High Injury Corridors

High injury corridors (HIC) are roadways in a city, county or the greater Portland region with the highest concentration of serious traffic crashes.

The Portland region's Vision Zero strategy acknowledges that even one death on our roadways is unacceptable. Metro and regional partners are using the  Safe System approach  to create equitable, safe mobility for all road users. A foundational principle of the Safe System approach is designing streets that are forgiving of human mistakes to reduce the severity of traffic crashes when they do occur.

Prioritizing systemic, corridor-wide safe system treatments on high injury corridors proactively addresses the most serious safety issues in a city, county or region. 

High injury corridors are roadways between one and five miles in length with the highest concentration of traffic crashes resulting in deaths or life-changing injuries. Metro identified high injury corridors for the greater Portland region, cities in the region, Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties using crash data from 2018-2022.

Transportation systems cross jurisdictional boundaries. There is need for city, county, regional and state governments to work together to invest in systemic, corridor wide safety treatments.

Let's start by taking a look at the high injury corridors across the greater Portland region.

Policy level regional high injury corridors are adopted into the Regional Transportation Plan (RTP). The RTP high injury corridors are updated once every five years and are used to guide planning and investments.

Identifying high injury corridors starts with mapping all roadways in Washington, Clackamas and Multnomah counties. From this network of roadways, corridors are then defined and scored based on the concentration of fatal and serious injury crashes (or all injury crashes for bike and pedestrian high injury corridors). Corridors are contiguous roadways with the same name that are between one and five miles long. High injury corridors are corridors whose scores fall within the top 20 percent of worst scores for all corridors included in the analysis.

County and city high injury corridors were developed to support local transportation safety planning. Metro applied the regional high injury corridor methodology to identify high injury corridors for cities and counties.

All corridors that are at least 50 percent within a city or county boundary are included in the analysis. County and city boundaries are also buffered by 200 feet to include roadways that run along the boundary. Counties and cities may also determine and generate their own high injury corridors using different tools and methods.

Regional, city and county bike and pedestrian high injury corridors are calculated using moderate and minor injury crashes in addition to fatal and serious crashes. There are fewer crashes involving people walking and bicycling and because they are more vulnerable to injury if involved in a crash, it is important to use all available injury crash data to provide a more accurate picture of high injury corridors for vulnerable road users.

High injury intersections are another dataset that helps Metro and its partners understand where serious crashes are concentrated. Intersections are complex areas because people are moving in many different directions, and there are many opportunities for conflicts between people walking, bicycling and driving. Over 50 percent of serious crashes in the region occur at an intersection.   

Use the tool below to explore the high injury corridors for the region, the three counties and cities in the greater Portland area. This tool and the high injury corridor data are a starting place for understanding the roadways with the highest need for safety interventions and the implementation of Safe System solutions.

Equity Focus Areas are Census tracts with higher than regional average concentrations and double the density of one or more of the following: people of color, English language learners and/or people with lower income. Most of these areas also include higher than regional average concentrations of other historically marginalized communities, including young people, older adults and people living with disabilities. 

High Injury Corridors (HIC) are roadways in a city, county or the greater Portland region with the highest concentration of serious traffic crashes. 

High Injury Intersections (HII) are intersections within the MPA with three or more fatal or serious injury crashes within a five-year period.  

Metropolitan Planning Area (MPA) is the boundary used by Metro for planning purposes. The boundary includes all areas within the Metro jurisdictional boundary, the 2010 Census urbanized area, designated urban reserves and the urban growth boundary. 

Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) is a long-range metropolitan transportation plan that is developed and adopted for the greater Portland metropolitan planning area (MPA) covering a planning horizon of at least 20 years.  

Transportation Safety Action Plan is a plan to assess and guide safety improvements on our roadways for all users including drivers, transit riders, bicyclists, pedestrians and those with rolling mobility devices. The plan includes transportation safety data and proposed programs and projects to reduce crashes. 

Visit the  Regional Transportation Safety Plan page  to find out more about Metro's safety program.

Metadata for the high injury corridors is available  here .

Access the data: (you can copy these URLs into your own ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro maps)

• All high injury corridors and intersections:  https://services2.arcgis.com/McQ0OlIABe29rJJy/arcgis/rest/services/HIC/FeatureServer 
• Regional and county high injury corridors:  https://services2.arcgis.com/McQ0OlIABe29rJJy/arcgis/rest/services/Regional_and_County_HICs/FeatureServer 
• City high injury corridors:  https://services2.arcgis.com/McQ0OlIABe29rJJy/arcgis/rest/services/City_High_Injury_Corridors/FeatureServer 
• Pedestrian high injury corridors:  https://services2.arcgis.com/McQ0OlIABe29rJJy/arcgis/rest/services/Pedestrian_High_Injury_Corridors_New/FeatureServer 
• Bike high injury corridors:  https://services2.arcgis.com/McQ0OlIABe29rJJy/arcgis/rest/services/HIC_2_view/FeatureServer 
• RLIS Crash Data (source: ODOT):  https://services2.arcgis.com/McQ0OlIABe29rJJy/arcgis/rest/services/Crashes/FeatureServer/0 

These links are for the 2018-2022 High Injury Corridors data, but data for past years is available upon request. Please contact drc@oregonmetro.gov for more information.

View  High Injury Corridor  profiles for more information on the top 25 worst scoring corridors (2017-2021 crash data).

View 2023  RTP High Injury Corridor  profiles for more information on the top 25 worst scoring corridors identified in the 2023 RTP HICs (2016-2020 crash data).