A proposed safety improvement project must usually go through a benefit-cost analysis to ensure that it will have a high probability of resulting in an overall economic benefit. The calculation of the benefit depends on projected crash reductions, which are calculated as the expected number of crashes without the improvement multiplied by a crash reduction factor (CRF). Two necessary inputs to developing CRFs are historical safety improvement projects and the associated crash records. While the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) maintains a comprehensive crash record system for its state roadway system, it does not have a central database for safety improvement projects. Consequently, historical improvement projects are maintained separately at various district offices in various formats and are not easily accessible for the purpose of developing and updating CRFs. In addition, FDOT also desires a system that can 1) automate the benefit-cost analysis, which used to require manual tallying of crash statistics for input into a spreadsheet program, and 2) assess the effectiveness of safety improvement projects. This paper describes a web-based information system that was designed to meet these needs of the FDOT. The system provides a central location for district officers to enter safety improvement projects and update CRFs as new improvement projects become available, to perform benefit-cost analysis to better identify effective improvement projects, and to perform before-after analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of safety improvement programs. The system can serve as a prototype for other states that have an interest in computerizing the maintenance and analysis of their safety improvement projects.
Samenvatting