A project to begin developing the Regional Transportation Safety Information Management System or RTSIMS was launched in December 2006. This regional project is funded with $350,000 in state funds provided by the Arizona DOT. It is being developed with extensive input from all key stakeholders in the MAG region, using both consultant and in-house staff expertise. Oversight for this project is provided by the MAG Transportation Safety Committee. When fully developed, the RTSIMS will serve as the key analytical tool at MAG for transportation safety analysis and planning. The RTSIMS development process is also contributing towards improving the state of practice in transportation safety planning in Arizona. Provide An Efficient User Interface for Analysis of Crashes
The RTSIMS will have an intuitive and user-friendly interface that will provide end users with the ability to query all or part of the crash database and perform various macro-level crash analyses. The end users of the system will be MAG staff and MAG member agency staff that might have a need to perform crash analyses to support regional planning discussions. Macro-level of crash analysis using RTSIMS will be capable of investigating ONLY region- or corridor-wide road safety issues. RTSIMS will not have built-in features for investigating crashes at specific locations such as intersections or freeway interchanges. Such microscopic analyses will continue to be performed by the affected jurisdictions. The RTSIMS will have the built-in ability to generate reports with statistics and the corresponding graphics (tables, bar/pie charts and trend lines). The generation of such graphics may be based on standard office software such as Microsoft Excel. The RTSIMS will have the ability to carry out the following: - Specific corridor safety analysis
- Forecast safety consequences of transportation planning alternatives
- Spatial analysis of crash data
Host a Historical Crash Data Archive for the MAG Region
The RTSIMS will contain an archive of crash data pertinent to the MAG planning region (currently consists of all entities within Maricopa County plus Apache Junction). The primary source of crash data will be the ALISS crash database maintained by Arizona DOT. The RTSIMS data archive will also contain other non-ALISS data useful for safety analyses such as traffic data, socio-economic data etc. The RTSIMS concept is based on the assumption that the current practice of Arizona DOT providing MAG with annual updates of the ALISS crash database (for the MAG region) will continue. The system will integrate new crash data into the crash data archive in an efficient manner and make the data available for use at MAG for planning purposes. The RTSIMS will be developed in three phases. Project documents will be made available as each phase of the project is launched and completed. Phase I : Develop a Table of Common Definitions (TCD) This project identified definitions currently used for all the data fields in the crash database. This was considered an essential step for consistency in safety analysis.
Status: Completed in June 2007
Consultant: Lee Engineering LLC
Budget: $ 49,976 Phase II: Annual Transportation Safety Reporting & Safety Forecasting Project S2-1: Alternatives to Custom Software Development for the RTSIMS. This project involved a review of existing software products that might meet Phase II functional requirements. The project was launched in December 2007.
Status: Completed in April, 2008
Consultant: Kittelson & Associates Inc.
Budget: $ 15,942
Deliverable: Produced a Technical Memorandum that documented the inadequacies of all potential software packages for meeting MAG functional requirements for the RTSIMS. Project S2-2: This project will produce a custom software application that would be capable of: - Performing analyses of historical crash data to generate custom reports based on crash frequency only
- Perform a standard analysis to produce an annual report on road safety in the MAG region based on crash frequency only
Status: Anticipated start in September, 2008
Consultant: TBD
Budget: TBD
Deliverable: A software product that will be installed at MAG, and the documentation. Documentation will include - Administration Guide including Account Management and Training
- Final Entity Relationship(ER) diagram with Database Scripts
- Well Documented Code Including Stored Procedures
- User’s Guide and Online Help
Project S2-3: Develop the ability to calculate intersection and segment crash rates. Project S2-4: Develop the ability to forecast crashes and safety outcomes of future transportation networks. Phase III: Spatial Analysis of Crashes Project S3: Develop/incorporate the ability to perform spatial analysis of geo-coded crash data in a GIS environment. The scope of work will depend on new spatial analysis capabilities at MAG to be developed through the on-going GIS-T project OR capabilities that might be imported from other applications. | 
