SPONSOR: Oregon Department of Transportation

BUDGET: $95,000

ABSTRACT: The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) Safety Investment Program (SIP) seeks to allocate safety funds in a manner that maximizes safety benefits on preservation projects and at specific high-crash locations. The SIP philosophy targets highway sections for investment with the premise that the most effective use of safety dollars to save lives is to invest in areas where the most people are being killed or seriously injured in traffic crashes. The SIP categorizes five-mile roadway sections on a 1-5 rating based on the number of crashes in a three year period; with five (5) being the most crash prone section. Safety funds are then assigned based on these ratings and may be used for stand-alone as well as 3R safety-based expenditures; however, ODOT does not have a program in place to assess of the actual influence these investments on the overall safety improvements of the corridors. There is some uncertainty as to whether SIP policy encourages the most cost-effective use of limited resources and whether it effectively sorts road segments requiring safety improvements and those where standards can be reduced. While nearly $140 million has been allocated through SIP since its inception, there currently is no system in place to track investments and results. SAFETEA-LU established a new core Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) which requires strategic highway safety planning and results assessment. Since SAFETEA-LU calls for a data driven decision process, there is a need for ODOT to address how best to invest in safety and assess these investments using some type of performance measure based system. In this research, a comprehensive evaluation will be designed to evaluate the SIP program and recommend appropriate policy and performance measurement changes. The objective of this research is study the effectiveness of SIP policies in meeting the goals and objectives of the ODOT. The research will seek to answer a number of funding, design, and construction decisions as they relate to the SIP policy. Based on comprehensive reviews of both roadway projects in low and high crash sections, this research will seek to quantify the impacts of investing in the "worst first" sections. The research will also explore alternative network screening techniques and investigate appropriate performance measures for the SIP.