Bus crash risk evaluation: An adjusted framework and its application in a real network.

Area of Science:

• Transportation Safety
• Risk Assessment
• Public Transit Operations

Background:

• Bus safety improvements offer significant benefits, including enhanced service performance, reliability, and reduced insurance costs for public transport companies.
• Existing research on bus crashes often overlooks integrated risk assessment, focusing on frequency and severity but rarely incorporating exposure factors.
• A gap exists in comprehensively evaluating bus transit network crash risk by combining frequency, severity, and exposure.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and validate a new framework for assessing crash risk on individual transit bus routes.
• To integrate safety factors, prediction models, and risk methodologies for a holistic risk assessment.
• To provide a safety performance ranking for bus routes to support transit safety management.

Main Methods:

• Identification of key safety factors influencing bus crashes.
• Development of a bus crash risk function incorporating frequency, severity, and exposure.
• Computation of crash risk for each route and generation of a safety performance ranking.

Main Results:

• A novel framework was developed to assess bus route crash risk.
• The framework successfully integrates safety factors, prediction models, and risk methods.
• A case study demonstrated the framework's feasibility, providing a route-specific safety performance ranking.

Conclusions:

• The proposed framework offers a comprehensive approach to evaluating bus crash risk.
• Transit managers can utilize this framework within safety management systems for route risk assessment and monitoring.
• The system enables qualification of bus routes based on current safety standards and performance.