01594849

Component

This paper presents an investigation into the economic feasibility of safety countermeasures along rural low-volume roads. While these roads may be associated with higher crash risks and hazards as they’re built to meet lower standards, crash occurrence and frequencies are notably lower than those on other roadways with higher traffic exposure. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that some conventional safety countermeasures that are proven to be cost effective on well-travelled roads may turn out to be infeasible on low-volume roads. Consequently, information on economic feasibility of countermeasures along low-volume roads is essential for the success of highway safety improvement programs. Twenty-seven safety improvements were identified and examined in this investigation for their economic feasibility along low-volume rural roads. A roadway sample with a total length of 681 miles in the state of Oregon was used in this study. Detailed benefit-cost analyses were performed using documented countermeasure costs, 10-year crash data, and expected crash reductions from the literature using Highway Safety Manual methods. Around half of the countermeasures investigated were found cost-effective for implementation along low-volume roads. Further, most of the countermeasures that were found to have very high benefit-cost ratio are associated with low initial cost and many of them do not require much maintenance cost (e.g. rumble strips, use of delineators and markers, etc.). At the other end of the spectrum, almost all roadway cross-section safety improvements (e.g. widening lanes, adding shoulders, etc.) were found economically infeasible due to higher associated costs relative to the expected crash reduction benefits on low volume roads.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AFB30 Standing Committee on Low-Volume Roads.

01584066

16-2323

English

17p

2016

Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting

Web

Figures; Maps; References (13) ; Tables

Benefit cost analysis; Cost effectiveness; Economics; Highway safety; Rural highways; Safety; Traffic volume

Oregon

Economics; Highways; Safety and Human Factors

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2016 Paper #16-2323

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 12 2016 5:02PM