Center for Safety Equity in Transportation

rural • isolated • tribal • indigenous

Enabling Data-driven Transportation Safety improvements in Rural Alaska

  • Completed

    CSET Project #: 1808

    Project Funding: CSET and University of Alaska Fairbanks

  • Start Date: September 2018

    End Date: February 2020

    Budget: $60,000

Principal Investigator(s)

Robert Perkins

Project Summary

Agencies that allocate funding to transportation safety depend on roadway safety data to identify community problems and to formulate a solution.  Data needed to support funding requests for transportation safety improvements are often not available for small, isolated communities. The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)/Public Safety system, where most states store crash data, works well for roadways in developed areas.  That system becomes less robust, and therefore less useful, for remote regions with low population densities and a variety of alternate transportation modes besides standard vehicles on roadways.  For Alaskan communities that are not connected to the larger state road system, the DMV system may contain very limited relevant safety data.

The goal of this project is to develop recommendations for data collection methods that will support safety-related transportation improvement in rural Alaska, and implement proof-of-concept trials as appropriate.  Vital to this goal is a summary of the data and data analysis needed by a funding agency to support project approval.