Study to look at dangerous pedestrian traffic on I-55/40

Study to look at dangerous pedestrian traffic on I-55/40

Potential for further injury, death enough to warrant action

news@theeveningtimes.com

Those that dare to make the dangerous dash across the Interstate 55/40 interchange prompted an application for a federal study.

The West Memphis Metropolitan Planning Organization heard an update during the MPO’s joint Technical & Policy Committee meeting earlier this month.

Arkansas Department of Transportation representative Paul Simms told the joint panel that pedestrian deaths on the Interstates through West Memphis may have become an issue serious enough to spawn a national safety study.

Last winter a local hotel owner presented his concerns with pedestrian fatalities on the highway in front of his hotel. The committee heard that crossings between Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in the truck stop area to just west of Ingram Boulevard in front of Southland Park Gaming & Racing were regularly occurring and all-to-frequently resulting vehicle-on-pedestrian collisons leading to injury and death. The committee was asked to find a way to deter those on foot from crossing the highways.

“This group submitted the idea back in February,” said Simms. “We felt it would be a statewide study and project but then the idea was this could be something of a concern to other parts of the country. So we submitted an application to the national cooperative highway research program.”

The study is under consideration.

“We submitted it a month ago, and we haven’t heard back yet,” emphasized Simms. “The idea is to carry this concern forward and do a nationwide study to see what other states are doing.”

MPO study Director Eddie Brawley said the safety issue was a genuine concern and noted the progress.

“This went from here all the way to nationwide,” said Brawley.

“I know the hotel owner will want to hear this was taken so seriously,” said City Councilor Ramona Taylor. “I know there were pedestrian crossing fatalities on the Interstates in other parts of Arkansas as well.”

“We are not the only place that has this problem,” said Brawley.

Safety performance targets are a renewed priority for highway planners. Safety is one of seven recently defined focal points for ArDOT and the Federal Highway. Simms indicated highway safety was now being tied to performance based planning.

“Each state department of transportation to comply with performance based planning and programming as part of MAP 21,” said Simms. “Safety is one of the goals and each goal has performance measure. It is up to the state and the MPO to set the target. We have to beat 4 out of 5 targets in the plan.”

The whole process is evaluated against the established goals.

“They’ll be reports on how well we’ve done in meeting the targets of the strategic highway safety plan,” said Simms. “That helps us do a very deep dive into our crash data and identify where our problems are.

They annually do a highway safety improvement plan.”

Some of the data compiled record lane departures, wrong way travel, seat belts used, DUI deaths, distracted driving, and turning. Rumble strips and roundabouts have shown to improve safety.

The local MPO dove right in and considered its first target to reduce highway fatalities. The local group circumvented making a local goal and deferred to the overall state highway fatality improvement plan.

“The MPO has a choice, we can set our own targets for fatality rates on a five year rolling basis,” said Brawley. “We don’t have enough deaths to set a legitimate improvement for our area. We have one or two a year. Just one wreck in a van with multiple deaths would blow us right out of attaining the improvement goal. There is no legitimate way we could meet an improvement target. There are penalties if we don’t meet those targets and direct reports to the federal highway safety. We cannot set a legitimate target locally.”

The MPO resolved instead to accept the state targets.

By John Rech