The unsignalized intersection of Rochambeau Drive at School House Lane and Old Stage Road in James City County, VA has been the subject of numerous letters, emails, and request from citizens and elected officials concerned about the safety of this intersection.  Unique traffic demands at this intersection include public and private school traffic, residential subdivision commuter traffic, and general mainline traffic.

EPR conducted this intersection safety assessment that met VDOT’s Roadway Safety Assessment procedures in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The safety analysis included analyzing crash data, preparing collision diagrams, and identifying crash trends and causal factors.

EPR convened a diverse group of stakeholders including school representatives, the local police and planning departments and VDOT traffic and operations staff to give additional insights on safety issues.  EPR facilitated a socially-distanced “virtual” site visit, broadcasting a walk-through of the intersection with three team members on site showing safety issues real-time to the full study team over Zoom.

Based on the crash trends, EPR identified potential countermeasures including intersection reconfiguration options, and explained the tradeoffs to the stakeholders.  EPR conducted a traffic analysis of the potential reconfigurations and identified short, medium, and long term recommendations to address the safety issues.

EPR led this study under the VDOT On-Call Professional Traffic Engineering Services for Eastern Region Operations contract.  EPR is a subconsultant to Clark Nexsen for this contract, and led this task order.