Impact of Freight on Highway Infrastructure in New Jersey

Infrastructure systems, such as pavement, bridges, tunnels, and traffic systems, constitute a major part of the national investment and are critical for our society’s mobility and economic prosperity. However, overweight vehicles deteriorate our infrastructure at a higher rate relative to other exposure and cause financial impacts that are not explicitly quantified. This project assesses the impact of overweight vehicles (both permitted and non-permitted) on New Jersey’s infrastructures, specifically highway pavements and bridges. It conducts a detailed literature review about overweight vehicles on infrastructure from various states, then investigates deterioration models for various types of pavements and bridges, and quantifies the effect of overweight vehicles on service life of pavements and bridges. This study also performs Life Cycle Cost Analyses (LCCA) based on the proposed deterioration models to obtain the damage cost incurred by overweight vehicles. In addition, it develops both a decision-support tool based on the ASSISTME-WIM software and a unified database for the decision support tool that can be used by New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) personnel to assess and quantify the associated damage costs to NJDOT infrastructure network due to overweight trucks. The end result provides a tool that enabled the Bureau of Freight Planning and Intermodal Coordination at the NJDOT to combine NJDOT’s freight and overweight vehicles data with maintenance and traffic data, to estimate the actual damage cost on NJ Highways due to overweight trucks. Using this tool, and based on the analysis of permit records, the estimated statewide average cost of moving one ton of overweight load per one mile is about $0.33, in which about approximately 60% of the damage cost is attributed to pavement and 40% to bridges. Based on the current permit fee structure from NJDOT, the damage cost for loads exceeding legal limit is not covered by the weight-based fee. Future work is needed to establish a fee structure based on overweight tons as well as trip miles.

• Record URL:
  http://www.nj.gov/transportation/business/research/reports/FHWA-NJ-2016-004.pdf
• 
• Summary URL:
  http://www.nj.gov/transportation/business/research/reports/FHWA-NJ-2016-004-TB.pdf
• Corporate Authors:

  Rutgers University, Piscataway

  Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
  623 Bowser Road
  Piscataway, NJ  United States  08854

  New Jersey Department of Transportation

  Bureau of Research, 1035 Parkway Avenue, P.O. Box 600
  Trenton, NJ  United States  08625-0600

  Federal Highway Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Authors:
  • Nassif, Hani
  • Ozbay, Kaan
  • Wang, Hao
  • Noland, Robert
  • Lou, Peng
  • Demiroluk, Sami
  • Su, Dan
  • Na, Chaekuk
  • Zhao, Jingnan
  • Beltran, Miguel
• Publication Date: 2015-9

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Edition: Final Report
• Features: Appendices; Figures; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 224p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bridges; Costs; Decision support systems; Economic impacts; Freight transportation; Highways; Infrastructure; Life cycle costing; Overweight loads; Pavements; Service life; Trucking
• Geographic Terms: New Jersey
• Subject Areas: Economics; Freight Transportation; Highways;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01649739
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: FHWA-NJ-2016-004
• Files: TRIS, ATRI, USDOT, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Oct 29 2017 7:01PM