According to data from the National Roadway Safety Strategy, serious injuries and fatalities in Texas and across the country have been steadily increasing, with 41% of Texas crashes occurring in rural areas.
Efforts to make roads safer have traditionally relied on crash data to inform decision-making when building and maintaining roadways, intersections, and lighting, with the goal of reducing further crashes in the future. The new plan from the South Plains Association of Governments (SPAG) intends to pair hard data with input from the affected communities.
The Department of Transportation established the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program in 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which provided $5 billion for regional, local, and Tribal plans to make roads safer.
That’s where SPAG decided to bring resources to West Texas on “the Road to Zero,” with the goal of reducing fatalities and serious injuries by 50% by 2035 and progressing toward zero fatalities by 2050.
SPAG’s plan covers all of Lubbock County — outside the city limits of Lubbock — and 14 other surrounding counties. The City of Lubbock’s Metropolitan Planning Organization has worked toward a complimentary traffic safety plan within city limits, calling for public commentary in July 2024.
The Comprehensive Safety Action Plan is the “building block” of the Safe Systems approach. It encourages communities to act proactively by designing for human mistakes and limitations, furthering driver education before crashes happen, and providing communities with the resources that save lives.
Edward Sewell is the project manager with consultants AtkinsRéalis, hired by SPAG to develop a safety plan for the South Plains. He said this data could bring benefits not only to the 46 communities under SPAG but to the rest of the region and the state.
“There's a lot of different things that this could potentially be used for,” Sewell said. “We are trying to gather as much information from the public as we can because the data that we have can only tell us so much.”
The Federal Highway Administration has identified 28 proven safety countermeasures that can be implemented or adjusted on roadways nationwide, but SPAG wants to know what would work best on local roads.
According to SPAG, current data analysis has narrowed down five emphasis areas contributing to crashes on South Plains roads:
- Speed management
- Intersection safety
- Impaired driving
- Distracted driving
- Roadway and lane departure
Along with infrastructure changes to make the roads safer, the CSAP also considers where educational campaigns, enforcement initiatives, policy changes, and other procedures may bring changes in behavior that make roads safer.
In addition to Federal SS4A funding, the safety strategies and actions identified with the CSAP data can provide information for other potential federal funding programs, such as RAISE and PROTECT, as well as state-administered programs.
“In some cases, it's the grants for additional EMS, it's the grants for additional law enforcement, it's the grants for the educational programs to come around and talk to the school districts,” Sewell said.
But with 15 counties and over 13,000 miles of the South Plains, SPAG has a lot of data to collect. This program hopes to get ahead of the curve when it comes to preventing crashes by taking input directly from the drivers on where a dangerous spot could be.
A survey and an interactive map have been set up to take input from drivers. A pinpoint can be added at roadways where issues are affecting traffic or contributing to the chances of a collision.
Folks can leave as many points as they like, with a comment to describe the problem, and Sewell said that input will inform leaders, engineers and officials.
“Give a description of what the problem is at that location, and then maybe a suggestion of, ‘hey, maybe if we had more lighting in this particular intersection, you could see somebody coming from the other direction, and there wouldn't be an accident.’”
Sewell said meetings with community stakeholders in West Texas have been important and encouraging, but the public's input is ultimately vital.
“We've had school districts, we've had cities, we've had counties, etc, so we've had really good participation. But we really want to hear from members of the public as well.”
Data is being collected until February 13, with the next step being a draft plan established by late March.
A survey can be submitted here, and the interactive map can be found here.