Every year, millions of taxpayers’ dollars are spent maintaining roads. The money is used to repair damage that occurs to pavements, bridges, and other elements of the roadway system. The service life of a pavement can be greatly reduced by unexpected heavy loading, which is one consequence of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) activity in rural areas. This paper describes a tool that can potentially lengthen the service life of pavements, especially thin pavement structures, by predicting unusually heavy loading. Predicting activities that cause increased truck loading can help agencies plan preventive measures to reinforce pavement structures before they fail. The goal of this study was to develop a tool, an early warning system (EWS), that can help to predict locations where damage from heavy truck traffic will occur. Truck travel related to the oil and gas industry is predictable and has recently had significant effects on pavement deterioration. The study focused on well permitting activity in the Austin, Texas, Department of Transportation district. ArcGIS software was used to find route assignments by using trip origins and destinations for fracking activity, truck volume, and vehicle weights. Several road segments that would be at risk for heavy loading and shortened service life were successfully identified. This tool can provide information needed to prioritize proactive pavement maintenance for more effective use of tax dollars. This tool could potentially also be used to determine a roughly proportional cost of damage from fracking activity to be levied on the oil and gas industry, thus alleviating the burden on taxpayers.
Pavement Maintenance Prioritization Tool for Effects of Hydraulic Fracturing
Transportation Research Record
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board ; 2580 , 1 ; 65-70
2016-01-01
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
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