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Summary from Assessment of Local Road Safety Funding, Training, and Technical Assistance: Benefit/Cost Tool and Local Road Safety Manual
Background
The Ohio Local Road Safety Program is a three-part collaboration among Ohio DOT (ODOT), the Ohio Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) center, and the County Engineers Association of Ohio (CEAO). The collaboration provides funding for local road safety improvements, offers training and technical assistance to local agencies, and assists with the administration of local safety projects.
ODOT dedicates $12 million of Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) funds annually to qualifying safety projects on county roads. The funds are administered by CEAO. ODOT also funds a position at CEAO to administer the county safety projects and provide technical assistance to counties as they develop and implement local safety projects. Once projects are approved for safety funding, they are administered by ODOT through the district offices or by local governments through the Office of Local Programs. The funding set aside specifically for county roads has enabled county engineers to take the lead in determining the improvement projects to fund. Providing funding for a CEAO position enables counties to administer projects with the assistance of the CEAO Program Manager.
Local agencies also are eligible to apply for HSIP funds through the statewide program managed by ODOT. Multidisciplinary committees review applications each year and award funds based on scored criteria and other factors, such as cost, compatibility between countermeasures and crash patterns, and relevance to the Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP). ODOT provides crash data and user-friendly tools to help local governments analyze safety challenges and justify public investments.
Ohio LTAP has developed educational, outreach, and Road Safety Audit (RSA) programs designed to build safety knowledge at the local level. Participation in RSA programs and training has increased now that an incentive is tied to local agency RSA participation. Typically ODOT will fund low-cost safety improvements on corridors or at spot locations where RSAs are conducted; however, if an RSA identifies the need for larger, more costly improvements, ODOT sends task order consultants to assess the problem and the costs.
Benefits
ODOT's partnerships with LTAP and CEAO have successfully made safety a local priority. With over 2,300 local agencies in Ohio, about 75 percent of these governments have taken advantage of the training, technical assistance, and tools provided by ODOT, Ohio LTAP, and CEAO.
Contact
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