Safety Assessment of a Rural Highway in a Design Process.

Transportation agencies are constantly faced with the challenge of upgrading their road network systems; as infrastructure ages and traffic volumes increase. However, improvements to each roadway are not feasible due to limited available budgets and resources. A variety of design alternatives should be considered in order to achieve a safe, efficient and economical highway design. Therefore, there is a need for an approach or method to estimate the operational and safety benefits of different alternatives designs. For this reason, the authors have undertaken an analysis of the current and potential future safety performance of Autoroute 50, for which an undivided highway section was recently opened in the Outaouais area, in Quebec. First, a scientific safety analysis was conducted to quantitatively measure the safety performance of the existing condition and compare it to adjacent roadways. Based on the outcome of the first analysis, a series of alternative designs were recommended to improve the safety performance of the existing condition. Then, a comparison of the existing and the future safety performance was completed for alternative designs. Finally, a benefit cost analysis was completed for the future 20 years in order to assess the cost?effectiveness of the design alternatives. (A) For the covering abstract of this conference see ITRD number E220308.