Prioritizing High Conflict Corridors to Protect Vulnerable Road Users in Culver City, CA

In 2022,  42,795 people died on American roadways, according to the latest data from National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA). This figure represents a 27% increase - 9,013 additional deaths since 2012. To tackle this crisis, the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) issued the National Roadway Safety Strategy which marshals the resources of the federal government and sets a strategy to reduce roadways deaths to zero. The strategy formalizes the Safe Systems Approach, a framework which recognizes the need for multiple layers of protection on our roadways, recognizing that data-driven planning, safer vehicles and roadway environments, lower speeds and better post-crash medical care all play a vital role. 

In this context, local governments are looking at unconventional strategies to prioritize safety interventions to prevent crashes and protect vulnerable road users. Culver City, CA wanted to better understand both the locations and characteristics of its high conflict corridors to help prioritize safety interventions along city roadways. The city had access to a limited amount of crash data and no exposure data. Further, there was a limited understanding of socio demographic, time-of-day or active mode volumes for trip-takers within the city limits.

Data

Replica worked with Culver City officials and leveraged data from Michelin to map driver events and active mode volumes to create a better and more efficient framework for corridor prioritization. These high conflict corridors can be generated with any combination of the following data:

• Pedestrian and Bike Volumes, including those for specific age groups such as seniors and children.
• Specific Driver Event data such as rapid acceleration, hard braking, speeding, collisions, and phone handling.
• Driver Speeds, looking at speeds above certain speed-limit threshold
• Weekday or Weekend Volumes
• Corridor Length

Solutions

‍1. Custom Hex Notebook: Replica developed an interactive Hex notebook which allowed Culver City to customize its analysis, defining its own parameters for High Conflict Corridors and to identify the top conflict corridors for intervention.

2. Priority Corridors for Intervention: Outputs of this custom analysis included:

• List of corridors ranked by potential conflicts per mile 
• Map of Priority Conflict Corridors and ability to generate shapefile
• Metrics on percentage of potential conflicts addressed on the corridor level

3.Corridor Level Deep-Dive: Replica was able to drill down the analysis to the corridor level, using these custom parameters to identify segments where interventions are most necessary. For example, a specific corridor can be highlighted with information about all drive events and active mode volumes per mile, and as a total of that in Culver City.