Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Analysis Of Design Attributes And Crashes On The Oregon Highway System, James G. Strathman, Kenneth Dueker, Jihong Zhang, Timothy Williams

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Since the passage of the Highway Safety Act of 1966, state departments of transportation have engaged in systematic safety improvement planning and programming. According to Davis (2000), the general approach to safety improvement planning employed by most states follows six principal steps:

1. Identification of hazardous roadway locations using crash records;

2. Detailed engineering study of selected hazardous locations to identify roadway design problems;

3. Identification of potential countermeasures;

4. Assessment of the costs and benefits of potential countermeasures;

5. Implementation of countermeasures with the highest net benefits;

6. Assessment of countermeasure effectiveness following implementation.

All planning processes are subject …

Effect Of Oregon's Axle-Weight-Distance Tax Incentive, Anthony M. Rufolo, Lois M. Bronfman, Eric Kuhner

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Oregon s weight-mile tax was amended in 1990 to provide for a lower tax rate for trucks weighing more than 80,000 pounds if they added axles. The additional axles within a weight class reduce the amount of road damage. The tax break was largely based on equity considerations, since trucks within a weight class tend to do less road damage if they have more axles; however, the tax reductions also created an economic incentive to add axles and thus reduce road damage. This article is a report on attempts to determine if the tax break actually led to an increase …