10 Ways to Make Busy 
Commercial Streets Safer

Improved safety relies on decreasing congestion, removing bottlenecks, and enforcing safety regulations.

by Ruth W. Stidger, Editor-in-Chief

Travel will jump from 35 to 60% on busy commercial streets by about 2010 according to a traffic congestion report from the Federal Highway Administration and the Institute of Transportation Engineers.

Small cities will have the largest increases percentage wise and rush-hour percentage climbs will be even higher in towns and cities of all sizes.

Smaller but more households, more vehicles per household, longer commutes, and more daily trips per capita account for many of these increases. And, most people make their trips by car. The use of car pooling and public transit has declined in recent years.

The problems

The ITE report offers a mobility/congestion reduction toolbox that can be effectively used to make busy commercial streets safer.

Benefits and costs play a role in deciding which of these tools can help your control of street safety. For example, a Puget Sound Regional Council report shows that the region spends about 25% of its personal income on transportation. Public spending covered only 8% of all transportation costs. Not including gas, taxes, licensing, and auto-related expenses, individuals and businesses paid for 62% of transportation costs. Only 3% of the regions transportation costs were for public or non-motorized transportation.

Many of these costs stem from higher accident rates on crowded streets. And the same trend exists nationwide, not just in Puget Sound.

There are ways to make these streets safer and improve vehicle flow, while lowering costs that will help individuals and businesses as well as your own budget.

1. Change the design

Turning a major intersecting street into a super street arterial at reconstruction time can increase capacity from 50 to 70% while reducing accidents up to 20%, the report states.

Super arterials use as many traffic operations improvements as possible, including:

1. Traffic channelization.

2. Grade separations.

3. Street widening.

4. Reversible traffic lanes.

5. Railroad grade separations.

6. Left and right turn lanes.

7. Removal of on-street parking.

8. Turn prohibitions.

9. Lighting improvements.

10. One-way streets.

11. Bus turn-out bays.

2. Improve intersections

A big proportion of accidents happen at intersections (see page 18, July, 2002 issue of Better Roads).

Several steps will help:

1. Reduce the number of conflict points among vehicular movements.

2. Control the relative speed of vehicles entering and leaving the intersection.

3. Coordinate traffic signals and timing with the volume of traffic at the intersection.

4. Use sophisticated intersection controls on busy commercial streets, including turning lanes or grade-separation structures.

5. Use separate right- and left-turn lanes.

6. Avoid multiple merging and diverging.

7. Separate conflict points. Channelization can help.

8. Give preference to the heaviest and fastest traffic flows.

9. Provide refuge islands for pedestrians.

3. One-way streets

Busy commercial streets may call for one-way traffic.

This switch can reduce intersection delays and accidents, increase street capacity, allow multi-lane turns to accommodate heavy traffic, and simplify traffic signal timing increasing traffic flow.

4. Reversible traffic lanes

Two-way, heavily traveled commercial streets can increase capacity and safety by reversing lanes during specific hours to accommodate peak traffic flow.

The ITE report cites Chicago’s Outer Drive as a good example. It uses a six-two lane split during peak hours, reversing proportions according to peak flow.

Reversal to one-way traffic can be used, too.

5. Access management

Businesses on commercial streets may not like access management unless access roads or lanes exist. Even so, access management reduces opportunities for vehicular conflict and accidents. In Colorado, 52% of accidents are access related, as are 32% of fatalities. In Oklahoma, 57% of accidents are access-related, as are 55% in Michigan.

Steps that you can use include:

1. Restricting left turns.

2. Restricting curb cuts and direct-access driveways.

3. Separating conflict areas.

4. Eliminating on-street parking.

5. Spacing intersections further apart.

6. Building frontage roads to collect local business traffic.

6. Improve traffic signals

Use of up-to-date signals with appropriate timing plans can make busy commercial streets safer. Data collection can provide information needed.

Improvements can include interconnected, pre-timed signals, traffic-actuated signals, interconnected actively managed timing plans, and master controls.

Be sure traffic signals are included in preventive maintenance programs to avoid unnecessary problems, the report states.

7. Surveillance

Accidents can also be reduced with better surveillance, including:

1. Fast incident detection and removal.

2. Intersection surveillance monitoring with cameras or loop detectors.

3. Parking control and regulation enforcement.

4. Traffic surveillance and metering.

8. Turn prohibition

In San Francisco, turn restrictions reduced accidents at intersections from 38 to 51%. The ITE report says that the intersections were high-volume, with 30,000 to 50,000 vehicles per day.

In Wichita, Kansas, use of medians to prohibit turns reduced intersection accidents from 43 to 69%.

9. Improve traffic control devices

Plan appropriate use of devices. Place them so all drivers can see them easily and will have adequate time to respond.

Maintain devices to retain legibility and visibility.

Use devices uniformly for similar applications.

10. Manage parking

On commercial streets, business owners will want on-street parking. However, moving vehicles into business parking lots can reduce accident rates by cutting the number of vehicle conflict points on the road.

Shared off-road parking offers one solution, with businesses having different peak hours sharing the same parking lots.

No-parking areas needed for visibility at intersections or other access points must be strictly enforced to keep streets safer.

Traffic Signal Eyes

The Center for Education and Research in Safety uses animated searching eyes in LED traffic signals to make the devices easy to understand.

Ron Van Houten at the Dartmouth, Nova Scotia center, says the eyes “could lead to a marked increase in compliance.”

The Canadian innovation was completed as part of the Intelligent Transportation Systems IDEA program, which is managed by the Transportation Research Board in the U.S.

The center evaluated the use of eyes in the traffic signals in several applications. Each produced large and statistically significant safety benefits, Van Houten says.

Reprinted from Better Roads Magazine
September 2002

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