Rural Transportation Logo

Integrating Safety in the Rural Transportation Planning Process

Integrating Safety in the Rural Transportation Planning Process

In This Article:

In November 2014, the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Safety released the guide Integrating Safety in the Rural Transportation Planning Process. Rural areas consistently experience higher numbers of crash-related fatalities and serious injuries than urban areas of the United States. Regional planning organizations (RPO) are poised to assist state departments of transportation (DOT) and local officials in addressing the safety needs in nonmetropolitan areas in accordance with statewide safety goals. RPOs in general engage in a planning process to understand the regional issues and needs, and identify strategies to address them through coordination with regional stakeholders. The opportunity exists to incorporate safety into this existing process.

This Technical Report provides methods for integrating safety into each step of the RPO planning and programming process, to assist in addressing rural roads multimodal safety needs.  The report includes discussion of

background issues relating to safety and transportation planning, as well as integrating safety into public involvement, multidisciplinary coordination, data and analysis, goals and objectives, safety performance measures and targets, project prioritization and programming, monitoring and evaluation, and developing a standalone safety plan.  This report includes case information from rural and small metro regions in many states across the country, and many useful graphics coming from regional planning documents.
Click here to view the table of contents and links to the each section of the technical report.  Click here to view the entire report in PDF.
To view PDF files, get Adobe Reader.

Additional Resources

Newsletter

Click the button below to receive NADO and Rural Transportation news and information directly to your inbox.