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Highway Safety Corridor Analysis Project

A project to improve cost effectiveness and safety, earned a FHWA award for highway safety corridor analysis. Improving the safety of the state transportation system is one of ITD’s highest priorities. Toward that end, ITD launched an innovative, data-driven program for safety analysis.

DKS Associates led the technical portion of the corridor analysis, building on work done previously in a District 6 pilot project. It involves the application of a new method for evaluating and prioritizing safety improvements.

The award-winning project followed a multi-step process to help identify the highest priority locations in need of safety improvements in ITD’s six districts across all categories. The second step was to identify the specific locations within the priority segments where the density and severity of crashes was greatest in the previous five years.

That produced a list of 111 “priority locations” where more detailed analysis was conducted. The final list of priority locations included less than 25 miles of roadway to analyze.

“The purpose of this project,” according to the application, “is to determine the best use of limited funds to most effectively decrease fatality and crash rates across the state of Idaho. This is done through a comprehensive analysis of the state roadway system … specifically focusing a five-year crash history and the expected effect of proposed safety improvements.”