Incorporating Safety into the Regional Planning Process in Virginia: Volume II: A Resource Guide

About the report:

Motor vehicle crashes have an annual societal cost of $230 billion, and one way to reduce this cost is to incorporate safety directly into the long-range transportation planning process.  This resource guide presents some ways through which safety and planning may be integrated and is targeted toward Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) district planners, metropolitan planning organizations, and planning district commissions. 

The guide does not constitute a VDOT policy or regulation; rather, it is a set of best practices designed to accompany, rather than duplicate, the regional transportation planning process.  The guide describes eight independent steps for integrating safety into the regional transportation planning process and provides one or more Virginia-specific examples for each step.  The steps are as follows:

1. Develop a vision statement, goals, and objectives that directly incorporate safety.
2. Use diverse stakeholders to identify alternatives and evaluate their utility.
3. Use safety-related performance measures to assess deficiencies.
4. Acquire data within the time constraints faced by the planner.
5. Analyze data with available resources and thus select higher impact projects.
6. Prioritize projects to determine the largest expected crash avoidance given limited funds.
7. Identify alternative funding sources for safety-related projects.
8. Monitor the safety impacts of implemented projects.

This guide constitutes Volume II of the two-volume report Incorporating Safety into the Regional Planning Process in Virginia.  Volume I describes how the guide was developed.

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