2017-05-08-minutes-public-works-study-session

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For the remaining roadway segments, potential countermeasures were identified and noted. Locations with similar countermeasures and vicinity were grouped into a single project in order to provide efficient contracting and better cost-effectiveness. Projects that emerged from this evaluation included safety improvements such as guardrail installation, signing, and delineation at spot locations to prevent run off the road accidents, as identified earlier. In addition to the run-off the road accidents, projects were identified to provide improvements that address intersection related accidents, including installation of updated or additional signing as recommended by the MUTCD and intersection improvement projects. In addition to the spot improvement projects identified through the data driven risk-based prioritization, the County has identified a need to address inadequate bridge railing throughout the county. There are a total of 268 bridge structures within Kittitas County, many of which have:insufficient railing or no railing at all. Because these observed hazards have a high potential for serious injury or fatal accidents, Kittitas County has chosen to be proactive and include these locations in this safety plan to prevent predicted future crashes. This preventative, systemic, risk-based approach is supported using the FHWA Systematic Safety Project Selection Tool criteria, which says a site can be identified as a candidate for safety investment if it has multiple risk factors but no crash history. With improvement projects identified through this process, Kittitas County recognized a need to collect data to support a clear zone inventory for the entire county road system. The effort to identify hazards within clear zone for the purposes of creating this safety plan included utilization of a variety of tools, including Mobility, Google Earth, RoadViewer, and field visits. Future safety improvement plans could more easily be identified using a clear zone inventory to target known hazard locations. For this reason an additional project has been identified as part of this safety plan to collect clear zone inventory data. Prioritized Cost Effective Safety Improvement Projects Project identification used a combination of spot location and systematic approaches. After projects were identified, they were prioritized based on potential for crash prevention and greatest benefit, as supported by engineering judgement. By focusing on similarities in the roads and their needs, countermeasure projects were formed rather than road focused projects, allowing the county to better reduce the possibility of fatalities and/or serious injuries. Greater details for each project can be found in Appendix B, including scope and locations of proposed work, and an estimated cost of improvements. The prioritized project table can be found on the following page.