Incorporation of safety into the regional transportation planning process in Virginia

Abstract

Crashes are a significant health risk. In 2008 almost 70,000 crash related injuries occurred in Virginia (Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, 2008). It has been suggested that the incorporation of safety into the planning process can decrease crash risk, which cannot only save lives but also decrease the high societal cost associated with crashes. The purpose of this research is to develop a Virginia specific process that Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and Planning District Commissions (PDCs) can use to incorporate safety into the planning process. This.research was conducted by performing six tasks: a literature search, a survey of23 Virginia MPOs and PDCs, classification of the MPOs and PDCs into large, medium and small categories, analysis of the survey, development of a resource guide and the writing of a final report. The Resource Guide was developed using three main sources: (i) the survey results that identified challenges the MPOs/PDCs face in incorporating safety, (ii) ten elements for assessing the incorporation of safety from the literature (Washington et. al., ~. . 2006), and (iii) feedblqk from a steering committee comprising of staff from the Virginia " .., Department of Transportation and the Virginia Transportation Research Council who oversaw this project. The Resource guide contains eight steps that can be used to incorporate safety into the planning process. The steps include: 1.Developing a vision statement, goals and objectives for each project in the Constrained Long Range Plan (CLRP). 2. Developing a producedure for using a wide variety of stakeholders during identifying, prioritizing and selecting projects 3. Using a wide variety of performance measures. 4. Identification of data sources. 5. Evaluating data analysis methods for safety projects. 6. Developing and documenting prioritization process used to identify hazardous locations. 7. Identifying alternative funding sources for safety projects. 8. Developing a monitoring process for assessing performance of safety projects in the CLRP. Each step provides a description of the process, summarizes the challenges from the survey, provides an example(s) that illustrates its implementation, and lists references that provide more information on the steps of the Resource Guide.