Highway Safety BCA Guide and Tool 

Benefit -Cost Analysis for Safety Countermeasures 

GUIDE HIGHLIGHTS 

Introduces BCA concepts such as: 

project costs and benefits, setting a 

base condition, project analysis 

period, and discounting. 

Describes agency costs included in 

BCA such as initial construction, 

continuing, and end-of-life costs. 

Describes methods for estimating and 

monetizing direct and indirect safety 

benefits with the implementation of a 

project. Direct safety benefits include 

changes in crash frequency and 

severity. Indirect benefits related to 

crash reductions include reduced 

travel time delay, improved travel 

time reliability, reduced fuel-related 

vehicle operating costs, and reduced 

mobile source emissions. 

Provides example BCAs to assess 

alternatives, including projects with 

single countermeasures, projects with 

multiple countermeasures at the 

same location, and projects with 

multiple potential locations (e.g., 

systemic safety improvements). 

Background 

Transportation agencies consider various factors in comparing project 

alternatives and justifying investment decisions. Such factors may include: 

• Safety performance. 

• Operational efficiency. 

• Environmental impacts and mitigation. 

• Economic impacts. 

Agencies quantify the operational, environmental, and economic impact 

of project alternatives using readily-available tools and resources. While 

the Highway Safety Manual and related tools are available to analyze the 

safety performance of project alternatives, there is a need to consider the 

complete lifecycle cost and benefits of projects, including direct and 

indirect safety benefits. Indirect safety benefits may include reduced 

delay, travel time, and emissions as a result of fewer crashes. 

BCA Guide 

The Office of Safety developed a Highway Safety Benefit-Cost Analysis 

Guide (the Guide) to assist transportation agencies in evaluating the 

direct and indirect safety benefits of project alternatives. The Guide is 

intended to meet the needs of transportation professionals conducting 

benefit-cost analysis (BCA) for highway safety projects and programs. 

The target audience is transportation professionals, such as traffic and 

safety engineers or planners. The Guide assumes these professionals are 

not economists and may not have formal training in economic analysis. 

Readers will learn about basic BCA concepts and terminology as well as 

methods to monetize the direct and indirect safety benefits of projects. 

The Guide is organized into nine chapters with the meat of the Guide 

concentrated in chapters 2 - 8. Chapter 2 presents fundamental BCA 

concepts. Chapter 3 and chapter 4 describe project costs and benefits, 

respectively. Chapter 4 also provides default values to monetize benefits. 

Chapter 5 identifies factors to consider when preparing for BCA. Chapter 

6 describes how to estimate and monetize safety-related project benefits, 

including the expected change in crashes and resulting operational and 

environmental benefits. Chapter 7 provides four hypothetical examples to 

illustrate BCA concepts and demonstrate the use of the methods. The 

examples cover a range of scenarios, including site-specific and systemic 

safety approaches with single or multiple countermeasures. Chapter 8 

presents considerations and options for communicating BCA results. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BCA Tool 

Complementary to the Guide, the Office of Safety developed a 

spreadsheet-based tool (the Tool) to help conduct BCA for project 

alternatives. The Tool calculates present value costs and benefits 

as well as economic measures such as the benefit-cost ratio (BCR) 

and net present value (NPV). Decision-makers can use these 

measures to compare and rank project alternatives. In this way, 

the Tool provides a consistent, comprehensive, and reliable 

approach to estimate project costs and benefits. 

The Tool requires basic data related to each project alternative. 

Users enter project costs, service life, discount rate, estimated 

crashes without the project, and expected safety effectiveness of 

the project. Users also enter general site characteristics such as 

annual average daily traffic (AADT) and facility type. Like the 

Guide, the Tool does not require any special economic expertise 

and provides default values for many of the inputs. While the tool 

provides default values, it also provides the flexibility to allow users 

to enter their preferred values for inputs such as crash costs and 

the value of time, fuel, and emissions. 

Using the Tool, analysts may update the BCA as project 

alternatives are refined, and more accurate project costs and 

benefits become available. By refining the inputs at each step in 

the project development process, analysts can easily update data 

inputs and generate revised BCA results. After deployment, when 

the analyst knows the final project costs and actual effectiveness 

of the countermeasure, they can use the Tool to compare the 

actual benefits and costs to the expected benefits and costs. 

Availability 

Access the Highway Safety BCA Guide and Tool now at: 

https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/hsip/planning.cfm 

Upon request, FHWA will provide training or technical assistance to 

State and local agencies on the Highway Safety BCA Guide and 

Tool. Please make a training request via: 

https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/rsdp/technical.aspx. 

The Guide’s target audience is transportation professionals that 

may not have formal training in economic evaluation techniques. 

BENEFITS OF BCA 

Documentation of the decision 

process. Quantifying and valuing the 

benefits and costs of highway 

projects provides excellent 

documentation to explain the 

decision process to legislatures and 

the public. 

Balance tradeoffs between project 

alternatives. BCA is used to consider 

and balance tradeoffs between 

project alternatives such as lowest 

delay cost or highest safety benefit to 

highway users. 

Best return on investment. Economic 

analysis can assist in planning and 

implementing transportation 

programs with the best rate of return 

for any given budget, or can 

determine an optimal program 

budget. 

Understanding of complex projects. 

In a time of growing public scrutiny of 

new and costly road projects, 

highway transportation agencies and 

other decision makers need to 

understand the comprehensive costs 

and benefits of these projects. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Karen Scurry 

FHWA, Office of Safety 

Karen.Scurry@dot.gov 

(202) 897-7168 

FHWA -SA -18 -002