CTRE

Center for Transportation Research and Education

CTRE|Research|In-Progress

Low-Cost Safety Strategies for Unpaved Rural Roads

Project Details
STATUS

In-Progress

PROJECT NUMBER

23-862

START DATE

09/01/23

END DATE

08/30/24

FOCUS AREAS

Safety

RESEARCH CENTERS InTrans, CTRE, Iowa LTAP
SPONSORS

Iowa Department of Transportation
Iowa Highway Research Board

Researchers
Principal Investigator
Shauna Hallmark

Director, InTrans

Co-Principal Investigator
Keith Knapp

Director, Iowa LTAP

Co-Principal Investigator
Guillermo Basulto-Elias

Research Scientist, CTRE

About the research

Unpaved roads make up almost 80% of roadway miles within the State of Iowa. These unpaved roads have lower traffic volumes but still account for many of the fatal and serious injury crashes throughout the state. Since these crashes tend to be more widespread and not concentrated to a single area, low-cost systemic countermeasures would be the ideal way to improve safety on these roads. Most research and guidance materials available related to low-cost systemic countermeasures focus on applications along paved roads. This project would help to address this gap by focusing on low-cost safety improvements for unpaved roads. Additionally, local road owners desire a toolbox of strategies for improving safety on unpaved roads.

The objectives for this research project include the following:

  • Develop a toolbox of strategies for improving safety on unpaved rural roads based on
    available research and guidance
  • Identify demonstration projects for innovative (possibly untested) safety improvement
    concepts for unpaved roads
  • Identify information gaps and develop research problem statements to address those gaps
  • Identify field research needed to develop crash modification factors (CMFs) or surrogate
    safety metrics to determine the effectiveness of various rural road safety strategies on
    unpaved rural roads
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