A Transferrable Simulation-based Planning Tool for Calculating Complete Roadway Maintenance Project Impact Costs 

Date and Time: 8/30/2022
Location: North Star

Presenter: Jeffrey LaMondia, , Auburn University

  

 

 

PRESENTATION DESCRIPTION

Roadway maintenance and rehabilitation are critical tasks to sustain our transportation system. Unfortunately, these activities often generate delays to road users, which can result in road user costs, work zone crash costs, and even local business impact costs. This presentation will demonstrate an easy-to-use transferrable excel tool that calculates all of these costs based on site specific characteristics for practitioners to use in perplanning, project scheduling, and cost estimations. The tool recognizes that costs change based on different roadway characteristics, regional demographics, and work zone plans, so planners are able to edit each of these sets of variables to generate results that are most applicable to their specific location.

The tool uses a monte-carlo simulation to generate a synthetic population of traffic and driver characteristics that pass through a work zone as well as their choices and likely behaviors . It then calculates a) road user costs, based on FHWA and AASHTO policies, b) work zone crash mitigation costs, using an ordered probit model of crash severity estimated from eight states’ work zone crash databases, and c) local business impact costs, using another ordered probit model of driver behavior change estimated from a nationally-representative survey conducted for this work. To our knowledge, this is the first example of local business impact costs being studied on a nationally transferable scale.

Our presentation will outline a) the data collected and analyzed to develop the tool, b) how planners can use the tool, and c) examples of how the tool has already been used in different communities. Our presentation is interactive, and participants can download the tool from our project website for immediate use at home.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY