Curbing transportation hazards with SS4A funding and intelligent transportation insights

Eligible agencies and organizations have until April 4, 2024 to apply for planning and demonstration grant funding under the Safe Streets and Roads 4 All (SS4A) program, an initiative rolled out as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Passed by the Biden administration, the bill is distributing $5 billion worth of funding between 2022 and 2026 to invest in new strategies that prevent critical injuries and loss of life on America’s road systems. Of the $5 billion, nearly $1.7 billion has been given out already to eligible organizations with previous SS4A programs. It’s important for agencies that want to apply for this year’s round of funding to do so by the upcoming deadline and have their respective action plans prepared.

As part of the funding eligibility requirements, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) outlines several essential components of an effective safety action plan, including:

• Having a data-first approach when developing new plans to prevent drivers from being seriously maimed or fatally injured on the road.
• A detailed study of public opinion, with feedback collected via education and citizen outreach.
• An examination of the severity and positions of vehicle collisions within a given region.
• Solutions to test the results of the proposed safety action plan.
• A planned timeline and end objective for preventing serious injuries and deaths.

Using deeper indicators from rich data and collision prevention technologies, agencies can include new infrastructure, policy and behavioral safety initiatives in their action plans. All of these aspects of transportation are essential to factor in when creating an effective safety strategy that’s backed by data. Identifying roads that need speed limit reductions, new construction options to reduce high injury rates or buildings (such as schools) whose roads need increased safety measures are just a few of the ways that metrics can help guide your organization’s action plan.

In addition to demonstrating how your agency will use transportation data to back up its safety suggestions, your plan will also need to show how it will measure its efficacy once implemented. With our Altitude platform’s data, you can deduce how vehicle types in an area interact, which areas have the highest traffic, which roads are the most prone to traffic-caused injuries and what intersections may be best suited for speed monitoring or other tactics. Tracking these important factors both before and after a new safety initiative has unfurled will assist in determining if it worked as intended.

Beyond real-world traffic insights, Altitude’s intrinsic value lies in its ability to contextualize the transportation data it’s aggregating. You’re provided with surrounding information on which jobs vehicles traveling through your region are commonly associated with as well as why they’re choosing the routes they are. By looking at both the current analytics and the valuable context behind them, you can gain a truly holistic view of all regional travel. It’s with this combination of information that you can craft a better safety action plan.

Altitude provides an abundance of data to help your planners and modelers pinpoint unsafe areas in your transportation grid. They can then craft new strategies within an overall action plan that effectively target these inefficiencies and/or unsafe areas. Several key ways our platform can help you identify potentially unsafe activity include:

Studying aggressive driving behaviors. Altitude offers insights on speeding instances by vehicles traveling along key corridors. Our platform also offers an API that serves aggregated harsh driving event data, enabling planners to identify potentially problematic roadways. Examples of these harsh driving events include erratic cornering, brake slamming and aggressive accelerating.

Predicting and measuring traffic intervention impacts. Our Interactive Map’s New York City use case highlights a prime example of how Altitude’s data can help DOTs track the results of their traffic-calming interventions. These interventions can include strategies like speed cushions that demonstrably reduce instances of speeding on high-risk roads.

Pinpointing traffic bottlenecks. Many different reasons can exist for an area’s susceptibility to high traffic congestion. Examining these areas with context using our platform can help your agency determine whether bottlenecks are due to insufficient infrastructure, frequent accidents or other factors. By streamlining bottlenecks using measurement-based strategies, traffic flow and safety can be improved in your region.

Analyzing parking trends and current curbside management. The role of parking is often neglected when motorist safety as a whole is discussed, but it’s even more relevant to mention when talking about commercial driving operations. Inefficient parking and poor curbside management can add more than just a headache to their daily work; it can result in safety concerns stemming from a lack of visibility, cramped spaces to maneuver their large trucks and potential stress over maintaining Hours-of-Service (HOS) compliance. Altitude uses a tandem of stop analytics and road metrics to help you understand how trucks are moving, where they’re frequently taking breaks and their total trip histories. With this information, you can devise new methods to improve parking and curbside safety by surveying the busiest areas and expertly choosing where to install more options.

Modeling route analytics for the purpose of sustainability. The end goals of sustainable transportation infrastructure are always to improve air quality and meet emissions targets. Using Altitude, you can rely on data to select the best places to put new electric vehicle charging stations, helping improve public health as a result. By supporting more drivers in the ongoing shift from internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles to EVs with sustainable infrastructure,  heavy-traffic regions can benefit from reduced air pollution. Preserving the long-term health of citizens with fewer greenhouse emissions from ICE fuel burn should be another key element of your safety action plan.

Support your data-first approach to 2024 SS4A funding by considering Altitude’s ability to help you execute your safety action plan in accordance with the USDOT’s guidelines. Creating a well-researched strategy that uses data to put public safety first helps you account for unforeseen challenges, identify their causes and enhance transportation networks for all.

Get in touch with one of our Altitude by Geotab data experts today to learn more about the 2024 SS4A grant and how our platform can help you curate an effective action plan.