Crashes down at Fredericton's busiest intersection

Collisions are down at Fredericton's busiest intersection, three months after the debut of design changes that were aimed at making the intersection safer.

There have only been three collisions recorded at or near Regent and Prospect streets between Sept. 28 and Dec. 21 of this year, according to data released publicly by the City of Fredericton.

That's a significant decrease from the average of 14.6 collisions recorded during that time period between 2007 and 2015, according to a data analysis by CBC News.

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Jon Lewis, a city traffic engineer, said it will take years to do a true analysis on the impact of the design changes.

But he's confident they will create a considerable decrease in collisions at Regent and Prospect over the long term.

"This is a good example of using the data to drive the decisions that were made here in terms of the upgrades," Lewis said.

Regent and Prospect is by far Fredericton's most dangerous intersection, recording at least 500 collisions since 2007.

That's 155 more than Smythe Street and Prospect Street, which came in second place.

Data driving design changes

The city came up with the changes after analyzing traffic flow and collisions at the intersection.

When analyzing the data, Lewis said they're looking at the number of collisions, the type and cause of crash and the time of day it's happening. A high number of collisions at night could signal a need for more lighting.

"With some changes, we try and reduce the possibility of humans making mistakes, just by making things less confusing or taking some of the driver workload away," Lewis said.

At Regent and Prospect, the changes include a double left turn lane on to Prospect Street and signal changes that mean drivers can only turn left on a green arrow.

"Drivers no longer have to try and determine if they can fit in a gap against oncoming traffic or conflict with pedestrians," Lewis said.

"By giving them their own dedicated [lane] where they have no conflicts, that certainly reduces driver workload and should reduce those types of collisions."

Preventing rear-end collisions

The intersection also has new right turn islands that are designed to slow vehicles down and give drivers a better line of sight when making a right turn.

That's aimed at reducing the number of rear-end collisions at the intersection. They've accounted for 28 per cent of all crashes at Regent and Prospect since 2007, more than any other type of crash.

The city also added more lighting to reduce night-time crashes.

"Just given the sheer volume of collisions here, we wanted to put as many safety counter-measures into the upgrades as possible."

There could be other reasons why the number of collisions are trending down.

Some of the traffic at Regent and Prospect has moved to the Smythe Street roundabout, making the intersection less busy than it was even two years ago.

The collision data, released on Fredericton's open data portal, shows that collisions are most likely to happen in Fredericton on Thursday and Fridays.

All five of the intersections that logged the most collisions since 2007 are in the uptown area.

While rear-end collisions have been a problem at Regent and Prospect, a failure to yield while turning right is the biggest cause of crashes at the second most collision-prone intersection, Smythe and Prospect.

Pedestrian collisions make up a small number of the collisions logged in the city's database. The most likely location to be hit is Smythe and Prospect, followed by Regent Street and McLeod Avenue.