01371077

Component

Travel demand management (TDM) consists of a variety of policy measures that affect the transportation system’s effectiveness by changing travel behavior. The primary objective to implement such TDM strategies is not to improve traffic safety; however, their potential in providing traffic safety profits should not be neglected. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the traffic safety impacts of conducting a fuel-cost scenario in Flanders, Belgium. While travel demand management strategies are usually conducted at an aggregated level, crash prediction models (CPMs) should also be developed at a more aggregated level. Therefore zonal crash prediction models (ZCPMs) are considered to present the association between observed crashes in each zone and a set of predictor variables. To this end, an activity-based transportation model framework is applied to produce exposure variables which will be used in prediction models. This allows the ability to conduct a more detailed and reliable assessment while TDM strategies are inherently modeled in the activity-based models unlike traditional models in which the impact of TDM strategies are assumed. Crash data used in this study consist of observed injury crashes between 2004 and 2007. Other network and socio-demographic variables are also collected from other sources. In this study, a selected zonal crash prediction model is developed to predict the number of injury crashes (NOICs) for both the null and a fuel-cost scenario. The results show a considerable traffic safety benefit of conducting the fuel-cost scenario besides its impact on reducing total vehicle kilometers travelled. The expected NOICs decreased by 4.17%, whilst a yearly 4.66 billion vehicle kilometers travelled reduction was observed after implementing the fuel-cost scenario; i.e. increasing the fuel cost by 20%.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB40(1) Emerging Methods Methods and Developments in Urban Activity and Travel Analysis

01362476

12-1659

English

15p

2012

Transportation Research Board 91st Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Costs; Forecasting; Fuel gas; Mathematical models; Traffic safety; Travel demand management

Activity based modeling; Crash prediction models; Zonal analysis

Flanders (Belgium)

Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning; I82: Accidents and Transport Infrastructure

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2012 Paper #12-1659

TRIS, TRB

Feb 8 2012 5:04PM