Streamlined Strategies for Faster, Less Traffic-Disruptive Highway Rehabilitation in Urban Networks

Abstract

The need for faster, less traffic-disruptive rehabilitation for aging highway infrastructure is an emerging concern for many state highway agencies. In response to this concern, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) launched the Long-Life Pavement Rehabilitation Strategies (LLPRS) program in 1998 to rebuild 2,800 lane kilometers of high-volume urban freeway with premium pavements that will last 30+ years and require minimal maintenance over their service life. This paper presents innovative strategies and technologies for achieving faster project completion with less traffic disruption as applied on three experimental LLPRS projects. The research team and the Caltrans project team used Construction Analysis for Pavement Rehabilitation Strategies (CA4PRS) software from the initial planning and design stages to implement the most economical rehabilitation strategies for the projects. The postconstruction analysis of all three LLPRS projects, made with data collected during construction, revealed a close match with the preconstruction schedule estimate generated by CA4PRS, validating the software's scheduling reliability. Incentive-disincentive contractual provisions proved effective for shortening project duration on all three LLPRS projects, which were time critical because of their heavy traffic volume. Resultant traffic data demonstrate the importance of a public outreach campaign that convinced motorists to use alternative routes or to adjust their commuting modes, resulting in significantly lower traffic demand in the construction work zone. The strategies and lessons addressed in this paper will help state highway agencies and contractors maximize construction productivity for early project completion and minimize inconvenience to the traveling public.

Quantitative model for determining incentive/disincentive amounts through schedule simulations

“…CA4PRS has been widely used in California and in four other states. Validation studies on several major highway rehabilitation projects in states including California, Washington, and Minnesota proved the scheduling reliability and accuracy of the software (Lee et al 2008). As a result, there has been nationally growing acceptance of the program, including recent arrangement by FHWA to provide free group licenses for all fifty states.…”

“…CA4PRS ¶V schedule analysis estimates the duration of highway rehabilitation project in terms of total number of closures (Lee and Ibbs 2005). CA4PRS ¶V work zone analysis quantifies the impact of construction work zone closures on the traveling public in terms of road user cost and time spent in queue (Lee et al 2008). CA4PRS has been widely used in California and in four other states.…”

ACT2: Time–Cost Tradeoffs from Alternative Contracting Methods

“…As the majority of the existing highway infrastructure systems were built during construction booms in the 1950's and 1980's and most feature a 20-year design life, this obsolescence issue of the US transportation infrastructure has created a major dual challenge for State Transportation Agencies (STAs) (Federal Highway Administration 2002;Lee et al 2008;Napolitan and Zegras 2008;Uhlmeyer and Russell 2013). Specifically, badly deteriorating infrastructure systems need to be renewed, while at the same time the public inconvenience caused by construction work zones must be minimized.…”

Analyzing Decision Making in Alternative Contracting for Highway Pavement Rehabilitation Projects

“…In order to simulate the project's duration as a result of the change in the contractor's resource utilization levels, the Construction Analysis for Pavement Rehabilitation Strategies (CA4PRS) schedule simulation software was utilized. CA4PRS was developed by the University of California at Berkeley Pavement Research Center and is specialized in pavement rehabilitation projects and was validated and implemented in a number of different states (Lee et al 2008). CA4PRS has three main modules: work zone analysis module, schedule simulation module, and cost estimation module; in addition to real-life project examples already stored in its database.…”

“…In order for the contractors to be able to reduce the duration of the project, they will need to increase the resources they utilize; hence, using the critical resource output provided from the baseline schedule simulation, the level of these resources was increased incrementally and the new corresponding schedules were simulated and the contractor's cost was calculated using equation (4-9). This process was repeated until no more critical resources can be increased (Lee 2008). These durations and costs were consistent with the durations and costs calculated through the model as shown in table (4-8): where the calculated duration reduction refers to the one derived from the A+B model, the simulated duration reduction refers to the one calculated using CA4PRS, the "B" As seen from table (4-8), all the simulated duration reductions fall within the calculated intervals for each "B" value; and for all the points, the additional cost incurred by the contractor is less than the "B" value offered which was calculated using the "B" value module.…”