EVALUATION OF ALTERNATIVE ROUTING STRATEGIES FOR THE ROAD TRANSPORT OF HAZARDOUS MATERIALS

Potential risks to urban areas from the road transport of hazardous materials can be reduced by restricting movements to designated safe routes. Current guidelines for establishing safe truck routes in many jurisdictions have failed to recognize random influences, which affect risk exposure. Essentially, accidents occur as a direct result of a complex interplay of environmental factors. To the extent that these factors vary over time and over different locations in the road network, the designation of safe truck routes for hazardous materials must be viewed as a dynamic process. In this paper, three routing strategies are evaluated for cost-effectiveness. They are: minimum risk, minimum accident likelihood, and minimum truck operating costs. These control strategies are applied to the Toronto road network, based on 1981 observed truck accident profiles. A cost-effective analysis of each routing strategy reveals significant trade-offs between safety enhancement and increased truck operating costs. In general, despite higher truck operating costs, routes that attempt to minimize risk exposure can still produce significant net savings in the form of enhanced safety. For the covering abstract of the conference see IRRD 286189. (TRRL)

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Proceedings of the International Transport Congress, Montreal, September 23-27, 1984, Volume 5: Special Session.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Association of Canada (TAC)

  401-1111 Prince of Wales Drive
  Ottawa, Ontario  Canada 
• Authors:
  • Saccomanno, F F
  • Chan, AYW
• Publication Date: 1984-9

Media Info

• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: p. B37-B61
• Serial:
  • Publication of: Balkema (AA)
  • Publisher: AA Balkema

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Cost effectiveness; Crash exposure; Economic efficiency; Freight transportation; Hazardous materials; Highway safety; Highway transportation; Motor vehicles; Networks; Operating costs; Risk analysis; Roads; Routing; Traffic crashes; Truck routes; Urban areas
• Uncontrolled Terms: Exposure; Road networks
• ITRD Terms: 1643: Accident; 8525: Conference; 9009: Decrease; 237: Economic efficiency; 283: Freight; 741: Goods traffic; 699: Itinerary; 221: Operating costs; 9150: Risk; 2259: Risk taking; 1053: Road network; 1665: Safety
• Subject Areas: Economics; Freight Transportation; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00466791
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Transportation Association of Canada (TAC)
• Files: ITRD, TRIS
• Created Date: Mar 31 1988 12:00AM