Improving Safety to Support Regional Mobility

Maximizing the mobility of people and goods depends upon making the transportation system as safe as possible. Traffic crashes produce not only personal tragedy, but increased burdens on the region due to medical and insurance costs, lost production potential, and delay of other drivers and freight. In order to address this issue at a regional level, SEMCOG developed the Southeast Michigan Transportation Safety Plan and Safety Plan Appendix. The Transportation Safety Plan is a data-driven comprehensive approach to identify key safety needs and guide investment decisions aimed to reduce fatalities and serious injuries.

SEMCOG can help member communities improve traffic safety by:

  • Analyzing annual traffic crash data to identify key traffic safety challenges and promote effective solutions.
  • Providing technical assistance in order to identify specific traffic safety concerns and countermeasures to improve safety performance.
  • Working with safety partners in the region to implement strategies which integrate the six E’s of transportation safety: engineering, education, enforcement, emergency medical services, equity, and evaluation.
Cover of the June 2023 Southeast Michigan Transportation Safety Plan by SEMCOG. A landscaped street with yellow flowers, a green streetlamp, a clock, and small-town buildings is pictured.
Graphic showing icons of different types of road users in various colors. From left to right: a pedestrian with a backpack, a public transit bus with passengers, a person riding a bicycle, a walking adult with a child and a wheelchair user, a motorcyclist, and a car with two passengers. Text reads Safe Streets Southeast Michigan and emphasizes safety for all road users.

Safe Streets is SEMCOG’s educational campaign to encourage safe transportation choices. Graphic resources, safety tips, as well as explanations of state laws, infrastructure, and signage, are available.

SEMCOG’s Transportation Safety Hub is an online resource for users to interact with key messages and datasets from SEMCOG’s Southeast Michigan Transportation Safety Plan. The Hub includes maps, data, funding opportunities, and additional information related to transportation safety

SEMCOG| image: southeast-michigan-transportation-safety-hub-homepage

Additional Safety Resources

SEMCOG currently provides several traffic safety data resources, including:

Road Safety Audit Program

USDOT awarded SEMCOG a Safe Streets and Roads for All grant to develop a Road Safety Audit (RSA) Program for Southeast Michigan. An RSA is a formal safety performance examination of an existing or planned road or intersection by an independent, multi-disciplinary audit team. RSAs can be used in any phase of project development: planning, preliminary engineering, design, and construction. They can also be used to retrofit existing locations. This program directly aligns with the actions of the region’s Transportation Safety Plan by providing needed resources to assess roadways and develop strategies to enhance their safety for all road users.

SEMCOG’s RSA Program will fund approximately 20-25 RSAs. Eight RSAs were selected for 2024. 

The 2025 RSA Program call for projects is now closed, but if you are still interested in an RSA contact Jenya Abramovich.

Additional resources:

Transportation Safety Action Committee

The Transportation Safety Action Committee meets quarterly to exchange information on transportation safety efforts in the region and monitor the implementation of the Southeast Michigan Transportation Safety Plan. The group shares information about crash data analysis, grants, infrastructure projects, best practices, new technologies, and more. Committee members include local government representatives, road agencies, law enforcement, safety and nonmotorized experts, mobility advocates, and other stakeholders working to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries in Southeast Michigan.

Register for upcoming meetings:

Traffic Safety Manual

The SEMCOG Traffic Safety Manual assists traffic engineers, public works personnel, and others in analysis of roadway-related traffic safety problems.

It provides a set of user-friendly tools for checking a location’s crash history, identifying possible crash causes and countermeasures, and conducting a preliminary benefit/cost analysis of those countermeasures selected for further consideration. Benefit/cost analysis is an economic tool for assessing and comparing possible countermeasures. For each countermeasure considered, it compares expected benefit to expected cost.

Purpose of the Traffic Safety Manual

This manual has been designed to aid in identifying:

  • Information relevant to safety analysis;
  • High-crash locations;
  • Significant crash patterns and generally related causes and countermeasures;
  • Default values for countermeasure service life, cost and effectiveness; and
  • Safety project benefit/cost ratios, for use in planning and budgeting.

In addition, many communities have witnessed a growing portion of their limited budgets consumed by the increasing litigation costs from crashes within their jurisdictions. The systematic use of this manual to develop traffic safety improvement priorities within available budgets is useful in defending against traffic crash litigation.

Using the Manual

This manual describes a comprehensive approach to traffic safety analysis, from collecting potentially useful information to ranking tentative solutions. The chapters are as follows:

Safe Routes to School

Safe Routes to School (SRTS) is a national program to make it safe, convenient, and fun for children to bicycle and walk to school. When routes are safe, walking and biking to school is a fun, easy, and inexpensive way for students to get some of the daily physical activity they need for good health. SRTS is a planning process (pdf, 65KB) where local stakeholders work together in order to:

  1.  Identify barriers to safe walking and bicycling to school
  2.  Develop a plan to address those barriers using a combination of infrastructure and non-infrastructure treatments

How does a SRTS program work?

A school forms a SRTS team consisting of school administrators, teachers, parents, student leaders, law enforcement officers, road authority representatives, local elected officials, and other community members who are interested in children’s health and safety. The team then collects data from parents and students (through surveys) and in the built environment (through walking or bicycle audits). The team uses this data to guide development of a plan to make walking or biking to school a safer and more appealing transportation option.

How can I start a SRTS program at my school?

The Safe Routes to School program is available to all schools with at least one grade in the K-12 range. The school can be public, charter, tribal or private.

  1. Register your school.
  2. Designate a Safe Routes to School coordinator.
  3. Build a SRTS planning team.
  4. Conduct student and parent surveys and in-class tallies.
  5. Conduct walking audits.
  6. Develop a SRTS action plan using surveys and audits

What can the federal funds be spent on?

The statute identifies project types for each category as follows:

  • Infrastructure Projects
    • Sidewalks
    • Traffic calming and speed reduction
    • Pedestrian and bicycle crossing improvements
    • On-street and off-street bicycle facilities
    • Off-street pedestrian facilities
    • Traffic diversion improvements in the vicinity of schools
  • Non-infrastructure Projects
    • Activities to encourage walking and bicycling to school
    • Public awareness campaigns, community outreach
    • Traffic education
    • Traffic enforcement operations in the vicinity of schools
    • Student training sessions (bicycle and pedestrian safety, health, and environment)
    • Funding for training volunteers and managers of Safe Routes to School program

All projects or programs proposed for funding under the SRTS program must 1) increase student safety while walking and biking to school and/or 2) increase the number of students walking and biking to school.

How SEMCOG can help

Jump-start a program in your community by increasing your understanding of the National Safe Routes to School Program. SEMCOG can also provide data for your application including:

Contact Jenya Abramovich to request more information about the Safe Routes to School program.

Additional Information on SRTS