Impact of Overweight Traffic from Shale Gas Development on Pavement Damage Costs: Case Study in Louisiana

During recent years, the rapid growth of shale gas exploration nationwide has resulted in a large number of overweight truck trips on roadways in areas with shale gas development. The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) has seen a rapid decline in roadway serviceability within the Haynesville Shale area, presumably due to shale-gas-related traffic. The objective of this case study was to estimate roadway damage costs resulting from shale gas-related overweight trucks in Louisiana. In this study, the permit data for shale-gas-related overweight truck trips from 2006 to 2016 were extracted from DOTD’s oversize/overweight database using R language. The extracted overweight truck trips were subsequently assigned to the roadway network based on the shortest path method using ArcGIS. In total, it was found out that there were approximately 9.7 million shale-gas-related overweight vehicle miles traveled on Louisiana roadways between 2008 and 2016. This can be translated into a roadway damage cost of $17 million because of the shortening of roadway serviceable lives. On average, the estimated damage cost due to a single shale gas well was approximately $5,242. The damage costs per overweight mile and per equivalent single axis load were $1.74 and $0.27, respectively. However, it was estimated that only $14.5 million was recovered through permit fees. Therefore, it may be concluded that the current permit fee schedule for overweight truck trips in Louisiana cannot fully recover the damage costs resulting from overweight truck trips related to shale gas development. In general, this case study quantified the damage costs of one specific traffic type (i.e., shale-gas-related overweight truck traffic) on the roadway network using a combination of R Language, ArcGIS version 10.41, and pavement damage estimation analysis. The adopted method can also be applied to quantify the impact of other traffic types (e.g., that related to seasonal agricultural activities) on roadways or bridges. The results of the average damage costs estimated in this study may serve as a reference for future damage cost recovery due to shale gas exploration in other regions.