01047648

Component

Safety and accessibility to bus transit systems plays a vital role in increasing transit market potential. Bus passengers often tend to cross the streets from either behind or in front of the bus as crosswalks do not exist near most bus-stops which are typically away from intersections. These unsafe maneuvers frequently result in either auto-pedestrian collisions or conflicts. Identifying hazardous bus-stops would serve as a building block to study the causal factors, select mitigation strategies, and allocate safety funds to improve safety of bus passengers. The focus of this paper is to develop a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) based methodology to assist decision makers in identifying and ranking bus-stops in high auto-pedestrian collision concentration areas. The proposed GIS based methodology involves (1) geocoding auto-pedestrian collision data, (2) identifying auto-pedestrian collision concentrations by generating a collision concentration map, (3) overlaying this on a bus-stop coverage to identify high auto-pedestrian collision locations in the vicinity of bus-stops, (4) extracting the number of collisions in the vicinity of each bus-stop for each bus-stop in high auto-pedestrian collision concentration areas, (5) identifying traffic volumes and obtaining number of passengers alighting and boarding at each bus-stop, and, (6) ranking the high collision bus-stops. Collision frequency (the number of auto-pedestrian collisions in the vicinity of the bus-stop) and collision rate (1.) dividing the number of auto-pedestrian collisions by average daily traffic, and, (2.) dividing the percent of auto-pedestrian collisions in the vicinity of the bus-stop by the percent of alighting and boarding passengers) are used and compared to rank the bus-stops. The working of the GIS-based methodology is illustrated using 2000-2002 auto-pedestrian collision data, traffic volumes, bus-stop coverage, transit ridership data, and street centerline coverage for the Las Vegas metropolitan area. Results obtained are sensitive to buffer radius and ranking methods used to rank hazardous bus-stops. Potential strategies and countermeasures to enhance safety at hazardous bus-stops are also discussed.

01042056

07-2830

English

15p

2007

Transportation Research Board 86th Annual Meeting

CD-ROM

Figures; Maps; References (7) ; Tables (3)

Bus stops; Bus transit; Bus transportation; Crash data; Crashes; Geographic information systems; High risk locations; Pedestrian vehicle crashes; Public transit

Las Vegas Metropolitan Area

Motor Carriers; Public Transportation; Safety and Human Factors

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2007 Paper #07-2830

TRIS, TRB

Feb 8 2007 7:31PM