Title: ECONOMICALLY EFFICIENT PAVEMENT DESIGN AND REHABILITATION POLICIES UNDER HIGH TRAFFIC VOLUMES
Abstract: Current methods of pavement structural design and evaluation typically are based upon rather arbitrary assumptions on level of service and maintenance to be provided. These design and evaluation procedures thus reduce the inherent economic problem - to minimize total pavement-associated costs - to a simpler, but not necessarily equivalent, technical problem. Such simplifications break down, however, for pavements required to support high-volume traffic (e.g. 100000 vehicles per day). For example, neither a 20-year design life, nor a terminal serviceability value of 2.5, may be optimal under high-volume traffic conditions. Also, assumptions of normal maintenance as applied to conventional designs fail to account for the significant porblems in repairing pavements during peak hour urban flows. Described in this paper is a computerized procedure to treat the problems above within an overall economic and management approach to pavement design, rehabilitation, and maintenance policy. Pavement damage is estimated by closed-form functions of cumulative traffic loads, current pavement structural condition and seasonal and environmental effects. Pavement maintenance, overlays, rehabilitation and reconstruction are scheduled under a demand-responsive concept, according to the level of damage accumulated, the desired maintenance policy (expressed through quality standards), and scheduling constraints (by season, day, and hours of the day when work is permitted). The system also considers the disruptive effects (and associated costs) of work-in-progress on the traffic stream - an important consideration on high-volume roads, where severe congestion may result from road occupancy for pavement maintenance or rehabilitation. Pavement investment alternatives are thus integrated with considerations of maintenance and rehabilitation policy, life-cycle pavement condition (i.e. duration of investment), and level of service provided road users (in terms of both condition of the riding surface, and congestion generated by road occupancy for maintenance and rehabilitation). Maintenance costs are computed from the specification of technology, and include labour, equipment, and material components. User-associated costs include charges for vehicle pollutant emissions. These computations are summed for each year within the analysis period to arrive at total economic costs for each of the design/maintenance/rehabilitation policies investigated. This paper describes the engineering, economic, and management concepts underlying this approach, and presents a case study example of its use on us freeways. (Author/TRRL)
Publication Year: 1982
Publication Date: 1982-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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