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Title: Relating Vehicle-Wildlife Crash Rates to Roadway Improvements
Principal Investigator's Name(s): Dr. Rhonda Young, P.E.
Project Sponsor: Mountain-Plains
Consortium and Wyoming Department of Transportation
Project Timeline: Completion February 2007
Background: Improving safety is a major goal for transportation agencies with significant resources being devoted nationwide reducing the number of vehicle crashes that are occurring on roadways. One aspect of roadway safety is vehicle-wildlife crashes that account for approximately 5% of all automobile crashes nationwide. In rural states, such as Wyoming, this issue is often of even greater importance as wildlife can be more prevalent causing more wildlife-roadway interactions. While there is significant research work into the effectiveness of different vehicle-wildlife crash countermeasures, very little information exists on the impacts of roadway improvements to vehicle-wildlife crash rates. This research effort looks at the past roadway improvement projects with respect to the vehicle-wildlife crash rates before and after construction. From the before and after analyses, correlations between specific project aspects and crash rates will be made.
The main objective of this research work is to investigate the effects of past roadway improvements on vehicle-wildlife crash rates. To meet this objective the following major research tasks are proposed:
- Analyze vehicle-wildlife crashes in Wyoming with a focus on Park and Teton Counties in the Northwest portion of the state using GIS to look at crash frequencies and crash rates.
- Identify major roadway improvements that have occurred in the last ten-years in area prone to vehicle-wildlife crashes and perform before and after crash analyses.
- Look for correlation between project characteristics and crash analysis results.