01477736

Component

Travel demand management (TDM) consists of a variety of policy measures that affect the effectiveness of transportation systems by changing travel behavior. The primary objective of such TDM strategies is not to improve traffic safety, although their impact on traffic safety should not be neglected. The main purpose of this study is to simulate the traffic safety impact of conducting a teleworking scenario (i.e. 5% of the working population engages in teleworking) in the study area, Flanders, Belgium. Since TDM strategies are usually conducted at a geographically aggregated level, crash prediction models should also be developed at an aggregate level. Given that crash occurrences are often spatially heterogeneous and are affected by many spatial variables, the existence of spatial correlation in the data is also examined. The results indicate the necessity of accounting for the spatial correlation when developing crash prediction models. Therefore zonal crash prediction models (ZCPMs) within the Geographically Weighted Generalized Linear Modeling framework are developed to incorporate the spatial variations in association between the number of crashes (NOCs) (including fatal, severe and slight injury crashes recorded between 2004 and 2007) and other explanatory variables. Different exposure, network and sociodemographic variables of 2200 traffic analysis zones (TAZs) are considered as predictors of crashes. An activity-based transportation model framework is adopted to produce detailed exposure metrics. This enables to conduct a more detailed and reliable assessment while TDM strategies are inherently modeled in the activity-based models. In this study, several ZCPMs with different severity levels and crash types are developed to predict the NOCs for both the null and the teleworking scenario. The models show a considerable traffic safety benefit of conducting the teleworking scenario due to its impact on the reduction of total vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) by 3.15%. Implementing the teleworking scenario is predicted to reduce the annual VKT by 1.426 billion and total NOCs to decline by 2.62%.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB20 Effects of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on Travel Choices.

01470560

13-1050

English

18p

2013

Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Case studies; Crash rates; Telecommuting; Traffic analysis zones; Traffic safety; Travel demand management

Flanders (Belgium)

Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning; I81: Accident Statistics

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2013 Paper #13-1050

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Feb 5 2013 12:18PM