MAG Road Safety Assessment Program

Road Safety Assessments (RSAs) are an active approach to improving road safety and can be applied to urban and rural intersections, arterial roads, and freeway corridors.

The concept of RSAs originated in the UK in the 1990s and has been adopted by many countries with considerable success. Numerous US states have begun incorporating RSAs along with their existing efforts to improve road safety.

An RSA is carried out by an independent multidisciplinary RSA Team and is led by a person trained in performing RSAs. The team typically consists of a police officer, a traffic engineer, a road safety planner, and an expert in human factors.

The RSA team considers the safety of all road users, evaluates and reports on possible road safety issues, and identifies opportunities for safety improvements. The team examines the sites during the morning rush hour, mid-day, and after sunset, by both driving and walking at the site.

The RSA program at the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) was established in 2006 as part of the state's plan for improving road safety. The 2005 MAG Strategic Transportation Safety Plan (STSP) identified RSAs as a means to improve road safety in the Phoenix metropolitan region. The MAG RSA program was developed with technical assistance from ADOT.

The first cycle of MAG sponsored RSAs were performed in the fall of 2011. These RSAs focused mainly on urban intersections, as nearly 50 percent of all serious injury and fatal crashes in the region occur at intersections.

The sites for performing RSAs are recommended by the Transportation Safety Committee. Through 2015, this was based on agency nominations followed by a review of crash history. Since 2017, all RSA sites have been identified and prioritized through a data-driven process.

As of June 2023, sixty-nine (69) RSAs were performed at 109 intersections and road segments, in mostly urban areas, in the jurisdictions of 16 MAG member agencies. Each RSA creates a list of recommended safety improvements.

The RSA program uses approximately $200,000 annually that is set aside in the Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP). These funds go toward on-call consultants who are qualified to perform RSAs.

In 2014, MAG's Transportation Safety Committee endorsed the development of Project Assessments (PA's) to analyze safety improvements recommended in an RSA. To implement a strategy identified in the 2015 STSP, Transit RSAs were included in the MAG RSA program. They focused on bicyclist and pedestrian safety on routes to transit stops and light rail stations. RSAs have been performed at eight (8) light rail access locations.

Fifty-three (53) PAs have been developed to provide 15 percent design plans for road safety improvements recommended in previous RSAs and to request Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) funding, a federal aid program, to implement road safety improvements. These PAs have included preliminary cost estimates and benefit-cost analyses.

A list of locations and completion dates are provided below.