Safety Conscious Planning for Small and Medium Size Urban Areas

The need for including safety considerations in the long-range transportation planning process was not seriously considered until the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) included among the mandatory planning factors for the metropolitan planning process in urbanized areas one factor dealing with the safety and security of motorized and non-motorized users of the transportation system. However, this requirement presents some difficulties since transportation planners usually are not trained to do safety analysis, and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) for small and medium sized areas often do not have adequate manpower and other resources needed to carry out a comprehensive safety program. Therefore, there is a need to examine thoroughly the scope of safety planning by MPOs and also analytical tools that may be needed. The paper presents a practical and comprehensive framework for proactive safety planning by MPOs in small and medium size communities. The paper examines each step/task of the long-range planning process, and identifies for each step how planners can make a contribution toward safety related activities. Issues involving the availability of crash data and the need to collaborate with other agencies are addressed. The paper also recognizes that crash prediction models currently available for safety analysis are difficult to use for long-range planning involving future highway networks because planners do not make forecasts of the values of the variables that are commonly used in these models. The paper presents a few examples of planning level tools that can be used for long-range plan development.