OREANDA-NEWS. August 25, 2016. Working to make the nation’s highways safer, CH2M has been selected—along with its partners from the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Minnesota, Pam Fischer Consulting, MBO Engineering and HDR—to provide Guidance for the Implementation of the Toward Zero Deaths National Strategy on Highway Safety.

This leading-edge research is being administered by the Transportation Research Board under the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) 17-64. The objective is to develop a guidance document with related resources to advance the implementation of the Toward Zero Deaths (TZD) national strategy for use by the safety community. The collaborative team will develop an execution plan and budget, and map out a national forum exchange workshop that will support a systematic integrated implementation of the TZD approach to highway safety.

“The NCHRP 17-64 selection is both a testament to and affirmation of CH2M’s position as the industry leader in highway and traffic safety,” said Kim Kolody Silverman, North America Director of CH2M’s Highway and Traffic Safety Practice. “We’re looking forward to working with our partners and with highway safety stakeholders throughout the U.S. to advance the vision of eliminating fatalities and serious injuries on our Nation's roadways.”

First adopted in Sweden in 1997 as "Vision Zero," and since spreading to countries around the world, the TZD vision calls for a highway system free of fatalities. Safety organizations and professionals embracing this vision have agreed to aggressively work toward an intermediate goal specific to their jurisdiction or the safety issue on which they are focused. These stakeholders continuously expand their efforts to improve highway safety and are committed to doing more of what they know works, while also using new approaches, materials and technologies to reach safety goals sooner.

The new research assignment builds on CH2M’s previous work on NCHRP 17-51, Input to the Development of a National Highway Safety Strategy. The framework developed out of that study presented a vision of what is needed to sustain or accelerate current reductions in severe injuries and fatalities on all public roadways in the U.S., over a 25-year period.