Citation

Beale VF, Troyer D, Chock A, Hopwood C, McNeill M. Transp. Res. Rec. 2018; 2672(32): 40-48.

Affiliation

Ohio Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) Center, Ohio Department of Transportation, Columbus, Ohio 2Ohio Department of Transportation, Columbus, Ohio 3Mott MacDonald, Cleveland, Ohio Corresponding Author: Address correspondence to Victoria F. Beale: victoria.beale@dot.ohio.gov

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0361198118782022

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Ohio faces the challenge, as do many other states, of how to utilize Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) funding to improve safety on its low-volume roadways while meeting the data-driven safety funding requirements of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. Low-volume roads present unique challenges because data is rarely available and other factors, such as roadway ownership, affect the implementation of safety countermeasures on this system. Beginning in 2014, the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) created a township safety signage grant program designed to address the issues with utilizing HSIP funding on low-volume roadways. The grant program's goal was to drive down the number of fatalities, serious injuries, and overall crashes occurring on Ohio's low-volume roads. ODOT took into consideration overriding issues regarding low-volume roads in how it structured the grant program. ODOT also utilized the direction from its Strategic Highway Safety Plan in choosing a safety countermeasure which met the needs of its roadway departure and intersection crash trends. The program has been actively engaged in by Ohio townships and now has a large enough amount of post-safety countermeasure installation data available to quantify its initial success. This paper presents the successful results by highlighting the human capital and comprehensive societal benefit/cost analyses for the first 24 townships with 12 months of post-grant completion crash data.

Language: en