HWYNEEDS: Methodology, Analysis and Evaluation (TR-433)

Project Details
STATUS

Completed

START DATE

04/01/99

END DATE

10/31/00

RESEARCH CENTERS InTrans, CTRE
SPONSORS

Iowa Department of Transportation
Iowa Highway Research Board

Researchers
Principal Investigator
Stephen Andrle
Principal Investigator
Omar Smadi

Director, CTRE

About the research

The quadrennial need study was developed to assist in identifying county highway financial needs (construction, rehabilitation, maintenance, and administration) and in the distribution of the road use tax fund among the counties in the state. During the period since the need study was first conducted using HWYNEEDS software, between 1982 and 1998, there have been large fluctuations in the level of funds distributed to individual counties. In 1998, the Center for Transportation Research and Education researchers (Maze and Smadi) completed a project to study the feasibility of using automated pavement condition data collected for the Iowa Pavement Management Program (IPMP) for the paved county roads to be used in the HWYNEEDS software (TR-418). The study proved the use of the automated condition data in HWYNEEDS would be feasible and beneficial in reducing fluctuations when applied to a pilot study area.

The study reported in this document builds on the previous study on using the automated condition data in HWYNEEDS and covers the analysis and investigation of the HWYNEEDS computer program methodology and parameters. The underlying hypothesis for this study is that along with the IPMP automated condition data, some changes need to be made to HWYNEEDS parameters to accommodate the use of the new data, which will stabilize the process of allocating resources and reduce fluctuations from one quadrennial need study to another. Another objective of this research is to investigate the gravel roads needs and study the feasibility of developing a more objective approach to determining needs on the counties gravel road network. This study identifies new procedures by which the HWYNEEDS computer program is used to conduct the quadrennial needs study on paved roads.

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