Abstract
In general the realization of a nationwide highway network has proven to be a successful measure to serve both the accommodation of traffic growth and the improvement of road safety. A good highway network carries safely big amounts of traffic at relatively high speeds. Such a network distracts traffic from secondary roads, not suitable for this kind of traffic. Additional measures to slow down traffic on secondary roads can improve road safety even more.
Considering the realization of a good highway network, the first thought is often to build a big number of fully -fledged motorways. Well-designed motorways provide speed, high capacity and safety. Budget and other constraints however, will show that realization of an extensive network of motorways is not feasible in the short term. In practice probably only a small number of stretches would be realized, while road safety and congestion on other parts of the entire road network would not improve.
A national highway network can consist of motorways and so called expressways. The least are easier to implement on the short term than motorways. They are less expensive and less land consuming than motorways. By using a substantial share of the budget for building expressways, it will be possible to adapt a larger part of the existing road network, than in case of building only motorways. In this way probably a better balance can be reached between investments on the one hand and road capacity and safety on the other hand.
Unfortunately expressways are not as safe as motorways. Therefore they should be designed carefully. Designers have to take much care of details. In the Partners for Roads program experts from The Netherlands and central Europe cooperate in the field of safe road design. In this framework in Hungary experts managed to select a number of `quick win´ safety measures on expressways: cheap and easy to implement. In this process the approach of bringing together experts with several backgrounds proved to be very effective. In a relatively short period of time shortcomings of a road became clear and safety measures could be formulated.
Keywords: road safety, road design, road network, expressway, motorway, traffic growth, costeffectiveness and low cost measure.