Hastings roundabout safety study

Objective

Audit existing multi-modal safety and accessibility of seven roundabouts in Hastings City and prepare a toolkit of improvement treatments with rough order costs

Client

Hastings District Council

Location

Hastings

Deliverable

Report

Timeframe

2018

Project Status

Complete

Background

St.Aubyn Street and Southampton Street are major iWay walking and cycling corridors as well as key motoring routes across the city of Hastings. Through the iWay network and MoveIt school travel planning programmes, the Hastings District Council (HDC) has identified that these two corridors present barriers for many people who are currently cycling or would like to walk and cycle more often. HDC commissioned ViaStrada to review the safety and usability of seven roundabouts along these two corridors. While borne out of concerns for non-motorised users, the review also considers the safety of motorists.

The project team was John Lieswyn, Warren Lloyd and Jon Ashford. Site visits included morning and evening peak observations at every leg of all roundabouts.

Inputs included the NZ Transport Agency Cycling Network Guidance (ViaStrada and Abley, ongoing), Pedestrian Planning and Design Guide, Austroads AP-R461-14 Assessment of the effectiveness of on road bicycle lanes at roundabouts (ViaStrada, 2014) and NZ Transport Agency research report 386 Crash Prediction Models for Roundabouts (Beca, 2009).

Desktop work included safety analysis using the Crash Analysis System (CAS) with placement of each crash found on an aerial with traffic volume labels.

crashes and volumes
Red outline represents the police-reported location of point of impact, light blue shaded number is the traffic volume per leg, and the blue/black text the date and time of each crash.

The seven main tools recommended are not mutually exclusive. Each tool was presented with a description, advantages and disadvantages, an illustration, and typical cost estimate.

platform treatment at roundabout
One of the seven treatments in the toolbox is a combination enlarged splitter island, changes to the lane delineation through roadmarking, and a raised safety platform (red colouring is for clarity but it is not proposed that the red colouring would be used)