Resolution_Adopt 2023_2025 Kittitas County Safety Plan

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accidents. The aforementioned roadway geometry and clear recovery area is the goal in improving roadside safety but is often cost prohibitive due to the geography of the area and is not supported by rural character or practical design. In cases where it is cost prohibitive to eliminate roadway curvature and create an unobstructed traversable roadside, alternative improvements that may reduce the severity of an accident or alert a driver to a hazard should be considered. This safety plan focuses on roadway segments and intersections where low-cost high benefit countermeasures and improvements can be implemented. These countermeasures and improvements may include improved or increased pavement markings, breakaway features on posts, guardrail deployment, bridge rail retrofits, rumble strip installation, and signing and traffic delineation upgrades, all of which may be implemented to reduce fatal and serious injury collisions. Based on the crash data for 2017-2021, 70.40% percent of the total crashes involved roads with an average daily traffic (ADT) of 175 or more and with a speed limit of 35mph of higher. In order to have the greatest potential impact in reducing collisions, the county considered roads for evaluation and prioritization of safety improvements with the following characteristics: MINIMUM CRITERIA FOR INCLUDING ROAD SEGMENTS IN SAFETY PLAN: • Paved: Asphalt Concrete Overlay (ACP), Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA), or Bituminous Surface Treatment (BST). • ADT of 175 or more. • Posted speeds of 35 mph or more. • Collision within segment in the past five years. The minimum criteria include the preliminary eligibility requirements as defined by the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration's Highway (FHWA) Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) as stated under the 2023 County Safety Program: Call for Projects solicitation for grant funding. Additional scoring criteria has been developed by Kittitas County Public Works Staff and used consistently throughout multiple years of safety planning to provide scoring and prioritization continuity. The additional criteria include a heavier weighted score for segments listed in the previous County safety plan, roadway curvature — horizontal curve, and collision seriousness (injury, serious, or fatal). Kittitas County recognized in previous safety plans the need to collect clear zone data that would reflect the current clear zone condition of all county roads. In 2022, a clear zone inventory was conducted that targeted known hazards such as shoulder width, side slope grade, and fixed objects in the clear zone of all county road segments. The hazards found in each road segment were scored based off severity and later totaled to get a final score per road segment. Each road segment was then ranked and given a weighted score that mirrored previous scoring criteria of past safety plans. County road segments possessing the minimum criteria characteristics, as well as the additional criteria characteristics, were evaluated and scored by the weighted method shown in Table 3. The complete list of resulting road segment prioritization is shown in Appendix B.