help in funding some of the counties safety requests from the HRRR program. This will provide an incentive for Wyoming counties to establish local safety programs.
The WYDOT safety program is now in the process of establishing guidelines and a timeline for counties to submit safety requests for funding from the HRRR program. All counties are expected to follow the five-step procedure developed in this study to submit their HRRR requests. A committee can then rank all the requests statewide and distribute the available funding.
"This program has been truly a success story, showing how Wyoming local governments can work closely with WYDOT and FHWA to improve the safety on rural roads across the state," says Ksaibati. "Other states can greatly benefit from this procedure when they are considering the distribution of their HRRR funds. Therefore, the findings of this study will be submitted for presentation and publication at the Transportation Research Board meeting in 2009."
NDSU Plans Transportation Input Workshops Across State
North Dakota's transportation planners want to know what the business community, elected officials, and individual citizens think about the state's existing and required transportation infrastructure and transit services. To find out, a series of eight public input workshops were held around the state in late March and early April. The workshops were partially supported by MPC funding.
"Fuel prices, economic growth and infrastructure concerns have focused public attention on our transportation systems nationwide," notes Jon Mielke, an associate research fellow with the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at NDSU. "We face critical transportation issues here in North Dakota and these meetings serve as an open door to anyone who wants to contribute ideas or concerns to public policy discussion."
The sessions were designed to create public awareness and to collect input concerning transportation and mobility issues faced by the state. Recognizing that the state would face important decisions related to the costs of maintaining its transportation infrastructure and demands for improved facilities and services, the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at NDSU is working with local, state, and federal entities to facilitate a public awareness and input process.
"The key point of the entire effort is to generate public awareness, input, and future involvement," Mielke says.
A state conference will be held May 1 to outline input that was generated and to present related recommendations. Resulting public input and recommendations will be presented to the Legislature's Interim Transportation Committee.
Utah Traffic Lab Assists in Planning for Bus Rapid Transit Project
University of Utah researchers are helping the Utah Transit Authority plan for the implementation of its first bus rapid transit line later this year.
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) compares favorably to standard city buses, street cars and light rail systems. It is a flexible, high performance form of transit mode which combines stations, vehicles, services, running ways, and Intelligent Transportation System elements (ITS) into an integrated system. It improves speed, reliability and identity of bus transit and combines quality of rail transit with flexibility of buses.
Utah Transit Authority (UTA) is planning to implement the first regional BRT project along 3500 South Street in Salt Lake County instead of the existing bus lane No 35. The Utah Traffic Lab is to evaluate benefits of the BRT installation. They are working on establishing transit signal priority for BRT buses and facilitating bus movements through signalized intersections along the corridor. A critical focus is on implementing transit signal priority on a segment between 2700 West Street and 5600 West Street. With 13 signalized intersections along this segment, signals need to be optimized to enable regular and reliable BRT service.
Based on traffic counts and measurements, the Utah Traffic Lab is creating a microsimulation computer model of this sub-network, which should represent the real situation in the field. Using different traffic software and other engineering tools, traffic and transit operations in this sub-network will be optimized in order to establish a reliable transit system with all its advantages.
