A wide-scale safety evaluation of traffic calming measures in residential areas

Since the mid 80s, the residential areas established in Israel by the Ministry of Construction and Housing (MCH), were built with elements of traffic calming. Among the measures, which can be frequently found in the field today are: carriageway narrowings, street courts, various speed humps, roundabouts, etc. However, until recently, the effects of these traffic arrangements on the safety of residential areas has not been examined, neither on a macro scale of whole residential areas, nor on a micro scale of specific measures. The purpose of the study presented was to evaluate the safety benefits of traffic calming measures, applied on the streets of MCH residential areas. The study comprised 37 residential areas situated in towns of Haifa and Galil counties, in the north of the country. The findings demonstrated that all the measures considered, except for rumble devices, are effective in reducing speeds, both at a point and along a road section. The multitude and a combination of measures like street courts, dense speed humps and narrowings, was found to be the most effective treatment for traffic calming in the residential areas. In most cases the safety level of the MCH residential areas was higher than for the towns. However, comparing with the control residential areas, the evident safety benefit was observed only for the MCH residential areas with medium level of treatment, whereas for the MCH residential areas with high and low levels of treatment, the problem of pedestrian injury and the problem of severe injury remained; the safety benefit at those sites was seen only in the overall reduction of accidents. In general, the study findings support the traffic calming approach as a safety treatment applied on the scale of a residential area but also indicate that there is a great need in changing the current way of planning. In the process of residential area planning there should be a preliminary and strategic stage, which should determine the street functions within the residential area and, then, the preferable traffic calming measures for these streets. The study findings have also a range of practical implications concerning the efficiency of various calming measures in the context of their design. For the covering abstract see ITRD E126595.