Economic Competitiveness and Equity Based Safety Improvements Allocation Model For Urban Intersections

摘要

Economic competitiveness and equity can be two competing objectives while allocating fundsfor implementation of safety alternatives on urban intersections. One of the critical phase ofcurrent safety management process (hazard elimination program) undertaken by most states isresource allocation among identified crash locations. Literature underlines the importance of thisphase and lack of sophisticated tools available to state planning agencies for evaluating federaland state policies. The study overcomes this limitation by proposing an optimization basedresource allocation model that maximizes safety benefits, subjected to budget and policyconstraints. The proposed model incorporates economic competitiveness in the allocation anddistributes improvements to urban intersections such that maximum economic benefits areobtained from crash savings. However, results show that while economic competitiveness leadsto optimal benefits, resource allocation is inequitable. Hence equity based models are developedby adding two policy options: equity in opportunity and equity in outcome. The resourceallocation model is solved using sequential quadratic programming. The model is applied tocrash prone intersections in four counties of southeast Michigan. The proposed model is genericand scalable, with flexibilty in including policy options often considered by state and localagencies.