Application of Crash Modification Factors for Access Management, Volume 2: Research Overview (2021)

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169   NCHRP manages coordinated and collaborative highway research of national importance. The focus of NCHRP is applied research, providing practical, ready-to-implement solutions for state DOTs and transportation professionals at all levels of government and in the private sector. While the results of NCHRP research can help to advance the state of the practice and address national priorities, the benefits of NCHRP research are realized only when the results are implemented. In addition to the final NCHRP research report and presentation to the project panel, there is a need for continued efforts to disseminate the guidance and facilitate broad implementation of the results. This chapter identifies and describes the critical steps, action items, and champions to dis- seminate and implement the research results in practice. The chapter is divided into three sections: dissemination, implementation, and evaluation. Dissemination The following questions will help to guide the dissemination of research results: • Who is the target audience? • What will be disseminated to the target audience? • Who will disseminate the guidance and other products to the target audience? • How will the information be disseminated to the target audience? Who Is the Target Audience? The target audience includes all agencies and decision-makers responsible for access man- agement, as well as those responsible for conducting analysis in support of access management decisions. What Will Be Disseminated to the Target Audience? The primary product of this research is a standalone guidance document to assist highway agen- cies in quantifying the safety effects of access management strategies at various levels of imple- mentation (NCHRP Research Report 974: Application of Crash Modification Factors for Access Management—Volume 1: Practitioner’s Guide) (Gross et al. 2021). This includes guidance that may be used to identify and apply CMFs from the Highway Safety Manual (1st Edition) (AASHTO 2010) and CMF Clearinghouse as well as CMFs developed as part of this research. A secondary product is the final research report for those interested in learning more about the data collection C H A P T E R 1 0 Implementation Plan

170 Application of Crash Modification Factors for Access Management process and analysis method (NCHRP Research Report 974: Application of Crash Modification Factors for Access Management—Volume 2: Research Overview). Who Will Disseminate the Guidance and Other Products to the Target Audience? Potential champions to help disseminate and promote the guidance include TRB, AASHTO, FHWA, state DOTs individually and through AASHTO, the NCHRP Project 17-74 panel, and private groups that promote safety (e.g., the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and ITE). The following are specific AASHTO and TRB committees that can provide leadership for the dis- semination of the results: • AASHTO Standing Committee on Safety, • AASHTO Standing Committee on Planning, • AASHTO Standing Committee on Design, • AASHTO Standing Committee on Traffic Engineering, • TRB Standing Committee on Access Management (ACP60), • TRB Standing Committee on Transportation Safety Management Systems (ACS10), • TRB Standing Committee on Safety Performance Analysis (ACS20), • TRB Standing Committee on Performance Effects of Geometric Design (AKD10), and • TRB Standing Committee on Roundabouts and Other Intersection Design and Control Strategies (AKD80). How Will the Information Be Disseminated to the Target Audience? There are opportunities to disseminate the information through presentations, print media (e.g., flyers), and electronic media (e.g., e-newsletters). Potential venues to deliver presentations and distribute print media include the AASHTO Spring Meeting and committee and subcommittee meetings, the TRB Annual Meeting and midyear committee meetings, and the ITE Annual Meeting or Technical Conference. Potential electronic media outlets include the TRB E-Newsletter, a TRB webinar, the AASHTO Journal, and transportation-related websites (e.g., the FHWA Office of Safety). Potential print media outlets include the Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, ITE Journal, FHWA’s Public Roads, or TRB’s TR News. AASHTO and other organizations and agencies facilitate the implementation of research results through updates to their standards and manuals (e.g., the Highway Safety Manual). While the above venues and media outlets provide an opportunity to inform the target audience of the avail- ability of the guidance and research results, updates to manuals, policies, procedures, and guide- lines will help to formalize the implementation of results in practice. The research results could be integrated into future updates/editions of the AASHTO Highway Safety Manual, TRB Access Management Manual, TRB Access Management Application Guidelines, National Highway Insti- tute’s training course in access management, and state/local access management policies. Future editions of AASHTO’s Highway Safety Manual present a key opportunity to implement the research results. While this project will not be complete in time to integrate all of the results into the second edition of the Highway Safety Manual, there may be opportunities to integrate some of the results in the near term. For example, the CMFs resulting from this project may be included in FHWA’s CMF Clearinghouse, which will serve as the source of all CMFs for the High- way Safety Manual (2nd Edition) (i.e., no CMFs in Part D). Future editions could incorporate the multiple variable SPFs in Chapter 16: Special Facilities and Geometric Situations, or Chapter 17: Road Networks. These models support corridor-level crash prediction applications.

Implementation Plan 171   Implementation For successful implementation, the target audience must accept the research results and imple- ment them in practice, including in decisions related to driveway permit applications and high- way improvement projects. The following are potential challenges to implementation: • Lack of awareness of the research products, • Uncertainty about the value of the research, • Lack of confidence in the research results, and • Misunderstanding how to apply the results in practice. To facilitate implementation, the project team has identified the following opportunities to overcome these challenges. Lack of Awareness of the Research Products The project team developed and delivered presentations during the project as a first step to raising awareness of the research results and products. Venues included the TRB Annual Meet- ing and midyear committee meetings (both access management and highway safety performance committees). Potential future venues for delivering presentations and distributing print media include AASHTO committee and subcommittee meetings, the TRB Annual Meeting and mid- year committee meetings, and the ITE Annual Meeting or Technical Conference. The activities described in the previous section of this implementation plan will be a critical component of raising awareness. To support implementation and guide the dissemination of results, the project team developed a PowerPoint presentation. As there may be multiple champions promoting the guid- ance, the speaker notes include key messages and talking points to ensure a consistent voice. To further market the guide and related research, it would be useful to develop a one-page infographic that explains what the guide is and how it can be used for safety and access manage- ment analysis/decision making. Uncertainty About the Value of the Research Demonstrating the value of research can be difficult. The primary benefit of the guidance is a means to quantify the safety impacts of access management decisions. While the guidance includes examples to demonstrate the application of the method, there will likely be skeptics. To appease the skeptics, and further demonstrate the value of the research, it may be useful to develop case studies based on early adopters. The case studies could describe an agency’s traditional approach to making access management decisions and then demonstrate how the agency employed the results of this research to enhance its traditional approach. It may be appropriate to utilize NCHRP implementation funding assistance to provide technical assistance to an early adopter and then develop a case study report. FHWA has also developed a technical summary of the safety benefits of corridor access management that will help to promote this type of analysis. Lack of Confidence in the Research Results The project team collaborated with the NCHRP Project 17-74 panel to employ reliable, state- of-the-art methods in developing the crash prediction models and crash modification factors. This helps to ensure the results are acceptable, defensible, and useful to practitioners. The project team has presented the goodness-of-fit measures and other indicators of the reliability of the results to help readers judge the quality of the research. Beyond the soundness of the methods and the

172 Application of Crash Modification Factors for Access Management indication of objective measures of quality, it may be useful to develop case studies based on early adopters, as described in the previous challenge. Further, the project team will document potential limitations of the research and additional research needs. Misunderstanding How to Apply the Results in Practice To overcome potential usability issues, the project team engaged a focus group composed of the target audience, including both access management and highway safety professionals. This helped to ensure the guidance is practical and user-friendly. The project team also developed several examples to demonstrate application of the methods. As a follow-on effort to NCHRP Project 17-74, there is an opportunity to develop a com- panion tool (e.g., a spreadsheet-based tool or a simple web-based application) to implement the methods. The tool would help users select and apply an appropriate equation(s) based on the strategy(ies) of interest. The tool could be similar to the simple spreadsheet tools (http:// www.highwaysafetymanual.org/Pages/Tools.aspx) that support implementation of the Highway Safety Manual (1st Edition) or could be web-based and more interactive such as the access man- agement Corridor Visualization Tool (http://teachamerica.com/CVE/cve.html). Evaluation The primary criterion for judging progress in implementation of the results will be the extent to which agencies are using the guidance to understand the safety impacts of access management strategies, and then using this information to make decisions or inform decision-makers. This criterion may be difficult to measure, but interviews or surveys could be conducted to determine awareness and application of the guidance document. Other measures related to dissemination can serve as surrogates, including the number of related outreach activities (e.g., number of pre- sentations delivered, number of articles published), and the number of guidance documents and NCHRP reports distributed or downloaded.