Abstract
As part of the project planning process, highway agencies must allocate limited funding to a substantial list of projects that exceeds available resources. For preservation projects, a key component of this decision is to determine which projects receive safety improvements and which are “pave only.” Traditionally, this decision has been made project by project, with the possible result of a selection that does not maximize safety benefits. This paper takes a case study approach and applies a new tool developed in NCHRP Report 486, the Resurfacing Safety Resource Allocation Program (RSRAP), to a subset of the Oregon Department of Transportation's (DOT's) highway network. The RSRAP tool maximizes safety improvements for a given set of projects and budget. Thirty-three projects scheduled to receive a new road surface were selected and analyzed with RSRAP. These projects were subdivided into smaller sites to meet the assumptions of RSRAP. Road geometry, traffic volumes, and crash history for each site were collected and input into the program. The type and cost of the safety improvements output by RSRAP were compared with those selected by Oregon DOT. This research determined that RSRAP, which selected more projects for safety improvements than did Oregon DOT, is a tool that could be used by the department to select various safety improvements on pavement preservation projects. It was also determined that the budget used by Oregon DOT was large enough that all cost-effective improvements could be made.
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