01628134

Component

The City of Albuquerque, New Mexico has upgraded its traffic signs in several sections of the city. The upgrade process replaces all traffic signs with signs made from new materials. Because sign improvements are traditionally made on a case-by-case basis, as funding challenges can limit an agency’s ability to implement widespread changes, this sign upgrade process in Albuquerque provided an opportunity to evaluate the safety effects of a systemic upgrade. The systemic improvements are still ongoing throughout the city as not every section has been addressed. The analyses of this study were therefore arranged to compare the crash frequencies experienced on segments that had the upgraded signs with crash frequencies from years before treatment on those same segments or on segments in other parts of the city that have not yet been treated. Findings indicate that, when viewed collectively as a systemic treatment, the upgraded signs may have contributed to reducing as many as 13 nighttime crashes across the entire collection of the treated segments. Crash reductions of other groups (such as total crashes or fatal and injury crashes) were less certain, though possible. When viewed at the level of individual segment, where effects of specific road features are also considered, the benefits of the upgraded signs were more elusive with no statistically significant findings directly related to the upgraded signs.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB50 Standing Committee on Traffic Control Devices.

01618707

17-02525

English

20p

2017

Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Before and after studies; Crash rates; Modernization; Nighttime crashes; Traffic safety; Traffic signs

Albuquerque (New Mexico)

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2017 Paper #17-02525

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 8 2016 10:57AM