1374823 - Safety Index for Transit Stops: Methodology and An Illustrative Application

This presentation and paper will summarize the development of a safety index proximate to transit stops and its applications. It is based on the road network, transit routes, ridership and stop locations, and motor vehicle crash data in the Las Vegas metropolitan area in Nevada. The safety index is based on crashes recorded proximate to transit stops locations (walking distances of 5 and 10 minutes), the severity of crash outcomes, and ridership data. Maximum abbreviated injury scale values were used to weight crashes based on severity. In addition, a three-tiered system (low, medium, high) based on the calculated risk index score for each stop was used to characterize relative risks.
A Geographic Information Systems (GIS) environment was used capture and integrate the data. Data sources included street center line database maintained by the Clark County GIS Manager’s Office; transit operations and ridership characteristics from the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada and the USDOT’s General Transit Feed Specifications database; crash data from the Nevada Department of Transportation for the years 2015 to 2019. The analyses used built-in spatial analysis tools of the GIS software, Kernel density estimation, and binary logistic regression modelling techniques. Of the 8,600 transit stops analyzed, 75 percent were characterized as low risk and 4 percent as high risk. The results help identify high-risk stop locations and to develop countermeasures to improve their safety in their vicinity.