Limiting Driveway Access at Intersections

Abstract

Transportation agencies are faced with unclear decisions when choosing among competing proposed research ideas. Research projects on the effectiveness of safety improvement treatments typically enhance the practice by yielding better information about where and when the treatment of interest should be implemented, if at all. This information is intended to reduce the frequency of incorrect decisions, including the decisions to treat when the cost is not justified or not to treat when the cost is justified. However, with limited resources for both research and treatment and with project evaluation criteria that may be subjective, identifying the best allocation of research funding is often difficult. A method called the value-of-research (VOR) evaluation has been documented as a way to quantify potential benefits of a proposed safety research project. The method accounts for considerations such as the number of analysis units (e.g., intersections or roadway segments) in existence that might be treated, frequency and cost of crashes targeted by the treatment of interest, effectiveness of the treatment, and knowledge about treatment effectiveness that could be gained through additional research. By collecting and analyzing these types of macroscopic data, decision makers can make more-informed decisions about the potential benefit of competing proposed research projects. The VOR evaluation method is demonstrated for the example treatment of removing major-street driveway access to corner businesses at signalized intersections.