Document Library

Transportation Asset Management Case Study- Washington State DOT

Performance Measures for Financial Sustainability of Highway Assets. The reports of mature US asset management practitioners include elements to produce sustainability indices. These data sometimes are explicit, sometimes only inherent. Data exist to produce financial sustainability metrics. They can add to the public discourse of intergenerational equity and legacy.

Sustainability of services should be a key objective of every agency. Discusses 3 key elements of Sustainable Communities: Stewardship: Role of Elected Members; Managing existing as well as new: Asset Management Planning; and Essential part of Business: Long Term Financial Planning.

In 1997, the Michigan Legislature increased the fuel tax by four cents per gallon to improve the state’s highway network, which at that time had some of the roughest pavements and most structurally deficient bridges in the country. Now, the Legislature is again considering additional highway investment. This report examines the uses of the 1997 four-cent fuel tax increase and whether it was adequate to sustain highway conditions today and into the future.

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This issue contains 14 papers concerning pavement management. The papers are categorized into two parts. Part 1 has two papers concerned with sustainable pavements. Specific topics include: assessing greenhouse gas emissions of highway construction projects and incorporating environmental impacts of pavement treatments into a performance-based optimization. Part 2 contains 12 papers on pavement management systems. Specific topics include: the integration of rolling wheel deflectometer deflection measurements into pavement management systems; a Bayesian approach to updating Markov-based models for predicting pavement performance; findings from the international scan on managing pavements and monitoring performance; and evaluating pavement condition of the National Highway System. Additional papers in Part 2 address: managing pavement maintenance, rehabilitation, and reconstruction through network partition; enhancing network-level decision making through the use of a structure capacity index; probabilistic characterization of uncertain inputs in the life-cycle cost analysis of pavements; pavement condition states before and after treatment; an innovative sprinkle treatment for thin durable asphalt overlays; Mississippi’s pavement warranty program; the impact of error in pavement condition data on the output of network-level pavement management systems; and evaluating the pavement structural number with falling weight deflectometer deflections."

Nine pavement and asset managers from the United States participated in the International Scan on Managing Pavements and Monitoring Performance. The scan team sought input on processes for implementing sustainable performance-based programs; effective communication methods for garnering upper management and legislative support; agency cultures that support performance-based programs; and techniques, tools, analyses, and reporting that support performance-based management. The team traveled to New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, the Netherlands, and England and gathered information from 14 agencies. The agencies selected for consultation had experience with managing their pavement networks under constrained budgets. Although the initial focus of the scan was on pavement management, the team found that some of the agencies conducted pavement management within an asset management framework. The findings are thus equally applicable to assets other than pavements. The key findings are (a) agency culture supports a long-term view toward managing pavements, (b) elected officials understand their responsibilities as stewards of public funds, (c) the road network is managed as a service provided to the traveling public, (d) agency priorities are known and agency personnel are held accountable for their actions, (e) the agencies recognize the importance of building internal capacity and capabilities, and (f) efficiency and value drive program delivery approaches. The scan team selected four implementation strategies for moving scan findings into practice: communicating scan findings, developing guidelines for asset management plans and long-term financial plans, encouraging use of recurring program assessments, and developing agency capabilities in the areas of engineering, contract administration, economics, and accounting.

In October 2011, the NC Department of Transportation conducted a roadway review with a randomly recruited sample of NC residents and community leaders. More than 300 people from 61 communities participated in the surveys, which were held in six locations: Asheville, Burlington, Charlotte, Jonesville, Rocky Mount, and Wilmington. The purpose of the roadway review was twofold: to determine the expectations for the condition of NC highways and to identify the features that North Carolinians believe are most important on different types of highways. Surveys were completed during both daytime and nighttime hours and covered many roadway maintenance aspects, such as pavement, landscaping and mowing practices, signage, retroreflectivity, and shoulders. Regression equations are also provided to predict the overall satisfaction of condition, safety, and appearance by each individual roadway type.

Mobile light detection and ranging (LIDAR) uses laser scanning equipment mounted on vehicles in combination with global positioning systems (GPS) and inertial measurement units (IMU) to rapidly and safely capture large datasets necessary to create highly accurate, high resolution digital representations of roadways and their surroundings. These virtual survey datasets can then be used in the planning, design, construction, and maintenance of highways and structures as well as for numerous other functions as varied as emergency response and asset management. This report presents guidelines for the use of mobile LIDAR technology in transportation applications. The guidelines (1) are based on an analysis of current and emerging applications in areas such as project planning, project development, construction, operations, maintenance, safety, research, and asset management; (2) address data collection methods, formatting and management, storage requirements, quality assurance, and the translation and formatting of derived products; and (3) are based on and organized around performance criteria such as data precision, local (relative) accuracy, network (absolute) accuracy, and point density. The development of the guidelines comprised several major tasks. The research team first conducted an extensive review of the worldwide literature on the use of mobile LIDAR. Emphasis was placed on exploring current mobile LIDAR trends, including systems components and software, and identifying current and emerging applications of mobile LIDAR for transportation agencies. Of particular interest was an analysis of quality control procedures used to verify the accuracy of the data collected with mobile LIDAR. The literature review was supported by a questionnaire administered to the state departments of transportation, other transportation agencies, and industry. Finally, projects piloting mobile LIDAR technology on network and local levels were identified and evaluated in depth. This information provided a solid foundation for developing the actual guidelines. The guidelines are organized into two parts. Part 1: Management and Decision Making provides guidance on the use and integration of mobile LIDAR data for a wide range of transportation applications without requiring in-depth knowledge of the technology; Part 2: Technical Considerations provides the details needed to completely specify the project requirements and appropriate deliverables.

This report provides a generic framework for the management of road-related assets. In recent times, road agencies have made a shift from being road builders to road managers. This change has ensured that road agencies need to accept responsibility for, and embrace the management of, all road-related assets (RRAs), not only pavements and structures. The framework is applicable to any RRA. It consists of three blocks of inputs into the core strategy. The input blocks are organisation strategic plans, organisation and business processes, and performance monitoring, review and feedback. The core strategy consists of four stages: asset management (AM) policy development, AM strategy development, AM plans development, and the delivery of AM plans or actions. Continuous improvement is maintained through a Plan-Do-Check-Act loop. The framework also correlates well with the process of reliability-centred maintenance that has a focus on assessing criticality and in deciding on how to "do the most good". This report lists the various RRA groups and asset types in each group. The RRA types were assessed and rated based on risk. RRAs with high risk ratings were identified for future research to develop specific asset management strategies using the generic framework.

UTA's account of the development of their asset management plan.

"This addendum documents the investigation of the rutting bias between field data and the Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS)/State Department of Transportation (DOT) pavement management system (PMS) data observed in the pilot study conducted as part of the “Improving FHWA’s Ability to Assess Highway Infrastructure Health” project. The objectives of this study were to: 1) investigate the discrepancy between rutting observed from field data collection versus that retrieved from HPMS/State data to determine the cause of the bias, and 2) develop data requirements and an algorithm that can be applied to rutting to produce consistent, high-quality data. A conclusive reason for the South Dakota rutting bias found during the pilot study was identified, but one for the Minnesota data could not be identified. It is possible that the rutting bias for the Minnesota data is the result of several variables, including different gage width, different sensor types, different years of data collection, different drivers, and different vehicle types. Based on the results of this investigation, rutting data requirements such as maximum longitudinal spacing, minimum number of points collected to characterize the transverse profile, gage width, and rutting algorithms are recommended."

The first webinar in the TAM Book Club covers:
• Introduction to the Book Club
• Overview of the AASHTO Guide
• Question and Answer Session