Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Two Programs Receive National Safety Awards

RICHMOND, Va. – The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) received two 2015 National Roadway Safety Awards recognizing highway safety improvement projects from the Roadway Safety Foundation and the Federal Highway Administration during a ceremony held this week on Capitol Hill.
“We’re honored to receive these national awards recognizing projects that have improved the safety of Virginia’s roadways,” said VDOT Commissioner Charles Kilpatrick. “We continue to seek innovative and efficient ways to increase safety and improve traffic flow.”
Virginia-Specific Safety Performance Functions
VDOT’s Virginia-Specific Safety Performance Functions received an award in the Program Planning, Development and Evaluation Category. This program serves as a way to identify and prioritize locations that need safety improvements, allowing the agency to target available funds to projects that will have the greatest impact on highway safety. Each safety performance function compares crash frequency and site characteristics, such as traffic volume, to the typical performance of a similar roadway.
Road Diets in Reston
Roads Diets in VDOT’s Northern Virginia District received an award in the Infrastructure and Operational Improvements Category. In coordPhoto 2 - Soapstone afterination with scheduled repaving projects, VDOT engineers proposed adding road diets, the first in Northern Virginia, to two modestly traveled streets, Lawyers Road and Soapstone Drive (right) in Reston. 
A road diet involves removing travel lanes to use the pavement in a different way. In this case, the two streets were converted from four-lane undivided roads to one lane in each direction with left-turn lanes and bike lanes, making them more accessible to bikers and pedestrians. 
In its first five years, crashes on Lawyers Road dropped 69 percent while crashes on Soapstone Drive were reduced by 67 percent after three years.
The National Roadway Safety Award recipients were evaluated on effectiveness, innovation and efficient use of resources.

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