U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Highway Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20590
202-366-4000
The Maine Department of Transportation (DOT) was implementing a project to
improve a 1.7 mile length of US Route 1 in the vicinity of Camden State Park
near Camden, Maine. The project was to include sidewalk, drainage, shoulder,
and utilities
work.
The community and the engineers were concerned about the best way to provide
safe access for sidewalks along and across the highway and to reduce vehicle
travel speeds in the vicinity of the park. To address these considerations,
the engineers
conducted a road safety audit to identify the best way to provide the sidewalk
and pedestrian crossing in the vicinity of the park.
The project was in the preliminary design stage, so several alternative roadway cross-sections and sidewalk treatments had been developed. Five people participated in the audit: the Camden Police Chief, two people from the maintenance and operations division, an urban and arterial engineering technician, and a project manager from the Bureau of Planning.
Team members conducted a field visit and reviewed preliminary plans, crash data, project history, Maine Access Management rules, the Maine Highway Design Guide, and the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Through the review, the report identified both general and specific findings. In general, the auditors provided comments for the design alternatives, including possible applications of mountable curbs, emergency stopping locations, applicability of bollards, construction traffic management plans, potential seasonal flooding issues, overhead signs, and striping.
Relative to travel speed and pedestrian safety, the auditors made specific
recommendations for locations of overhead signs, cross-walk locations, locations
where the shoulder might be widened to separate vehicle door swings from bicyclists
passing by, guardrail locations to optically narrow the road, the location of
speed reduction zones, and a monitoring program to test for improvements. The
auditors further recommended that if suitable speed reduction was not achieved,
then a pedestrian tunnel should be considered. The RSA report was three pages
long.
