Chicago Department of Transportation

Multimodal Crash Analysis Study

Working to Reduce Traffic Fatalities

The City of Chicago has adopted a Vision Zero goal to eliminate traffic crashes that result in serious injury or death on the City’s roadways by 2026. To achieve this goal, the City released the Vision Zero Chicago Action Plan in June 2017. This project was one of the data-driven steps taken to assess historical crash hotspots, predict locations with a high probability of having crashes, and target improvements to achieve that goal.

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Contributing to the Initiative – A State-of-the-Art Team

Civiltech was retained to perform the Multimodal Crash Analysis Study intended to contribute directly to the Vision Zero Chicago initiative by providing detailed benchmarking data and in-depth analysis of the determinants of traffic crashes resulting in serious injury or death. The Civiltech team included industry leaders from the technology, geographic, information systems, and transportation fields and created a statistical model to identify roadways most at risk of serious and fatal crashes. This information was used for education, enforcement, engineering, technology, and policy initiatives through 2019 and beyond.

Analysis and Implementation

The Multimodal Crash Analysis Study built on earlier studies by providing a general update to the previously created Pedestrian Crash Analysis and Bicyclist Crash Analysis and produced a comparable Motorist Crash Analysis. The study provides further insights applicable to ongoing implementation of the Vision Zero Chicago initiative by designing and executing multi-variate statistical and other analytical studies of the determinants of crash severity with independent variables including demographics, behaviors, roadway design, crime, and the built environment.

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Meaningful Deliverables

One of the final deliverables included a map-based web application that Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) designers can use to see roadways most at risk of crashes and the factors involved in serious crashes. Another deliverable included a city-wide report on crash statistics, location-specific case studies, hot spots, and countermeasures

The Project Incorporates the Following:

Support and implementation of Vision Zero Chicago
Data benchmarking and analysis
Location-specific case studies
Map-based web application
Final report of City-wide crash statistics, case studies, hot pots, and countermeasures