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                Equity in Roadway Safety
                                Equity in Roadway Safety Overview and Resources
                Collect and Analyze Safety Data Equitably
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                Evaluate Safety Improvements Equitably
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            Equity
      
      
      
        Anthony Boutros
      
                    
            Equity in Roadway Safety Program Manager
      
                    
            Office of Safety Programs
      
                
    **Email:**Anthony.Boutros@dot.gov
    If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability, please dial 7-1-1 to access telecommunications relay services.
                
                Evaluate Safety Improvements Equitably
    

    
    
          Advancing equity in safety is an iterative process that requires continuous assessment and improvement. Evaluation helps monitor key metrics and outcomes before implementation, during construction, after a trial phase, and after the project has been completed. This helps ensure the intervention is meeting intended project outcomes for local communities. All transportation projects, including those that may not focus on underserved communities or vulnerable road users, may be evaluated for their equity and safety impacts by:

Engaging with underserved communities to address their needs and priorities
	Collecting data on safety, mobility, health impact, and community perceptions and disaggregating the data to identify the impact on different population groups
	Identifying problems or deficiencies and implementing improvements to address them
	Reporting back to the community about positive and negative changes stemming from transportation investments
	Documenting, sharing, and learning from negative and unintended outcomes of a project
	Reporting data transparently to communities in order to demonstrate countermeasure effectiveness and to make the case for future funding
	Establishing systematic and equitable maintenance policies
	Creating a plan for data collection and analysis before, during, and after the project planning and development period; determining the types of data to collect, when to collect the data, and how to use the data
	Learning from experience and adjusting design and implementation approaches in the future to reach safety and equity goals more effectively
	Recognizing, acknowledging, and communicating that problems often arise during the implementation phase and building in room to make changes along the wayEvaluation also provides an opportunity to assess unintended outcomes or negative changes for underserved communities. Shifting social trends (including an aging population, changing policing practices, displacement and geographic distance between low-income housing and well-paying jobs, the suburbanization of poverty, and vehicle automation) will affect future transportation safety issues and needs.

Transportation professionals may evaluate every aspect of the project to look for successes and opportunities to improve. Multiple metrics can be considered to measure project impacts, including safety, mobility, health, and community perception, as well as to evaluate gaps and limitations in data analyses, community engagement activities, and public communication during the construction phase. It is critical not to assume that projects will benefit all members of a community equally. Equitable evaluation includes considering how the project impacted specific populations by disaggregating data and engaging with community representatives. For all metrics used, evaluation analyses may examine population-based impacts by disaggregating the data to assess whether benefits or harms are disproportionately experienced by specific sociodemographic groups. Below are additional metrics for transportation professionals to consider for a more equitable evaluation process.

Safety metrics

Crash fatalities and serious injuries. Since a relatively small numbers of deaths and serious injuries occur at specific locations, these metrics may require long-term evaluation periods and a network-level focus.
	Safety surrogate variables may be used to evaluate the impact of a specific project over a shorter time period. These include interactions between road users related to crash risk or severity (e.g., driver yield behavior, bicyclist position and maneuvering, and conflicts or near misses between motorists and pedestrians).
	Perceptions of safety and comfort as measured through surveys, questionnaires, and road safety audits provide key information on how people experience changes to the roadway.Accessibility and Mobility metrics

Increases in walking or rolling and bicycling
	Network of pedestrian facilities that are accessible to people with disabilities
	Better on-time performance of transit service
	Effective routing and stop placement for transit services
	Improved access to key services and destinations for underserved communities
	Motor vehicle volumes
	Curb use that promotes safe mobility for all users
	Right-of-way use for vulnerable road usersHealth impact metrics

Air quality
	Noise and sound pollution
	Hospital data
	Emergency response and access
	Climate (and related) impacts
	Access to health services
	Access to active transportation opportunitiesCommunity perception and feedback metrics

Qualitative methods to assess community responses and perceptions following a project can provide valuable context for more quantitative analyses:

Interviews or intercept surveys
	Phone surveys
	Web-based surveys
	Focus groups
	Walk audits/assessments
	Wheelchair audits/assessments
	Wayfinding audits/assessments
	Public forums
	Pop-ups and other techniques that meet community representatives where they areUSDOT Equity Action Plan: Performance Indicators

Increase USDOT direct contract dollars to small disadvantaged businesses to an aspirational goal of 20% by FY25.
	Increase in the number of State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) officially adopting a quantitative Equity Screening component to their Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) and Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) development processes to incorporate community vision and need in project selection and design.
	Increase in the number of meaningful and representative public participation engagements held by MPOs and State DOTs in the development of STIPs and TIPs in rural and urban communities.
	Increase in the number of USDOT discretionary grant applicants from disadvantaged communities in urban and rural areas who have never applied for USDOT funding before.
	Increase in the number of new projects in disadvantaged communities utilizing formula funds added to Statewide Transportation Improvement Programs (STIPs) and Transportation Improvement Programs (TIPs).
	Reduction in transportation travel cost as a percent of income.
	Reduction in transportation travel time.
	Increase in access to key destinations, including work, education, grocery stores, health care.
	Increase in mobility measured by number of trips at the individual level.Next Steps

Consider how program and project evaluation processes and criteria integrate and measure equity. Ask:

“What data or metrics are being collected and analyzed to evaluate safety and equity improvements?”
	“Is the agency evaluating and reducing the impact of unintended consequences from social trends, including aging, gentrification, displacement, and over-policing?”
	“Does the current project adversely affecting a specific group?”
	“What limitations impact the agency’s ability to conduct evaluations of projects? Does missing data present obstacles to a full evaluation?”
	“What processes are in place to report to the community and provide transparent access to data?”
              
      
    
          Last updated: Friday, March 24, 2023 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

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