Urban KiwiRAP: Road Safety Assessment Programme

Road Assessment Programmes have been around for well over a decade now, however typically they have focussed on rural corridors and townships these pass through. Urban KiwiRAP looks to apply road risk ratings to major urban networks. The first stage was to develop risk maps for road links, intersections and network zones for motorised vehicles (cars, trucks, motorcyclists) and vulnerable road users (pedestrians and cyclists) using reported crashes and converting these into estimated death and serious injury casualty equivalents. These have now been completed for several cities in New Zealand. The second stage, to be commenced late in 2013, will be to trial the iRAP v3 star rating model for various road user groups on the arterial and collector links in these cities. This paper presents the process adopted for the first stage of the Urban KiwiRAP project and examines the extent to which the risk mapping process assists with the identification of parts of urban road networks where road safety efforts and investment should be targeted.