Access management techniques such as raised median installation and driveway consolidation improve safety conditions for motorists. Several locations where these access management techniques have been installed in the state of Utah were selected for analysis of the safety impacts. Although crash rates were not necessarily reduced as a result of the access management techniques, other safety improvements were observed. The raised medians generally reduced the more serious types of collisions, which resulted in a decrease in the severity of crashes. The fatality rates generally decreased as crashes became less severe. Because fatalities and the overall severity of crashes decreased, the overall cost of crashes was reduced. The cost of installing the raised medians was easily recouped by this reduction in the cost of crashes.

Access management techniques such as raised median installation and driveway consolidation improve safety conditions for motorists. Several locations where these access management techniques have been installed in the state of Utah were selected for analysis of the safety benefits. Although crash rates were not necessarily reduced as a result of the access management techniques, other safety improvements were observed.

Access management (AM) is the process that provides (or manages) access to land development while preserving safety, capacity, and speed on the surrounding road network. These benefits have been increasingly recognized at all levels of government, and a growing number of agencies are managing access by requiring driveway permit applications and establishing where new access should be allowed. They are also closing, consolidating, or improving driveways, median openings, and intersections as part of their AM implementation strategy. However, these decisions are often challenged for various reasons, and there have been few scientifically rigorous evaluations to quantify the safety effects of corridor AM. As such, there is a need to provide additional information to help rationalize decisions related to AM so that agencies can better explain the safety benefits of their policies and practices. This study seeks to fill some of the safety-related research gaps—namely, to quantify the safety impacts of corridor AM decisions. The objective of this research was to evaluate the safety effects of corridor AM policies and strategies on urban, suburban, and urbanizing arterials. Crash prediction models were developed using more than 600 mi of detailed corridor data from four different regions in the United States. The crash prediction models were estimated using generalized linear modeling. Agencies can use the crash prediction models to assess the safety impacts of their decisions related to corridor AM.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate if SSAM can be used to assess the safety of a highway segment or an intersection in term of the number and type of conflicts and to compare the safety effects of multiple access management alternatives with less time, less cost and less uncertainty than the traditional safety analysis methods. To meet the purpose of the study, two study sections, one on University Parkway in Orem and Provo and the other on Main Street in American Fork were selected and analyzed in this research.