Montana 2006 Five Percent Report

This report is in response to the Federal requirement that each state describe at least 5 percent of its locations currently exhibiting the most severe highway safety needs, in accordance with Sections 148(c)(1)(D) and 148(g)(3)(A), of Title 23, United States Code.  Each state’s report is to include potential remedies to the hazardous locations identified; estimated costs of the remedies; and impediments to implementation of the remedies other than costs.  The reports included on this Web site represent a variety of methods utilized and various degrees of road coverage.  Therefore, this report cannot be compared with the other reports included on this Web site.

Protection from Discovery and Admission into Evidence—Under 23 U.S.C. 148(g)(4) information collected or compiled for any purpose directly relating to this report shall not be subject to discovery or admitted into evidence in a Federal or State court proceeding or considered for other purposes in any action for damages arising from any occurrence at a location identified or addressed in the reports.

Additional information, including the specific legislative requirements, can be found in the guidance provided by the Federal Highway Administration,
http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/safetealu/fiveguidance.htm.

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Montana Department of Transportation

FIVE PERCENT REPORT

Pursuant to Federal Highway Administration guidance “Highway Safety Improvement Program, 23 U.S.C. 148 (c) (1) (1) 5 Percent Report” of April 5, 2006, the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) presents the following information:

Montana has over 69,000 miles of roads, spread over 145,000 square miles. Its estimated 2002 population is barely over 900,000 inhabitants. The Montana Highway Patrol records show 22,376 crashes in 2005. For 2005, the average number of crashes on the rural off-system roads was 6 crashes per 100 miles, compared to 19 crashes per 10 miles on the rural Interstates.

The MDT highway program, that includes safety elements with each project, is compiled in the State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP), that can be viewed at www.mdt.mt.gov/publications/docs/stip/2006stip_final.pdf.

For the 2006-2008 period, the program gives the following break down:

Construction/Reconstruction $ 376.7 Million (51.9%)
Resurfacing $ 142.8 Million (19.7%)
Rehabilitation/Widening $ 89.3 Million (12.3%)
Bridge Replacement/Rehab $ 68.0 Million (9.4%)
Spot Improvement/Safety $ 21.1 Million (2.9%)
Miscellaneous $ 28.3 Million (3.9%)

Highway safety does not involve just the Department of Transportation. Numerous agencies, Tribal governments and advocacy groups are involved. At the Federal level, the main agencies are the Federal Highway Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. At the State level, the main partners, besides MDT, are the Department of Justice with the Montana Highway Patrol and the Motor Vehicle Division, the Department of Public Health and Human Services and the Office of Public Instruction. At the local level, Police and Sheriff Departments, Public Works/Road Departments and the courts dealing with traffic issues participate in highway safety. In short, highway safety involves everyone. Most of these agencies are active stakeholders in the Montana Comprehensive Highway Safety Plan, that is being finalized. These stakeholders have selected the following focus areas:

1. Increase safety belt usage to 90%;
2. Reduce statewide alcohol-and drug-impaired fatal and incapacitating injury crashes;
3. Reduce Native American fatal crashes;
4. Reduce and mitigate the consequences of single vehicle run-off-the-road fatal and incapacitating injury crashes;
5. Develop and implement a comprehensive, coordinated transportation records and crash reporting, data management, and analysis system, accessible to all stakeholders, to manage and evaluate transportation safety;
6. Reduce young driver (under age 21) fatal and incapacitating injury crashes;
7. Establish a process to reduce crashes, injury crashes and fatal crashes in identified high crash corridors and locations;
8. Reduce fatal and incapacitating injury crashes involving trucks, and
9. Develop an effective and integrated Emergency Medical Services (EMS) delivery system.

In addition to these nine priority emphasis areas, Montana adopted three additional emphasis areas:

1. Reduce fatal and incapacitating injury crashes in urban areas;
2. Reduce motorcycle fatal and incapacitating injury crashes, and
3. Reduce older driver fatal and incapacitating injury crashes.

Figure 1 gives the number of fatalities and incapacitating injuries on Montana highways over the last ten years 1996-2005. Figure 2 illustrates the percent of belted injured occupants in crashes from 1996 to 2005. Figure 3 shows the alcohol related fatalities as percent of all fatalities in the 1996-2004 period. The Statewide crash rate was estimated at 2.64 crashes per million vehicle miles traveled in 1996 and 2.00 in 2005.

As part of this Comprehensive Highway Safety Plan, MDT identified highway corridors with a combination of high crash severity rate and high number of fatalities and incapacitating injuries per mile, based mostly on 2000-2004 crash data. The severity rate is defined as the number of crashes with a fatality or an incapacitating injury times eight plus the number of crashes with a non-incapacitating injury or possible injury times three plus the number of property damage only crashes per million vehicle-miles traveled.

The following corridors with highest ratings on the rural National Highways, rural State Primary and Secondary highways were identified. These segments were based on 10 plus mile lengths, except for the State Secondary roads were based on 5 plus mile lengths.

I-15	Boulder-Bernice
I-90	West of Frenchtown to Missoula
I-90	Homestake Pass
US 2	Kalispell – Hungry Horse
MT 2	Pipestone Pass
US 93	Kalispell - Whitefish
MT 78	Red Lodge - Luther
S-430	Canyon Ferry Road
S-231	Green Meadow Drive
S-269	East Valley Highway

For the urban areas on the Interstate and on the combined National Highways and State Primary routes, the routes with the highest combination severity rate and high number of fatalities and incapacitating injuries per mile are:

I-15	Great Falls within urban limits and
N-92	Missoula Reserve Street

These corridors are located on the attached map in blue.

MDT plans to establish a process to perform safety audits of these corridors. The intent is to develop low cost safety improvements and pursue strategies such as enforcement activities and public education, involving the disciplines of the participants in the development of the strategic highway safety plan.

In addition the 10 plus mile on-system segments with the greatest number of severe crashes involving an occupant using no protective device are shown on the map in green. Another major problem in Montana is the alcohol and drug focus area. The map illustrates the 10 plus mile segments where the highest number of drivers, who had been using alcohol or drugs were involved in severe crashes. These corridors are depicted in red. The identification of these corridors will allow the safety stakeholders to concentrate their efforts in these areas and Statewide.

In view of the late passage of the Federal Transportation Act SAFETEA-LU and recent guidance documents, MDT provides the latest list of Highway Safety Improvement Program projects approved by the Transportation Commission in January 2006. These sites were selected based on high crash rates, high severity rates, high number of crashes. Sites were also submitted for evaluation by local agencies, enforcement agencies and MDT Districts. The projects with the highest benefit/cost ratios are distributed with the following percentages by highway classification systems:

Interstate 8%
National Highway Non-Interstate 24%
State Primary 24%
Urban 6%

Projects on collectors and local roads:

State Secondary 30%
Local roads 8%

The attached map shows the location of the sites where the proposed improvements exceed $50,000. The attached Table 1* summarizes the proposed improvements.

All the partners involved in the Comprehensive Highway Safety Plan hope that all these efforts will further improve the safety on Montana Highways.

Contact Person:
Pierre A. Jomini, P.E.
Safety Management Engineer
Montana Department of Transportation
2701 Prospect Avenue
P.O. Box 201001
Helena, MT 59620-1001
pjomini@mt.gov

TABLE 1*

HIGHWAY SAFETY IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM

(Approved by Transportation Commission on January 25, 2006)

	DISTRICT		ROUTE	HWY	BEGIN RP	END RP	LOCATION	IMPROVEMENT
1	GREAT FALLS	N	60	US 89	90.366	94.457	GREAT FALLS	SIGNAL TIMING-10TH AVE	$100,000.00	*
2	MISSOULA	S	317	MT 317	2.8	3.8	KALISPELL	RECONSTRUCT	$400,000.00	*
3	GREAT FALLS	S	226	MT 226	0.625	15.227	S OF GREAT FALLS	SIGNING	$60,060.00	*
4	GREAT FALLS	S	280	MT 280	2.5	2.7	N OF E HELENA	SLOPE FLTN, CHEV, LUMN	$159,200.00	*
5	GREAT FALLS	P	60	US 89	28.7	53.4	KINGS HILL - S-427	CORRIDOR SIGNING	$302,600.00	*
6	BILLINGS	N	16	US 87	0.2	0.2	INT US-87 & N FRONTAGE	SIGNAL UPGRADE	$250,000.00	*
7	BUTTE	I	90	I 90	210.4	211.3	W OF BUTTE	REMOVE STRUCTURES	$694,000.00	**
8	MISSOULA	S	473	MT 473	12	12.5	S OF DARBY	GUARDRAIL	$120,900.00	*
9	BUTTE	P	86	MT 86	2.8	3.8	NE OF BOZEMAN	GUARDRAIL	$167,200.00	*
10	MISSOULA	S	317	MT 317	3.8	4.1	KALISPELL	RECONSTRUCT	$217,500.00	*
11	BUTTE	N	85	MT 85	3.9	4.1	S OF BELGRADE	LEFT TURN LANES	$690,000.00	*
12	GREAT FALLS	X	L25-9		1.5	1.7	N OF E HELENA	REPLACE BR W/ CULVERT	$445,700.00	*
13	MISSOULA	S	269	MT 269	3.6	3.9	N OF HAMILTON	RECONST (MOD VERT)	$250,000.00	*
14	MISSOULA	P	52	MT 35	5.5	6	N OF POLSON	GUARDRAIL	$67,070.00	*
15	BILLINGS	X	LOCAL		0	1	BILLINGS	INTERSECTION REALIGN	$309,500.00	*
16	MISSOULA	I	90	I 90	23.9	24.8	W OF ST REGIS	ITS	$754,000.00	*
17	BUTTE	I	90	I 90	195.4	196.1	E OF RACETRACK	REMOVE STRUCTURES	$1,486,000.00	**

* Project programmed for preliminary design

** Right-of-way issues