Highway Safety Benefit-Cost Analysis Tool: Reference Guide
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Highway Safety Benefit-Cost Analysis Tool: Reference Guide

Filetype[PDF-1.80 MB]


English
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  • Corporate Creators:
    United States. Federal Highway Administration. Office of Safety
  • Contributors:
    Scurry, Karen
  • Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Publication/ Report Number:
    FHWA-SA-18-027
  • Resource Type:
    Tech Report
  • Geographical Coverage:
    United States
  • Corporate Publisher:
    United States. Federal Highway Administration. Office of Safety
  • Abstract:
    The Highway Safety Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) Tool (the Tool) supports the implementation of the methods described and demonstrated in the Highway Safety Benefit-Cost Analysis Guide (the Guide). Specifically, the Tool provides a method for preparing a simple economic analysis of infrastructure projects, helping users to quantify projects costs as well as direct and indirect safety-related benefits of project alternatives. Direct safety benefits include the expected change in crash frequency and severity. Indirect benefits include the operational and environmental benefits that result from a reduction in crashes (i.e., reduced travel time, improved travel time reliability, reduced fuel use, and reduced emissions). Given certain input data for a project, the model calculates the present value costs, present value benefits, net present value, and benefit-cost ratio. The benefits are derived from the estimated change in crashes between the base condition and an alternative scenario. While the user has multiple options for estimating and entering safety benefits in the Tool, the benefits are based on changes in crashes by severity. The Tool does not estimate benefits by crash type or by combinations of crash type and severity. Further, the crash severity levels are defined by the five-level KABCO scale; however, there is a conversion process if an agency estimates the change in crashes by different severity levels. The Tool is intended for project-level analysis of single or multiple improvements at a given location. It can also support network-level economic analysis for projects that include multiple locations (e.g., systemic improvements). It does not address behavioral measures, or the direct benefits related to operations and the environment (i.e., those benefits not derived from a change in safety performance). Agencies may use other tools to quantify the benefits of behavioral measures and non-safety factors (e.g., microsimulation to estimate operational impacts; noise and emissions models to estimate environmental impacts). While the Guide and Tool provide methods and default values to monetize the direct and indirect safety benefits of alternatives, a BCA is a policy or procedural decision where an agency defines the parameters. Agencies should develop a prioritization process that meets their specific needs, integrating quantitative safety and non-safety factors as needed.
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