Toll Facility Safety Study Report to Congress - About

Toll Facility Safety Study Report to Congress
vehicle. While such incidents are relatively rare, 7 they have occurred, and the potential certainly
exists for them to occur again. Among the factors that have contributed to such incidents in the
past (or to more recent close calls) are the introduction of ETC lanes, the uncertainty of driver
actions in mixed-use lanes, the inability of operators of large trucks to see someone crossing
directly in front of them, the dangers associated with closing a lane, and worker complacency.
To improve the safety of these crossings and/or to reduce
exposure of workers to traffic, agencies are using a
number of strategies as discussed in the following
sections.
4.1.2.1 Direct Access to Toll Booths for Workers
The most aggressive mitigation strategy to protect
workers from vehicular traffic is to provide workers
access to booths without requiring them to cross active
traffic by-pass toll lanes. This can be accomplished with
the use of tunnels or bridges (example shown in Figure
4-6).
Approximately half of the agencies visited by the study
team have built such structures for their larger plazas.
However, these structures rarely prevent workers from
being in the roadway altogether. Most of the structures
do not have entrances for each and every lane;
consequently workers are typically required to cross two
to three lanes. Even if collectors can avoid crossing a
lane by using the structure, they still sometimes find
themselves in live traffic – whether to pick up dropped
money, to assist customers having problems with their
Figure 4-6. Tunnels Provide
Access to Booths without Exposure
to Traffic
ETC transponders, or to close a lane. Further, the use of such structures by collectors is typically
not mandated (even when present), and many of the agencies that have them report that the use
of the tunnels/bridges remains quite low. The reasons for this are varied – workers avoid bridges
without elevators because of the need to climb stairs, tunnels are often dank and the entrances
slippery, and using a tunnel or bridge can take more time than simply crossing a lane.
Another strategy for minimizing the number of lanes that a worker must cross is to provide break
areas on either side of the plaza. Some agencies with plazas or with staffed lanes at either end of
the plaza (with ETC lanes in the middle rather than on the far lanes) have placed break rooms on
either side of the plaza to minimize the number of lanes that workers must cross. These are
found to be effective where they have been implemented, but they can be costly and they are
often simply impractical given space limitations and lack of right-of-way.
Two final design strategies for minimizing worker exposure include:
Locating all high-speed ETC lanes to the left of the facility (i.e., toward the middle of
the roadway) and prohibiting employees from crossing these high-speed lanes.
7 The accident and injury data obtained through this study did not include any fatalities and the project team learned
of only one fatality from the agency interviews.
Findings – Factors Affecting Safety at Toll Plazas Page 24