Toward Improving and Standardizing Highway Drainage System Design
The United States (US) invests billions of dollars in road infrastructure each year, with a significant portion of these costs going to drainage components. Given the scale of investment, as well as tightening budgets, it’s more critical than ever to optimize the value of transportation projects. With this in mind, improved processes for increasing competition and efficiency in selecting drainage pipe systems for highway projects is a key national priority. This paper presents discussion on two main themes surrounding highway drainage design. The first theme discusses the framework behind a proposed approach to develop and implement alternative bidding for drainage pipe systems on highway projects as developed for National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Project 10-86. Trial implementation of the proposed framework has shown it to be flexible, transparent and technically robust yet suitable for customization by individual agencies. The second topical theme of the paper focuses on a series of identified opportunities for greater national standardization across various aspects of drainage pipe system evaluation. In particular, the lack of standardization in backfill and installation specifications, design service life requirements, meaningful structural classifications for all pipe material types, as well as a lack of a national pipe system inventory have been identified as potential opportunities for increased standardization that could ease development and standardization of pipe system evaluation across US transportation agencies. This paper concludes by highlighting how the new proposed framework for alternative pipe system evaluation can readily incorporate the results of other ongoing and planned research projects to synergistically derive increased benefits.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AFF70 Culverts and Hydraulic Structures.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Maher, Michael L J
- Fuggle, Andrew R
- Hebeler, Gregory L
- Caywood, Colby
- Van Kerkhove, Joseph A
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC
- Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
- Date: 2014
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References;
- Pagination: 12p
- Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Bids; Design practices; Drainage; Highways; Optimization; Service life; Standardization
- Subject Areas: Bridges and other structures; Highways; Hydraulics and Hydrology; I20: Design and Planning of Transport Infrastructure; I26: Water Run-off - Freeze-thaw;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01506352
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 14-5705
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Feb 3 2014 9:17AM