A Novel Approach for Identifying, Diagnosing, and Treating Active Transportation Safety Issues

Abstract

There has been an increasing interest in active transportation because of its many health, environmental, and economical benefits. However, active commuters are subjected to an elevated level of severe crash risk, which can be a deterrent to many road users to shift to active transportation. Therefore, there is a need for developing systematic approaches to improve the safety of active commuters. This paper presents a new approach for identifying, diagnosing, and remedying active transportation safety issues. The approach is demonstrated through a case study of the City of Vancouver’s 134 traffic analysis zones. Comprehensive GIS data related to traffic exposure, socio-economics, land use, built environment, street network, and cyclist and pedestrian networks were used in the analysis. A multivariate full Bayesian spatial mixed crash model (CM) was developed incorporating cyclist and pedestrian crashes as well as motorized and non-motorized traffic exposure measures. The CM was used to identify the top 10% active transportation crash-prone zones (CPZs) and safe zones (SZs) using the novel Mahalanobis distance method. CPZs were found clustered in the Downtown. Sixteen trigger variables were statistically investigated for each CPZ and SZ. Lastly, remedies, related to land use, traffic demand, and traffic supply management, were proposed using the trigger variable analysis and literature consultation.