A Sustainable Road Safety Investment Plan for Persiaran Saujana Impian

Abstract

Persiaran Saujana Impian portrays a good example of how a road network ‘inherits’ poor design characteristics from poor town planning and particularly poor road safety institutionalization. As a result of increased traffic loading due to rising housing development projects along this 5 km road, the rate of road crashes has been rise over the last five years. Crash data obtained from the Royal Malaysia Police revealed that the most common type of collision involved passenger cars, and more than one-third of the total crashes occurred in dark environment. Crashes involving motorcyclist constituted less than 10% of the total cases and yet they over-represented the number of fatalities. A road network safety assessment showed that more than 50% of the road length was rated as high risk for passenger cars and more than 80% for motorcyclists. Aside from controlling the operating speed, the assessment confirmed that this road network requires improvement in relation to roadside safety and intersection design. Several intervention programmes were identified to have high benefit-to-cost ratio (BCR) and should be included in any road improvement plan to reduce the risk of severe crashes. This paper proposed a holistic road safety improvement plan based on crash evidence, scientific evaluation and strategic implementation framework. This paper also highlights the importance of localizing road safety intervention programmes which places emphasis on empowering local community to champion road safety. The proposed strategic framework can be replicated for use in other parts of the country as long as evidence-based approach is used.