Tribal Safety Plan Development

MGT’s approach to Tribal Safety Plan development is to assist clients with plan development from “start to finish,” and our firm generally writes every aspect of a client’s plan, as well as the requisite Tribal Council plan adoption resolutions.  Typically, plan development commences with: crash and injury data collection; Long Range Transportation Plan and/or Road Safety Assessment review; a local site visit; a public meeting to establish a community’s safety emphasis areas; and the crafting of an area-specific Transportation Safety Survey  with aerial maps (and, if needed, an online Tribal Safety Plan Development Survey  through SurveyMonkey to obtain local area safety information, when community members can not attend public plan development meeting).

MGT Tribal Safety Plans:

• meet or exceed the U.S. Department of Transportation-Federal Highway Administration standards as described in the Tribal Transportation Program Safety Funds Notice of Funding Opportunity, FHWA-2017-0021, published September 21, 2017 in the Federal Register;
• are data driven;
• identify existing transportation safety issues, safety partners, safety efforts, and emphasis areas;
• incorporate a literature review that considers the most recent tribal, local, regional, and state transportation safety plans; e.g., the client’s most recent Long Range Transportation Plan; updates to the Indian Reservation Roads Inventory System; and the most current Strategic Highway Safety Plan published by a particular client’s state Department of Transportation;
• promote a strategic approach to addressing safety needs by including all safety stakeholders from many tribal, local, regional, and state disciplines and entities;
• identify potential funding sources to implement the prioritized list of activities;
• prioritize recommended activities based on difficulty, short- and long-term needs to address those safety issues and emphasis areas;
• may include project cost estimates when the budget allows the hiring of sub-consultant engineering support; and
• are developed utilizing the input and coordination of tribal, municipal, regional/borough, and Federal Land Management agencies to complete critical safety-related data gathering, data distillation, and analysis relevant to:

Because the Tribal Safety Plans MGT writes include Safe Routes to School as an emphasis area, MGT prefers to schedule site visits during the school year.  Thus, effective observations of students walking and biking to school; morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up by parent drivers; and school bus driving behavior can be made.