Mapping Overweight Vehicle Permits for Pavement Engineering Applications
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 142, Issue 10
Abstract
Oversize-overweight (OSOW) permit programs allow carriers to move large, heavy, and often high-value freight on state and federal highways. This study analyzed six years of Wisconsin single-trip overweight permits and two years of Iowa single-trip overweight permits to visualize routing trends, identify heavily travelled highway segments, and provide support for mechanistic-empirical pavement design guide (MEPDG) analyses and pavement reliability research. The methodology used custom visual basic for applications (VBA) scripts for text parsing and route processing with results linked to a geographic information system (GIS) database. The results allowed for visualization of permit traffic, geospatial queries of permit routes, origin-destination analyses, and identification of heavily-used permit vehicle corridors. These results have numerous applications for highway design, bridge engineering, freight trend analysis, and highway system planning. Additionally, the methodology supports the generation of site-specific permit truck axle load spectra for integration into AASHTOWare MEPDG software traffic inputs. This methodology can improve the estimation of pavement damage from overweight permit vehicles, and results can inform OSOW program policies and assist in optimizing the permit issuance process.
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Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the National Center for Freight & Infrastructure Research & Education (CFIRE). The authors thank the staff of the Wisconsin DOT for their assistance in acquiring and interpreting permit data, especially Kathleen Nichols, Edward Lalor, and Laura Fenley. The authors thank Mr. Paul Trombino III, Iowa DOT Director, for his help and support.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 142 • Issue 10 • October 2016
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 10, 2015
Accepted: Mar 17, 2016
Published online: Jun 3, 2016
Published in print: Oct 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Nov 3, 2016
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