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Rhode Island 2007 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.

4.0 - Rhode Island's "5 Percent" Report

This section of the HSIP report is to identify locations in Rhode Island exhibiting the most severe safety needs in the state. Rhode Island's hazard elimination safety improvement program has traditionally focused on intersections, and as such RIDOT has elected to focus this section of the report on the safety needs of intersections. It should be noted that RIDOT understands that crashes are also occurring along corridors and potentially at mid-block intersections and intends to incorporate these locations into future HSIP submittals.

4.1 - Methodology for Identifying the Top 5% of the State's Intersections

RIDOT evaluated a number of alternatives in developing the "5 Percent" report, which included a review of the frequency of all crashes, frequency of only severe and fatal crashes, the development of an equivalent property damage only (EPDO) crash ranking, the development of severe and fatal crash rates for intersections and corridors, and the potential for using a combination of these approaches. However, due to limitations with available data at the time this report was developed, Rhode Island used crash frequency and severity as the means to identify the intersections exhibiting the most severe safety needs. The following is an overview of the process used.

The first step was for RIDOT staff to identify all of the intersections throughout the state using a Geographic Information System (GIS). The RIDOT has a base map that has each intersection labeled with a unique identifier. Staff was then able to link the accident databases for 2004 through 2006 with the intersection layer and assign each of the approximately 152,400 individual crashes to the roadway network. Crashes that occurred within fifty feet of two intersecting links within the GIS layers were then grouped and assigned to the corresponding intersection. Crashes that occurred outside of the fifty feet of intersecting links were considered crashes occurring along a corridor and were eliminated from further consideration.

Once the crashes were assigned to intersections, each record then had its corresponding injury (crash severity) code linked. This allowed staff to identify not only the intersections having the greatest frequency of crashes, but also the ability to rank the intersections exhibiting a high frequency of severe injury and fatal crashes. In addition, by knowing the severity of the crash, a cost for each injury type was then assigned.

For the purposes of this report, RIDOT elected to value a property damage only (PDO) crash at $2,300, each type of injury (no visible injury (complaint), bruising, and bleeding and broken bones) at $63,000, and a fatal injury at $1,500,000. These values for the PDO and injury crashes are the same as those used in evaluating high hazard locations in the HSIP program. The value for the fatal injuries was reduced from $3,000,000 to $1,500,000 to lessen the relative impact of a single fatality at an intersection.

Since crash occurrences are random in nature, RIDOT first reviewed the data for the crashes at intersections and identified that a significant percentage were a single property damage only crash that occurred once over the three-year period. To ensure that only the intersections exhibiting the most severe safety needs are identified, it was decided that locations having on average 5 or more crashes a year (15 or more over the three year period) would be considered. The 5 crashes per year threshold was selected because this is typically the minimum number of crashes required before an engineering review of an intersection is initiated.

Once the intersections having 15 or more crashes were identified, they were then ranked by their resulting severity cost. By assigning a cost to an intersection's total crash history over the three year period, it ensured that the less severe crashes did not over represent the more severe. The top five percent of these intersections, resulted in just over 60 intersections. For this report, the top 50 intersections have been tentatively identified as locations exhibiting the most severe safety needs. The following sections provide an overview of the results and identify these 50 locations.

4.2 - State's Top 5% of Intersections Exhibiting Greatest Need

During the 2004 through 2006 reporting period, Rhode Island experienced approximately 152,400 crashes. Of these crashes, a total of 128,521 were able to be mapped to the road network and used in the analysis. Using the methodology described in Section 4.1 above for locating crashes at intersections, 68 percent (87,022) of the crashes were determined to have occurred at or within the influence area of an intersection or interchange. The remaining 32 percent of the crashes were considered to have occurred along segments or corridors. Figure 4.1 depicts the crash severity at Rhode Island's intersections and along its corridors and Table 4.1 shows the resulting estimated costs of these crashes over the time period.

Figure 4.1 - Total Crashes by Severity 2004-2006

Table 4.1 - Estimated Cost of Crashes 2004-2006

Severity Intersection Corridor Total
No Injury $159,323,300 $75,490,600 $234,813,900
Complaint $811,503,000 $351,288,000 $1,162,791,000
Bruise $167,391,000 $92,232,000 $259,623,000
Bleeding $132,489,000 $95,760,000 $228,249,000
Fatal $165,000,000 $175,500,000 $340,500,000
Total $1,435,706,300 $790,270,600 $2,225,976,900

4.2.1 - Intersection Results

More than 12,500 intersections experienced at least one crash over the three-year period. The majority of the crashes at intersections/interchanges were non-injury related crashes and many of which experienced only one crash over the three-year period. To reduce the effects of random crashes, intersections having 15 or more crashes per year were considered for further review. By placing the crash threshold at 15 or more, this reduced the number of intersections requiring additional review from 12,516 to 1,232.

The 1,232 locations accounted for 43,139 crashes or almost half of all the intersection crashes in the state. The distribution of injuries is represented in Figure 4.2 which shows that non-injury crashes were the most prominent. The crashes occurring at these locations were estimated to have a total cost of $703,058,500, which is 49 percent of the cost of all intersection crashes.

Figure 4.2 - Intersections having 15 or More Crashes 2004-2006

From the 1,232 intersections ranked by cost, the top five percent having the greatest crash costs were identified. This five percent resulted in 62 locations, but for this report the Top 50 intersections having the greatest cost have been selected as exhibiting the greatest need. These 50 locations, identified in Table 4.2, account for approximately 7 percent of all intersection crashes in the state and approximately 15 percent of the crashes occurring at intersections having 15 or more per year. Figure 4.3 shows the distribution of crash severity at these 50 locations.

Figure 4.3 - Distribution of Crash Severity at the Top 50 Intersections

Table 4.2 - Top 50 Intersections Exhibiting Greatest Needs

TOWN/CITY INTERSECTION/INTERCHANGE TOTAL
ESTIMATED
CRASH COST		 STATUS
Primary Street Secondary Street
Providence I 95 N I 195 $5,201,100 Construction
Providence RI 10 N I 95 S $5,063,700 -
Johnston Hartford Ave I 295 S $4,319,000 -
Pawtucket I 95 S Lonsdale Ave $4,305,100 -
Burrillville Douglas Pk Victory Hwy $3,934,900 Design
Warwick I 95 S Centerville Rd $3,722,200 Construction
Cranston RI 10 RI 2 $3,543,200 Design
Cranston I 295 N RI 37 $3,385,900 -
Warwick RI 37 E Post Rd $3,378,700 Design
Providence I 95 Thurbers Ave $3,325,800 Construction
Pawtucket George St I 95 $3,165,700 -
Providence US 6 Killingly St Exit $3,162,400 Design
Providence I 195 Wickenden St $3,059,500 Design
North Smithfield Eddie Dowling Hwy Sayles Hill Rd $3,022,700 Design
Warwick East Ave Bald Hill Rd $3,008,500 Design
Providence US 6 E RI 10 $2,950,500 Design
Johnston Atwood Ave Hartford Ave $2,922,400 Design
Smithfield I 295 Putnam Pk $2,898,900 -
Cranston Oaklawn Ave RI 2 $2,860,300 Design
Warwick I 95 East Ave $2,801,900 -
West Greenwich Nooseneck Hill Rd I 95 $2,681,400 Construction
Warwick W. Shore Rd Warwick Ave $2,628,200 Design
Warwick Post Rd Veterans Memorial 100 160 Dr $2,548,500 Design
Providence Elmwood Ave Roger Williams Ave $2,545,800 Design
Warwick I 95 S Exit 9 $2,498,400 Design
Providence Broadway Service Rd 7 $2,466,300 City Intersection
Lincoln Sayles Hill Rd RI 99 $2,457,900 Design
Cranston Park Ave Reservoir Ave $2,451,600 Design
Warwick I 95 N RI 37 $2,411,100 -
Cumberland Mendon Rd RI 99 $2,406,400 Design
East Greenwich RI 4 Exit 7 $2,392,600 Construction
Lincoln RI 146 RI 116 $2,385,800 Design
Warwick Quaker Ln Division St $2,345,800 Design
Warwick Post Rd Airport Ew $2,323,700 Design
South Kingstown Kingstown Rd Old Tower Hill Rd $2,309,400 Design
Providence N. Main St Smithfield Ave $2,273,500 -
Providence Eddy St Public St $2,239,000 Design
Providence RI 10 Union Ave $2,192,200 Design
Warren Metacom Ave Seymour St $2,149,800 Design
Warwick Bald Hill Rd Toll Gate Rd $2,097,500 -
Providence Richmond St Eddy St $2,095,600 City Intersection
Providence I 95 Broadway $2,086,900 Design
Cranston Sockanosset Cross Rd Reservoir Ave $2,044,600 -
Exeter S County Tl Main St $2,036,200 Design
Newport Bridge Ramp Jai Alai Admiral Kalbfus Rd $2,017,000 Design
Providence Branch Ave Douglas Ave $2,005,400 City Intersection
South Kingstown Kingstown Rd Charles St $2,003,100 Design
Providence Exit 24 I 95 N $2,000,000 Design
Warwick I 95 Exit 15 $1,961,800 Construction
Pawtucket I 95 Broadway $1,958,100 -
Total Costs     $138,046,000  

4.3 - Potential Remedies and Costs for Locations Identified

As Table 4.2 shows, 70 percent of the 50 intersections have already been scheduled for improvements. Twenty-nine of the intersections/interchanges are currently in varying stages of design, 6 are under construction, and 3 are city controlled locations. The remaining twelve locations will require further evaluation. RIDOT has not conducted an in-depth analysis of these locations to ascertain the cause of the crashes or what the actual collision countermeasures could be implemented. However, since these locations are intersections and interchanges, some basic countermeasures may take the form of:

The above list of countermeasures is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but it is to show a range of potential measures that could be implemented. An engineering analysis should be conducted to identify the appropriate countermeasures for each location. Based on that analysis, an estimated cost can then be developed for each intersection/interchange.

 

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