Low-Cost Technical Measures for Rural Road Safety Enhancement in Beijing

From 2007, Beijing Mentougou Highway Sub-Bureau invests 13 million RMB on 58 rural roads safety enhancement project that cover 214 kilometers. The features of vehicles, road users, road geometrics, budget, road environment, maintenance responsibility and traffic management are all different from normal highways that have corresponding standards and regulations for road safety. The technical measures of safety enhancement for rural roads cannot copy normal highways. Research must be done to know the vehicles and road users there effectively. New low-cost technical measures must be adopted or invented to fit the limit of the budget and the safety requirements. The paper describes the technology to reduce the cost of the safety enhancement for rural roads. These technologies include: innovate the treatment technology, choose new materials and innovate the structure of the traffic signs. A variety of low-cost technical measures which were used to the safety enhancement of rural roads in Mentougou District are listed. Most the low-cost technical measures are the first time to use on the rural roads in China. The types, principles, methods, specifications, advantages, shortcomings, outcomes and evaluation of the various measures and facilities are introduced and analyzed in this paper.