Our Transportation Manager, Ryan Nuesmeyer, performed a study (while with his previous engineering firm) to help Sandy City quantify the reduction of vehicle crashes along one of their major arterial roads. Since Ryan joined Meridian, the article has been published in the April 2016 ITE Journal, pages 34-39. Click the link below to see the study.
https://mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=295245
Abstract: Crash analyses are often completed prior to the design and construction of safety improvement projects to help identify the most appropriate safety improvements based on the crash history. The effects of those safety improvements are rarely quantified by transportation engineers following the completion of construction. However, Sandy City, a suburb of Salt Lake City, UT, USA, wanted to forgo the usual and instead conduct a before and after crash analysis to better understand the return on investment of the safety improvements that they constructed along one of the city’s major arterial roadways, 1300 East (see Figure 1). The findings of the study showed that the addition of raised medians, median barriers, right-turn lanes, street lighting, pedestrian access ramps, signs with improved retroreflectivity, bicycle lanes with bicycle safe catch basin grates, and more visible signals, among other improvements, reduced the severity and number of crashes by 40 percent per year along the 5-mile corridor.
