Extracting Arterial Access Density Impacts on Safety Performance Based on Clustering and Computational Analysis
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 144, Issue 4
Abstract
Access density is defined as the number of accesses per unit length along an arterial. Numerous studies conducted in various regions have indicated that access density has a significant influence on crash occurrences and severities. However, these research findings tend to simplify the relationship between access density and crash attributes and overlook the distinctive local roadway geometric and traffic flow characteristics. This study was conducted to quantitatively understand the impacts of various access densities on the safety performance of major arterials in New Mexico. A cluster analysis and a negative binomial model have been used through computational analysis to investigate the relationship between access density and crash rate. The analysis results demonstrate the piecewise relationship and verify that access density imposes heterogeneous influences on crash rates given different access density ranges, and lower public and commercial access rates are associated with lower crash rates. The impacts of other access features, such as access usage type and median opening type, on crash rates are also investigated. The research findings are helpful to improve safety performance on major arterials in urban metropolitan areas.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
AASHTO. (2010). Highway safety manual, Washington, DC.
Ahmad, A., and Dey, L. (2007). “A k-mean clustering algorithm for mixed numeric and categorical data.” Data Knowl. Eng., 63(2), 503–527.
Avelar, R. E., Dixon, K. K., Brown, L. S., Mecham, M. E., and van Schalkwyk, I. (2013). “Influence of land use and driveway placement on safety performance of arterial highways.” Transp. Res. Rec., 2398, 101–109.
Bonneson, J., and Mccoy, P. (1997). “Effect of median treatment on urban arterial safety an accident prediction model.” Transp. Res. Rec., 1581, 27–36.
Brogan, J. D., Tarefdar, R., Ruiz, J. I. R., and Ababio, G. K. (2011). “Statewide traffic data collection, processing, projection and quality control.”, New Mexico Dept. of Transportation Research Bureau, Albuquerque, NM.
Brown, H., and Tarko, A. (1999). “Effects of access control on safety on urban arterial streets.” Transp. Res. Rec., 1665, 68–74.
Cafiso, S., Di Graziano, A., Di Silvestro, G., La Cava, G., and Persaud, B. (2010). “Development of comprehensive accident models for two-lane rural highways using exposure, geometry, consistency and context variables.” Accid. Anal. Prev., 42(4), 1072–1079.
Chen, G. X., Fang, Y., Guo, F., and Hanowski, R. J. (2016). “The influence of daily sleep patterns of commercial truck drivers on driving performance.” Accid. Anal. Prev., 91, 55–63.
Dart, O. K., and Mann, L. (1970). “Relationship of rural highway geometry to accident rates in Louisiana.” Highway Res. Rec., 312, 1–16.
De Luca, M., Mauro, R., Lamberti, R., and Dell’Acqua, G. (2012). “Road safety management using Bayesian and cluster analysis.” Procedia Soc. Behav. Sci., 54, 1260–1269.
de Oña, J., López, G., Mujalli, R., and Calvo, F. J. (2013). “Analysis of traffic accidents on rural highways using latent class clustering and Bayesian networks.” Accid. Anal. Prev., 51, 1–10.
Eisele, W., and Frawley, W. (2005). “Estimating the safety and operational impact of raised medians and driveway density: Experiences from Texas and Oklahoma case studies.” Transp. Res. Rec., 1931, 108–116.
Elvik, R., Hoye, A., Vaa, T., and Sorensen, M. (2009). The handbook of road safety measures, 2nd Ed., Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bingley, England.
Fernihough, A. (2014). mfx: Marginal effects, odds ratios and incidence rate ratios for GLMs, The Comprehensive R Archive Network, Vienna, Austria.
FHWA (Federal Highway Administration). (2011). “Roadway departure safety: A manual for local rural road owners.” ⟨http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/local_rural/training/fhwasa1109/app_c.cfm⟩ (Jan. 16, 2018).
Fitzpatrick, K., Carlson, P., Brewer, M. A., Wooldridge, M. D., and Miaou, S. P. (2005). “Design speed, operating speed and posted speed practices.”, National Cooperative Highway Research Program, Washington, DC.
Frawley, W. E., and Eisele, W. L. (2004). “Investigation of access point density and raised medians: Crash analysis and micro-simulation.”, Texas Transportation Institute, College Station, TX.
Gattis, J. L. (1996). “Comparison of delay and accidents on three roadway access designs in a small city.” Proc., 2nd National Access Management Conf., Federal Highway Administration, Washington, DC.
Gluck, J., Levinson, H. S., and Stover, V. (1999a). “Impacts of access management techniques.”, National Cooperative Highway Research Program, Washington, DC.
Gluck, J., Levinson, H. S., and Stover, V. G. (1999b). Access management manual, National Academy Press, Washington, DC.
Gu, Y., Qian, Z., Xie, X.-F., and Smith, S. (2012). “An unsupervised learning approach for analyzing traffic impacts under arterial road closures: Case study of East Liberty in Pittsburgh.” J. Transp. Eng., 202–209.
Huang, B., Zhang, Y., Lu, L., and Lu, J. J. (2014). “A new access density definition and its correlation with crash rates by microscopic traffic simulation method.” Accid. Anal. Prev., 64, 111–122.
Joshua, S., and Garber, N. (1990). “Estimating truck accident rate and involvements using linear and Poisson regression models.” Transp. Plann. Technol., 15(1), 41–58.
Kim, K., and Yamashita, E. Y. (2007). “Using a K-means clustering algorithm to examine patterns of pedestrian involved crashes in Honolulu, Hawaii.” J. Adv. Transp., 41(1), 69–89.
Kumara, S., and Chin, H. (2005). “Application of Poisson underreporting model to examine crash frequencies at signalized three-legged intersections.” Transp. Res. Rec., 1908, 46–50.
Lee, J., and Mannering, F. (2002). “Impact of roadside features on the frequency and severity of run-off-roadway accidents: An empirical analysis.” Accid. Anal. Prev., 34(2), 149–161.
Li, Z., Wang, W., Liu, P., Bigham, J. M., and Ragland, D. R. (2013). “Using geographically weighted Poisson regression for county-level crash modeling in California.” Safety Sci., 58, 89–97.
Lord, D., and Mannering, F. (2010). “The statistical analysis of crash-frequency data: A review and assessment of methodological alternatives.” Transp. Res. Part A: Policy Pract., 44(5), 291–305.
Mannering, F. L., and Bhat, C. R. (2014). “Analytic methods in accident research: Methodological frontier and future directions.” Anal. Methods Accid. Res., 1, 1–22.
May, A. D. (1990). Traffic flow fundamentals, Prentice Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Mehta, G., Li, J., Fields, R. T., Lou, Y., Jones, S., and Asce, M. (2015). “Safety performance function development for analysis of bridges.” J. Transp. Eng., 04015010.
NMDOT (New Mexico Department of Transportation) and Transportation Planning and Safety Division Data Management Bureau. (2013). “New Mexico traffic crash annual report 2012.” Santa Fe, NM.
Palamara, F., Piglione, F., and Piccinini, N. (2011). “Self-organizing map and clustering algorithms for the analysis of occupational accident databases.” Safety Sci., 49(8–9), 1215–1230.
Plazak, D., Garms, A., and Rees, J. (2006). “Access management plan and program for Des Moines, Iowa, metropolitan area.” Transp. Res. Rec., 1981, 142–147.
Poch, M., and Mannering, F. (1996). “Negative binomial analysis of intersection-accident frequency.” J. Transp. Eng., 105–113.
Prasannakumar, V., Vijith, H., Charutha, R., and Geetha, N. (2011). “Spatio-temporal clustering of road accidents: GIS based analysis and assessment.” Procedia Soc. Behav. Sci., 21, 317–325.
Prato, C. G., Gitelman, V., and Bekhor, S. (2012). “Mapping patterns of pedestrian fatal accidents in Israel.” Accid. Anal. Prev., 44(1), 56–62.
R [Computer software]. R Project for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
Ratrout, N. (2011). “Subtractive clustering-based K-means technique for determining optimum time-of-day breakpoints.” J. Comput. Civ. Eng., 380–387.
Rice, E. (2010). “Access management in the vicinity of intersections.”, U.S. Dept. of Transportation, Washington, DC, 15.
Ripley, B., Venables, B., Bates, D. M., Hornik, K., Gebhardt, A., and Firth, D. (2016). Package “MASS”, Springer, New York.
Savolainen, P. T., Mannering, F. L., Lord, D., and Quddus, M. A. (2011). “The statistical analysis of highway crash-injury severities: A review and assessment of methodological alternatives.” Accid. Anal. Prev., 43(5), 1666–1676.
Saxena, M. (2010). “Comparison of various methods to compute access density and proposing a weighted methodology.” M.Sc. thesis, Univ. of South Florida, Tampa, FL.
Schultz, G., Braley, K., and Boschert, T. (2008). “Correlating access management with crash rate, severity, and collision type.” Proc., 87th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC.
Schultz, G. G., Braley, K. T., and Boschert, T. (2010). “Relationship between access management and other physical roadway characteristics and safety.” J. Transp. Eng., 141–148.
Sharma, A. K., Landge, V. S., and Rao, T. K. (2014). “Access density and standard deviation of speed as contributing factors for accident of high speed cars.” Int. J. Comput. Appl., 1–4.
Sheskin, D. J. (2000). Handbook of parametric and nonparametric statistical procedures, Chapman & Hall, London.
Sohn, S. Y., and Lee, S. H. (2003). “Data fusion, ensemble and clustering to improve the classification accuracy for the severity of road traffic accidents in Korea.” Safety Sci., 41(1), 1–14.
TRB (Transportation Research Board). (2008). Operational impacts of access management, Washington, DC.
Washington, S. P., Karlaftis, M. G., and Mannering, F. L. (2003). Statistical and econometric methods for transportation data analysis, Chapman & Hall, Washington, DC.
Williams, M., K., Stover, G. V., Dixon, K. K., and Demosthenes, P. (2014). Access management manual, National Academy Press, Washington, DC.
Williamson, M., and Zhou, H. (2014). “A study of safety impacts of different types of driveways and their density.” Procedia Soc. Behav. Sci., 138, 576–583.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 144 • Issue 4 • April 2018
Copyright
©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 8, 2017
Accepted: Oct 2, 2017
Published online: Feb 10, 2018
Published in print: Apr 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Jul 10, 2018
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.