Quantitative Safety Information and Project Development

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Quantitative Safety Information and Project
Development

• Session 8
• Policy Level Issues Related to Safety
• Timothy Neuman, PE
• Chief Highway Engineer
• CH2M HILL

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Presentation Overview

• How will the availability of system-wide
  quantitative safety information influence agency
  project development processes?
• What types of policies are envisioned to be most
  affected?
• What organizational and educational barriers need
  to be overcome?

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Transportation Agency Responsibilities

• Programming and Prioritization
• Project Development
• Operations and Maintenance

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Project Development Process
Screening and selection of preferred
Problem Definition
Preliminary and Final Design
Decision and Evaluation Framework
Design Studies (Alternatives)
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Project Development Risks Abound

• Some stakeholder opposition must be assumed for
  essentially every project
• Purpose and need must be defensible
• Recommended solutions must be effective and
  defensible (per proven solutions or industry best
  practices)

• Costs and impacts must be justified to be
  acceptable to regulatory agencies (assuming
  adversarial interests or resource conflicts exist)

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Safety Information and Project Development

• Is safety truly part of the problem or not? If
  so, what is the specific safety problem? If not,
  then what is the problem?
• If the problem is truly a safety one, then what
  solutions make sense? If it is a congestion or
  other problem the universe of solutions is
  different.

• How important is safety relative to other
  factors in developing and screening alternatives?
• Are design exceptions acceptable or not? If so,
  what types? Where? Under what circumstances?

Screening and selection of preferred
Problem Definition
Preliminary and Final Design
Decision and Evaluation Framework
Design Studies (Alternatives)
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Project Development Issues

• Defining Purpose and Need (problem statement)
• Project Type and Safety Information
• New Construction
• Reconstruction
• 3R
• Alternatives development, analysis and
  decision-making
• Agency liability and risk management

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Project purpose and need drives the
environmental decision-making process

• Replacement of infrastructure in disrepair

Congestion or traffic operational problems

• Safety (crash prevention and/or severity
  mitigation)

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The way things are today

• Not every project is driven by safety
• But most purpose and need statements assert
  safety as a driver
• Solutions may or may not specifically deal with
  safety (other drivers generally prevail)
• Challenges to EISs and EAs are the primary means
  of stalling or halting otherwise good projects

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SPIs (and other tools) offer objective,
defensible means of characterizing safety problems
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Project Type Definitions

• New construction (projects on new alignment)
• Reconstruction of existing facility

• Resurfacing, restoration or rehabilitation (3R)

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The Green Book encourages 3R designation where it
is appropriate

• Specific site investigations and crash history
  analysis often indicate that the existing design
  features are performing in a satisfactory manner.
  The cost of full reconstruction for these
  facilities, particularly where major realignment
  is not needed, will often not be justified.
• Green Book Foreword, pg xliii

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The way things are today Nominal safety drives
project type decisions

• Nominal Safety is examined in reference to
  compliance with standards, warrants, guidelines
  and sanctioned design procedures

Is this road safe?

• Substantive Safety is the expected or actual
  crash frequency and severity for a highway or
  roadway
• 
  Ezra Hauer, ITE Traffic Safety
  Toolbox Introduction, 1999

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Project Development Process
Screening and selection of preferred
Problem Definition
Preliminary and Final Design
Decision and Evaluation Framework
Design Studies (Alternatives)
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Designers have many choices to make

• Intersection types
• Access control

• Number and type of lanes shoulders
• Presence, type and width of medians
• Accommodation of bicyclists and pedestrians
• Accommodation of transit vehicles
• Traffic control strategies
• Design level of service

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Objective Safety Information Supports Project
Evaluations and Decisions
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Objective safety information informs and improves
decisions

• Type of facility
• Effect of varying cross section dimensions
• Effect of alignment
• Access control policies and solutions
• Roadside design policies
• Intersection design solutions
• Traffic control strategies
• etc.

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Project Development Process
Screening and selection of preferred
Problem Definition
Preliminary and Final Design
Decision and Evaluation Framework
Design Studies (Alternatives)
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Design Exceptions are part of project development

• Understand objective operational and safety
  effects of potential design exceptions
• Employ proven, safety-effective mitigation
  strategies
• Fully document the design exception and
  mitigation approach

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Potential project development policy changes

• 3R design criteria
• Identifying safety as a key purpose and need
  element
• Revisions to agency standard design solutions
• New tasks or reports integrated with other
  technical work (e.g., design study reports,
  interchange justification reports, design
  exceptions requests)

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Potential programming policy changes

• Project scoping (3R vs. reconstruction) to
  incorporate quantitative safety up front
• Criteria for considering conversion of two-lane
  highway to multi-lane facility or other basic
  capacity improvements
• Allocation of funding for safety-driven projects
  vs. other priorities based on confidence in
  information and demonstrated paybacks

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Policy Level Data Issues

• Acquisition and Maintenance of Safety Data
• Not just crashes
• Traffic counts (more, intersections)
• Geometric (including roadside)
• Traffic control
• Substantive Safety Based Policies

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Cultural and Educational Barriers to Overcome

• Exploding the Safety always comes first myth
• Balancing safety against other values is not only
  ok, it is what we should have been doing all
  along
• Recognizing safety as a continuum and not an
  absolute
• Coming to grips with the fact that some things we
  do are less safe than the alternative that we
  dont like for other reasons
• Understanding design decisions as discretionary
  in nature

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Organizational Barriers to Overcome

• Scientific safety information is too important to
  be relegated to just your safety program
• Safety Divisions/Bureaus have roles to play in
  essentially all projects at all levels
• Safety asset acquisition and management needs to
  become a priority (across Divisions/offices)
• Project development teams must include safety
  expertise
• Designers and other problem solvers must enhance
  their basic understanding of safety science

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A View to the Future

• Decisions based on objective information are
  better decisions we ought to do a better job
• Resources spent in the name of safety will
  actually produce measurable safety benefits
• Proven successes will lead to re-allocation of
  limited resources
• Design standards and criteria will evolve to more
  closely reflect the science of safety
• Performance based design processes may eventually
  supplant standards based approaches

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Questions and Discussion