Urban road safety & sustainability in low and middle income countries

Globally there is a rapid movement of populations to urban areas in low and middle income countries (LMICs) in particular. With this move comes an increasing safety problem in urban core areas, particularly in relation to the safety of pedestrians, public transport facilities, urban intersections and urban areas. Priority research activities will include:
•An investigation of the distribution of crash types in urban areas including where, when and how road deaths occur on urban roads in LMICs. This would be focused on the overall distribution of injury patterns exists on the urban network of a sample of major cities of LMICs.
•Review of evidence based knowledge in relation to the pedestrian and public transport related countermeasures that work, in what circumstances and the quantification of fatality risk reductions.
•Investigation of mode shift related treatments and safe design practice for the urban environment in relation to sustainable development and transport.
•Influence of Bus Rapid Transit on overall crash rates on urban corridors
•The safety impact of intersection related treatments including intersection signal timings, signal coordination, pedestrian phases, turning treatments and turning bans.
•The effectiveness of one way networks and area based treatments and their effect on speed, crash numbers and fatality rates.
•The role and management of speed and congestion in relation to safety outcomes.
•Crash rates in relation to different roundabout designs and size.

On completion of the research all relevant findings will be incorporated into the iRAP toolkit (http://toolkit.irap.org) and the iRAP star rating and countermeasure generation modules, to ensure that the research in converted into practice immediately.

Note: the research will be carried out in collaboration with iRAP(www.irap.net).

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