The study was conducted in close collaboration with the New Jersey Division of Highway Traffic Safety, the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT), NJ TRANSIT, Transportation Management Associations, and subregional input.
The study sought to improve safety for bus riders at many thousands of bus stops in the northern New Jersey region. Its centerpiece was a safety educational awareness campaign to raise awareness about safety for both pedestrians and motorists. The study also made recommendations related to physical improvements and design guidelines to create safer bus stops through its Bus Stop Safety Toolbox brochure (pdf provided above) and Bus Stop Field Audit Reports. This included consideration of bus stop design and location, pedestrian signage/signals, pavement markings and area illumination.
Study Highlights:
New Jersey experiences a disproportionate number of pedestrian injury crashes and fatalities compared to the nation as a whole. Many factors contribute to this, such as the region's density, traffic congestion, and high level of transit ridership, particularly bus ridership. Bus ridership accounts for two-thirds of all transit riders, with approximately 600,000 trips per day boarding at over 20,000 marked bus stops in New Jersey. Many bus passengers board and alight from buses along busy highways and often must cross these roadways after dark or during inclement weather. Many crashes at and near bus stops occur on congested urban street systems and along highway corridors.
The Pedestrian Safety At and Near Bus Stops Study sought to identify approaches to reduce the severity and frequency of pedestrian crashes at and near bus stops in the 13 county NJTPA region and to improve safe pedestrian access to transit facilities. Successful approaches to improving travel safety often involve a combination of engineering, enforcement, and educational strategies, as well as strategies to improve emergency response time.
The study consisted of three key steps:
- Broad-based analytical review of existing crash data within an appropriate distance of bus stop locations; identified highest frequency crash locations; determined key behavioral and enforcement factors contributing to high-crash activity; selected seven high crash bus stop locations for more detailed analysis.
- Developed and tested educational awareness campaign plan designed to improve pedestrian safety at and near bus stops. This incorporated extensive input from focus groups, one-on-one interviews, surveys and other outreach mechanisms. Approaches included a presentation of campaign themes, concepts, and multimedia communication methods. As part of the educational campaign plan, methods to evaluate the campaign's success was developed as well.
- Evaluated potential engineering, enforcement and other contributing factors at seven high crash bus stop locations that reflected a mix of urban and suburban corridor locations. This analysis was developed as seven individual Bus Stop Field Audit Reports at site-specific bus stop locations. Following this analysis, a Bus Stop Safety Toolbox brochure (pdf provided above) was developed to showcase design and policy recommendations appropriate for bus stops throughout the region.
The study was designed to support and advance the goals of the New Jersey Comprehensive Strategic Highway Safety Plan and build upon the NJTPA's 2008 Regional Safety Priority Update Study, and NJ TRANSIT initiatives in pedestrian-bus crashes at and near bus stops.
Study Status:
As of September 2011, the Pedestrian Safety at and Near Bus Stops Study is in its final draft phase. The report speaks to an Educational Awareness Campaign Plan that consists of three overall themes and various executions of those themes geared toward changing pedestrian and motorist behavior when traveling at and around bus stops.
In addition, the draft contains seven Bus Stop Field Audit Reports with short and long-term suggested design improvements, implementation strategies, and their safety benefits for a small subset of bus stops within the NJTPA region. These Bus Stop Field Audit Reports were developed from pedestrian tracking surveys, field audit observations, bus passenger surveys, and input from the study's literature review.
The study's Bus Stop Safety Toolbox brochure has been finalized (pdf provided above). Printed copies are available upon request from the NJTPA.
