Mohamed El Esawey, Joy Sengupta, John E. Babineau, Emmanuel A. Takyi
{"title":"Safety evaluation of variable speed limit system in British Columbia","authors":"Mohamed El Esawey, Joy Sengupta, John E. Babineau, Emmanuel A. Takyi","doi":"10.1080/19439962.2021.1960663","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This study reports the safety benefits associated with the installation of Variable Speed Limit System (VSLS) on provincial highways in British Columbia (BC), Canada. A VSLS is an intelligent transportation system (ITS) that aims at increasing the safety level on highways by varying the speed limit according to downstream operational condition and/or weather conditions. The analysis made use of police-attended serious crashes (i.e. fatal + injury) that took place during winter seasons. Three winter seasons were available as a before-implementation period, and three winter seasons were available as an after-implementation period. The results of a simple-before-and-after showed overall reductions of 35.8% and 36.8% in winter serious collision (WSC) frequency and rate, respectively, were found for the evaluation corridors. An Empirical Bayes (EB) before-and-after safety evaluation was also carried out to ensure that the results are reliable. The EB analysis showed an overall reduction of 34.4% in WSC. An economic assessment of the system was undertaken and the results showed that the benefits of implementing a VSLS exceeded the system cost with an overall benefit-cost (B/C) ratio of 4.3 and a Net Present Value (NPV) of C$34.41 million. The results of this study may motivate stakeholders who are interested in pursuing similar systems for mitigating weather-related safety challenges.","PeriodicalId":46672,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Transportation Safety & Security","volume":"21 1","pages":"1776 - 1797"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2021-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Transportation Safety & Security","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19439962.2021.1960663","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"TRANSPORTATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Abstract This study reports the safety benefits associated with the installation of Variable Speed Limit System (VSLS) on provincial highways in British Columbia (BC), Canada. A VSLS is an intelligent transportation system (ITS) that aims at increasing the safety level on highways by varying the speed limit according to downstream operational condition and/or weather conditions. The analysis made use of police-attended serious crashes (i.e. fatal + injury) that took place during winter seasons. Three winter seasons were available as a before-implementation period, and three winter seasons were available as an after-implementation period. The results of a simple-before-and-after showed overall reductions of 35.8% and 36.8% in winter serious collision (WSC) frequency and rate, respectively, were found for the evaluation corridors. An Empirical Bayes (EB) before-and-after safety evaluation was also carried out to ensure that the results are reliable. The EB analysis showed an overall reduction of 34.4% in WSC. An economic assessment of the system was undertaken and the results showed that the benefits of implementing a VSLS exceeded the system cost with an overall benefit-cost (B/C) ratio of 4.3 and a Net Present Value (NPV) of C$34.41 million. The results of this study may motivate stakeholders who are interested in pursuing similar systems for mitigating weather-related safety challenges.