Fahmid Hossain | Montana State University - Bozeman (original) (raw)
Papers by Fahmid Hossain
This project aimed to identify ambiguities and disparities that exist in the regulations pertinen... more This project aimed to identify ambiguities and disparities that exist in the regulations pertinent to heavy trucks and buses, and offers recommendations on how to improve clarity and cohesion of these regulations in the State of Montana. The goal is achieved by a logical set of two tasks. Task 1 involved the conduct of a trucker's survey, in addition to a review of federal and state laws, to more effectively identify issues/questions pertaining to heavy truck/bus regulations. Various aspects of heavy truck/bus regulations were explored, namely, speed limit, roadside safety inspection, weigh station, commercial driver's license, hours of service regulation, hazardous materials regulation, and vehicle maintenance standards. Task 2 resulted in a thorough review of the questions revealed in Task 1, the identification of the ambiguities and discrepancies that may exist in the regulations, and the development of recommendations on how to address them. These two tasks are summarized in Chapters 1 and 2 of this final report. This final report synthesizes the research process and presents the research results. The results (Chapter 3) are organized into three parts. The first part summarizes the changes that may be needed in the state's administrative resources such as the Montana Trucker's Handbook, Getting Started Guidebook, and Montana Commercial Driver's License Manual. These changes address discrepancies that exist in these administrative resources and update outdated information to make it consistent with state laws. The second part summarizes the questions that may need to be discussed in future legislations. These questions reveal more complicated issues that would require adding new passages or modifying existing clauses in state laws (i.e., Montana Code Annotated [MCA] and Administrative Rules of Montana [ARM]). The third part consists of items that can be included in the educational booklet for drivers and motor carriers.
This paper investigates the underlying patterns of transit ridership and develops strategies to i... more This paper investigates the underlying patterns of transit ridership and develops strategies to increase ridership for a small city using the conventional 4 step travel demand model. Transit ridership at the zone level is estimated and calibrated using two models. Binary logit model was used to reveal the variables affecting the bus ridership decision and ordered logit model was used to find the relation between the frequencies of riding the bus versus other explanatory variables.
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2021
The United States Road Assessment Program (usRAP) provides a systemic approach to estimate the ri... more The United States Road Assessment Program (usRAP) provides a systemic approach to estimate the risk of severe injury and fatal crashes along roadway segments based on the expected safety performance of roadway and roadside characteristics, together with a general estimation of traffic volume. Detailed crash data are not needed for safety assessments, providing advantages over more traditional crash-driven approaches. However, experiences with usRAP are limited to the United States and to date, the program has a growing but limited number of participating states. Verification of the adequacy of usRAP assessments is therefore of significant value, not only to identify strengths and limitations of the methodology within the U.S. context, but also to potentially expand the set of tools available to agencies. This paper presents a verification of usRAP risk assessments for run-off-road and head-on crashes using over 7,000 mi of coded segments and five years of crash data collected in Uta...
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2020
This paper explores the effects of operating speed and traffic flow on roadway safety in light of... more This paper explores the effects of operating speed and traffic flow on roadway safety in light of the methodology provided by the U.S. Road Assessment Program (usRAP). Unlike traditional approaches, usRAP produces a systemic expected roadway safety performance, more specifically the likelihood of being involved in a severe or a fatal crash, that is derived purely from roadway, roadside, and traffic characteristics, without need for detailed historical crash data. Data from over 7,000 mi of segments coded using the usRAP protocols and 5 years of crash data were used to examine changes in expected safety performance with changes in operating speed and traffic volumes. Speed and flow emerged as candidates for initial exploration as their effect is explicitly considered in the usRAP formulation for all crash types. The usRAP methodology indicated a gradual increase in the frequency of expected severe and fatal crashes with an increase in the operating speed, and such trends followed tho...
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2019
Low-volume roads constitute a significant proportion of the roadway network in rural areas, but t... more Low-volume roads constitute a significant proportion of the roadway network in rural areas, but they are usually associated with sparse crash data. This makes it impractical to rely on crash history alone to identify candidate locations for more detailed safety investigations and potential improvements. This paper presents the development of a prioritization scheme, in the form of a crash risk index, to be used in ranking candidate sites for safety improvements on low-volume roads in the State of Oregon. The index developed utilizes information on highway geometry, roadside features, traffic exposure, and crash occurrence in assessing risk, rather than relying solely on crash history in identifying hazardous locations. A roadway sample with a total length of around 830 mi was used in this study to represent different geographic regions in the state. Subsequently, extensive roadway, traffic, and safety data for the study sample were acquired and utilized in the development of the pro...
Journal of Transportation Safety & Security, 2016
This paper presents an investigation into the economic feasibility of safety countermeasures alon... more This paper presents an investigation into the economic feasibility of safety countermeasures along rural low-volume roads. While these roads may be associated with higher crash risks as they're built to meet lower standards, crash frequencies are notably lower than those on other roadways with higher traffic exposure. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that some conventional safety countermeasures that are proven to be cost effective on well-travelled roads may turn out to be infeasible on low-volume roads. Twenty seven safety improvements were examined in this investigation for their economic feasibility along low-volume roads. A roadway sample of 681 miles of Oregon was used in this study. Detailed benefit-cost analyses were performed using countermeasure costs, ten-year crash data, and expected crash reductions using Highway Safety Manual methods. Around half of the countermeasures investigated were found cost-effective for implementation along low-volume roads. Further, most of the countermeasures that were found to have very high benefit-cost ratio are associated with low initial cost and many of them do not require much maintenance cost. At the other end of the spectrum, almost all roadway cross-section safety improvements were found economically infeasible due to higher associated costs relative to the expected crash reduction benefits on low volume roads.
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2016
Crashes are random events and can occur at any location along a roadway. On roadways with high tr... more Crashes are random events and can occur at any location along a roadway. On roadways with high traffic volumes, the more frequent occurrence of crashes permits the direct identification of high-frequency crash locations with the use of historical data. On low-volume roads, crash occurrence, particularly the occurrence of crashes with fatal and serious injuries, is less frequent. There is a need to understand better the risks associated with geometric and roadside features along low-volume roadways in order to identify locations where preventive countermeasures may be employed. This paper describes the collection and analysis of a large sample of data from low-volume roads in Oregon to quantify the effects of geometric and roadside features on crash occurrence and associated risks. The effects of lane width, shoulder width, grade, side slope, fixed objects near the roadway, and horizontal and vertical curves have been quantified. For the low-volume road sample, roads with lanes less ...
Crashes are random events and low traffic volumes therefore don’t always make crash hot-spot iden... more Crashes are random events and low traffic volumes therefore don’t always make crash hot-spot identification possible. This project has used extensive data collection and analysis for a large sample of Oregon’s low volume roads to develop a risk index that expresses the crash risk for different road geometries and roadside features as well as crash history and traffic exposure. This crash risk index can then be a proactive means of identifying potentially risky locations where safety treatments might be best targeted. The economic analysis completed as part of this effort can be used in conjunction with the risk index when determining which safety treatments may result in the highest return on investment for agency safety improvement funds. This report includes a review of literature related to features effecting crash risk and other past risk index efforts, the data collection and analysis methods used in quantifying risks, the establishment of the crash risk index, an economic feas...
This project aimed to identify ambiguities and disparities that exist in the regulations pertinen... more This project aimed to identify ambiguities and disparities that exist in the regulations pertinent to heavy trucks and buses, and offers recommendations on how to improve clarity and cohesion of these regulations in the State of Montana. The goal is achieved by a logical set of two tasks. Task 1 involved the conduct of a trucker's survey, in addition to a review of federal and state laws, to more effectively identify issues/questions pertaining to heavy truck/bus regulations. Various aspects of heavy truck/bus regulations were explored, namely, speed limit, roadside safety inspection, weigh station, commercial driver's license, hours of service regulation, hazardous materials regulation, and vehicle maintenance standards. Task 2 resulted in a thorough review of the questions revealed in Task 1, the identification of the ambiguities and discrepancies that may exist in the regulations, and the development of recommendations on how to address them. These two tasks are summarized in Chapters 1 and 2 of this final report. This final report synthesizes the research process and presents the research results. The results (Chapter 3) are organized into three parts. The first part summarizes the changes that may be needed in the state's administrative resources such as the Montana Trucker's Handbook, Getting Started Guidebook, and Montana Commercial Driver's License Manual. These changes address discrepancies that exist in these administrative resources and update outdated information to make it consistent with state laws. The second part summarizes the questions that may need to be discussed in future legislations. These questions reveal more complicated issues that would require adding new passages or modifying existing clauses in state laws (i.e., Montana Code Annotated [MCA] and Administrative Rules of Montana [ARM]). The third part consists of items that can be included in the educational booklet for drivers and motor carriers.
This paper investigates the underlying patterns of transit ridership and develops strategies to i... more This paper investigates the underlying patterns of transit ridership and develops strategies to increase ridership for a small city using the conventional 4 step travel demand model. Transit ridership at the zone level is estimated and calibrated using two models. Binary logit model was used to reveal the variables affecting the bus ridership decision and ordered logit model was used to find the relation between the frequencies of riding the bus versus other explanatory variables.
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2021
The United States Road Assessment Program (usRAP) provides a systemic approach to estimate the ri... more The United States Road Assessment Program (usRAP) provides a systemic approach to estimate the risk of severe injury and fatal crashes along roadway segments based on the expected safety performance of roadway and roadside characteristics, together with a general estimation of traffic volume. Detailed crash data are not needed for safety assessments, providing advantages over more traditional crash-driven approaches. However, experiences with usRAP are limited to the United States and to date, the program has a growing but limited number of participating states. Verification of the adequacy of usRAP assessments is therefore of significant value, not only to identify strengths and limitations of the methodology within the U.S. context, but also to potentially expand the set of tools available to agencies. This paper presents a verification of usRAP risk assessments for run-off-road and head-on crashes using over 7,000 mi of coded segments and five years of crash data collected in Uta...
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2020
This paper explores the effects of operating speed and traffic flow on roadway safety in light of... more This paper explores the effects of operating speed and traffic flow on roadway safety in light of the methodology provided by the U.S. Road Assessment Program (usRAP). Unlike traditional approaches, usRAP produces a systemic expected roadway safety performance, more specifically the likelihood of being involved in a severe or a fatal crash, that is derived purely from roadway, roadside, and traffic characteristics, without need for detailed historical crash data. Data from over 7,000 mi of segments coded using the usRAP protocols and 5 years of crash data were used to examine changes in expected safety performance with changes in operating speed and traffic volumes. Speed and flow emerged as candidates for initial exploration as their effect is explicitly considered in the usRAP formulation for all crash types. The usRAP methodology indicated a gradual increase in the frequency of expected severe and fatal crashes with an increase in the operating speed, and such trends followed tho...
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2019
Low-volume roads constitute a significant proportion of the roadway network in rural areas, but t... more Low-volume roads constitute a significant proportion of the roadway network in rural areas, but they are usually associated with sparse crash data. This makes it impractical to rely on crash history alone to identify candidate locations for more detailed safety investigations and potential improvements. This paper presents the development of a prioritization scheme, in the form of a crash risk index, to be used in ranking candidate sites for safety improvements on low-volume roads in the State of Oregon. The index developed utilizes information on highway geometry, roadside features, traffic exposure, and crash occurrence in assessing risk, rather than relying solely on crash history in identifying hazardous locations. A roadway sample with a total length of around 830 mi was used in this study to represent different geographic regions in the state. Subsequently, extensive roadway, traffic, and safety data for the study sample were acquired and utilized in the development of the pro...
Journal of Transportation Safety & Security, 2016
This paper presents an investigation into the economic feasibility of safety countermeasures alon... more This paper presents an investigation into the economic feasibility of safety countermeasures along rural low-volume roads. While these roads may be associated with higher crash risks as they're built to meet lower standards, crash frequencies are notably lower than those on other roadways with higher traffic exposure. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that some conventional safety countermeasures that are proven to be cost effective on well-travelled roads may turn out to be infeasible on low-volume roads. Twenty seven safety improvements were examined in this investigation for their economic feasibility along low-volume roads. A roadway sample of 681 miles of Oregon was used in this study. Detailed benefit-cost analyses were performed using countermeasure costs, ten-year crash data, and expected crash reductions using Highway Safety Manual methods. Around half of the countermeasures investigated were found cost-effective for implementation along low-volume roads. Further, most of the countermeasures that were found to have very high benefit-cost ratio are associated with low initial cost and many of them do not require much maintenance cost. At the other end of the spectrum, almost all roadway cross-section safety improvements were found economically infeasible due to higher associated costs relative to the expected crash reduction benefits on low volume roads.
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2016
Crashes are random events and can occur at any location along a roadway. On roadways with high tr... more Crashes are random events and can occur at any location along a roadway. On roadways with high traffic volumes, the more frequent occurrence of crashes permits the direct identification of high-frequency crash locations with the use of historical data. On low-volume roads, crash occurrence, particularly the occurrence of crashes with fatal and serious injuries, is less frequent. There is a need to understand better the risks associated with geometric and roadside features along low-volume roadways in order to identify locations where preventive countermeasures may be employed. This paper describes the collection and analysis of a large sample of data from low-volume roads in Oregon to quantify the effects of geometric and roadside features on crash occurrence and associated risks. The effects of lane width, shoulder width, grade, side slope, fixed objects near the roadway, and horizontal and vertical curves have been quantified. For the low-volume road sample, roads with lanes less ...
Crashes are random events and low traffic volumes therefore don’t always make crash hot-spot iden... more Crashes are random events and low traffic volumes therefore don’t always make crash hot-spot identification possible. This project has used extensive data collection and analysis for a large sample of Oregon’s low volume roads to develop a risk index that expresses the crash risk for different road geometries and roadside features as well as crash history and traffic exposure. This crash risk index can then be a proactive means of identifying potentially risky locations where safety treatments might be best targeted. The economic analysis completed as part of this effort can be used in conjunction with the risk index when determining which safety treatments may result in the highest return on investment for agency safety improvement funds. This report includes a review of literature related to features effecting crash risk and other past risk index efforts, the data collection and analysis methods used in quantifying risks, the establishment of the crash risk index, an economic feas...