Transport Canada International Road Engineering Safety Countermeasures and their Applications in the Canadian Context Final Report Prepared by: AECOM Canada Ltd. 220 – 2000 Argentia Road, Plaza 2, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5N 1V8 T 905.858.8798 F 905.858.0016 www.aecom.com In Association with: CIMA+ 3400, boulevard du Souvenir, bur. 600, Laval, Quebec, Canada, H7V 3Z2 T 514.337.2462 F 450.682.1013, and Lund University, Box 117 S-221 00 Lund, Sweden T 0046 (0)46 222 00 00 F 0046 (0)46 222 47 20 Project Number: 110245 Date: May 2009 Transport Canada International Road Engineering Safety Countermeasur es and their Applications in the Canadian Context Statement of Qualifications and Limitations © 2009 AECOM CANADA LTD. OR CLIENT (IF COPYRIGHT ASSIGNED TO CLIENT). ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND TRADE SECRET LAW AND MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED IN ANY MANNER, EXCEPT BY CLIENT FOR ITS OWN USE, OR WITH THE WRITTEN PERMISSION OF AECOM CANADA LTD. 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Final Report AECOM, CIMA+, Lund University Transport Canada International Road Engineering Safety Countermeasur es and their Applications in the Canadian Context Distribution List # of Hard Association / Company Name PDF Copies Copy 11 Road Safety and Motor Vehicle Regulation - Transport Canada, Ontario 1 10 Final Report AECOM, CIMA+, Lund University May 2009 Transport Canada International Road Engineering Safety Countermeasur es and their Applications in the Canadian Context Revision Log Revision # Revised By Date Issue / Revision Description 1 Alireza Hadayeghi / Dec 18 th , 2008 Addressing Steering Committee’s Comments Hossein Zarei 2 Alireza Hadayeghi / May 21 st , 2009 Adding French Version of Executive Summary Hossein Zarei Final Report AECOM, CIMA+, Lund University May 2009 Transport Canada International Road Engineering Safety Countermeasur es and their Applications in the Canadian Context Signature Page Report Prepared By: Report Reviewed By: Hossein Zarei, M.A.Sc. Ali Hadayeghi, P.Eng., Ph.D Transportation Safety Analyst Supervising Engineer Reviewer Project Team Members Advisor: Christer Hydén, Ph.D (Lund University), Brian Malone, P. Eng., P.T.O.E. (AECOM) Chantal Dagenais (CIMA+), and Oleg Tonkonojenkov, Ph.D (AECOM) Final Report AECOM, CIMA+, Lund University May 2009 Transport Canada International Road Engineering Safety Countermeasur es and their Applications in the Canadian Context Executive Summary According to 2005 Annual Report on Road Safety Vision 2010 Canadians are among the most mobile people in the world. Unfortunately, this level of mobility has come with a price. During 2006, the most recent year for which traffic collision data are available, according to Road Safety Vision annual report, 2,889 road users were killed and about 200,000 were injured (Transport Canada, 2006) . Despite the fact that during the past 20 years road transportation deaths and serious injuries have been halved on a per unit of population basis, traffic collisions have remained one of the leading contributors to years of lost life among Canadians - accounting for more than 94% of fatalities and 99% of serious injuries in transportation-related occurrences according to the same report. The annual economic cost to Canadian society, due to fatal and injury traffic collisions, is estimated at $63 billion (Transport Canada, 2007) . In October 2000 Canada officially approved its second national road safety plan; Road Safety Vision 2010. The goal of Road Safety Vision 2010 is to make Canada’s roads the safest in the world. The initiative has set an ambitious national target calling for a 30% decrease in the average number of road users killed or seriously injured during the 2008-2010 period, as compared with 1996-2001 average figures. Also in this initiative, there are some sub-targets addressing areas such as occupant restraint use, impaired driving, rural road safety, intersection and speed-related collisions, commercial vehicle safety, young drivers, and vulnerable road users. It is well known that rural road safety, intersection and speed-related collisions, collisions involving vulnerable road users, and commercial vehicle safety would greatly benefit from the implementation of road engineering safety countermeasures. While the majority of effective countermeasures being implemented in Canada are well documented and readily available to Canadian practitioners, there still appears to be a knowledge gap with respect to many countermeasures that have been implemented in other top-ranked member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in support of their national road safety plans. Often the related information remains fragmented, scattered, under-evaluated and not readily available to practitioners in Canada. Therefore in order to further support the implementation of Canada Road Safety Vision 2010, Transport Canada decided to retain Synectics Transportation Consultants Inc. to identify such countermeasures, to evaluate their relevance to the vision and to asses their respective applicability to Canadian conditions. This research is mainly dedicated to finding countermeasures from other OECD countries that have the potential to be transferred to Canadian applications, provided that they are not already well known to the Canadian road engineering community and have not been widely implemented in Canada. It has also been decided to further include countermeasures that are highly successful in OECD countries, which are well known in Canada, but have yet to be implemented due to reasons not related to safety. This was done in hopes that including such countermeasures may facilitate a fresh look, and may prompt new ideas among Canadian practitioners, on how such countermeasures could be successfully implemented in Canada. An extensive literature search and agency contact has been conducted. All collected material was reviewed and a considerable amount of efforts were put to compile descriptions of countermeasures with illustrations and their known safety effects followed by a discussion of their safety effects, different aspects of design, implementation, public acceptance, costs, environmental impacts, etc. Also in parallel to the literature Final Report AECOM, CIMA+, Lund University May 2009 - i - Transport Canada International Road Engineering Safety Countermeasur es and their Applications in the Canadian Context search, some selected agencies were contacted as needed to identify and obtain all related published and unpublished materials containing information on the most successful countermeasures introduced in the respondent’s respective country. Based on the results of the literature search, review, and agency contact, the study team has compiled a long list of countermeasures in a matrix format, as shown in Appendix B of this report, which contains a countermeasure name, concise description, and general evaluation criteria as defined above. Also in order to select the most efficient countermeasures, some general evaluation criteria