Safety performance functions in Dedicated Bus Lane of BRT on Caracas Avenue Corridor at Bogotá city

Abstract

Introduction- Road safety is a global concern due to the fact that traffic accidents represent serious temporary and / or permanent damage to the health of those involved. On the other hand, the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems carries a large volume of passengers and during their operation; they are involved in this problem.
 Objective- Accident prediction model implemented in the Highway Safety Manual 2010 or HSM is an alternative to evaluate the strategies that allow to reduce accidents in this type of systems. However, there is not specified safety performance functions (SPFs) developed for BRT systems. In the present work, the accident model of HSM is adapted by calibration of general SPFs expressions of the manual and also, SPFs were developed for BRTs installed on the central-line of main roads and use an exclusive lane of all other transport systems (both public or private) and mobility (e.g. bike paths).
 Method / Results - Crashes reports and traffic volumes data supplied by the Department of Transportation of Bogotá were used. The model was calibrated using the safety performance functions (SPFs) of the HSM and a specific developed functions for the BRT conditions. These SPFs were developed using a negative binomial model in roadway segments and intersections.
 Conclusions- Through the validation, it was found that the functions developed have a better fit than the established SPF of the HSM. The developed SPFs can be used as a tool to define safety performance guidelines of Bogotá's BRT corridors in the coming years.