Highway Engineering

Martin Rogers, Bernard Enright

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781118378137
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Civil Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The repair, renovation and replacement of highway infrastructure, along with the provision of new highways, is a core element of civil engineering, sothis book covers basic theory and practice in sufficient depth to provide a solid grounding to students of civil engineering and trainee practitioners.

• Moves in a logical sequence from the planning and economic justification for a highway, through the geometric design and traffic analysis of highway links and intersections, to the design and maintenance of both flexible and rigid pavements
• Covers geometric alignment of highways, junction and pavement design, structural design and pavement maintenance
• Includes detailed discussions of traffic analysis and the economic appraisal of projects
• Makes frequent reference to the Department of Transport's Design Manual for Roads and Bridges
• Places the provision of roads and motorways in context by introducing the economic, political, social and administrative dimensions of the subject

Chapter 1
The Transportation Planning Process

1.1 Why are highways so important?

Highways are vitally important to a country’s economic development. The construction of a high-quality road network directly increases a nation’s economic output by reducing journey times and costs, making a region more attractive economically. The actual construction process will have the added effect of stimulating the construction market.

1.2 The administration of highway schemes

The administration of highway projects differs from one country to another, depending on social, political and economic factors. The design, construction and maintenance of major national primary routes such as motorways or dual carriageways are generally the responsibility of a designated government department or an agency of it, with funding, in the main, coming from central government. Those of secondary importance, feeding into the national routes, together with local roads, tend to be the responsibility of local authorities. Central government or an agency of it will usually take responsibility for the development of national standards.

Highways England is an executive organisation charged within England with responsibility for the maintenance and improvement of the motorway/trunk road network. (In Ireland, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, formerly the National Roads Authority, has a similar function.) It operates on behalf of the relevant government minister who still retains responsibility for overall policy, determines the framework within which the agency is permitted to operate and establishes its goals and objectives and the time frame within which these should take place.

In the United States, the US Federal Highway Administration has responsibility at the federal level for formulating national transportation policy and for funding major projects that are subsequently constructed, operated and maintained at the state level. It is one of nine primary organisational units within the US Department of Transportation (USDOT). The Secretary of Transportation, a member of the President’s cabinet, is the USDOT’s principal.

Each state government has a department of transportation, which occupies a pivotal position in the development of road projects. Each has responsibility for the planning, design, construction, maintenance and operation of its federally funded highway system. In most states, its highway agency has the responsibility for developing routes within the state-designated system. These involve roads of both primary and secondary statewide importance. The state department also allocates funds to local government. At the city/county level, the local government in question sets design standards for local roadways and has the responsibility for maintaining and operating them.

1.3 Sources of funding

Obtaining adequate sources of funding for highway projects has been an ongoing problem throughout the world. Highway construction has been funded in the main by public monies. However, increasing competition for government funds from the health and education sector has led to an increasing desire to remove the financing of major highway projects from such competition by the introduction of user or toll charges.

Within the United Kingdom, the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 gave the Secretary of State for Transport the power to create highways using private funds, where access to the facility is limited to those who have paid a toll charge. In most cases, however, the private sector has been unwilling to take on substantial responsibility for expanding the road network within the United Kingdom. Roads tend still to be financed from the public purse, with central government being fully responsible for the capital funding of major trunk road schemes. For roads of lesser importance, each local authority receives a block grant from central government that can be utilised to support a maintenance programme at the local level or to aid in the financing of a capital works programme. These funds will supplement monies raised by the authority through local taxation. A local authority is also permitted to borrow money for highway projects but only with central government’s approval.

Within the United States, fuel taxes have financed a significant proportion of the highway system, with road tolls being charged for the use of some of the more expensive highway facilities. Tolling declined between 1960 and 1990, partly because of the introduction of the Interstate and Defense Highways Act in 1956, which prohibited the charging of tolls on newly constructed sections of the interstate highway system, and because of the wide availability of federal funding at the time for such projects. Within the past 10 years, however, the use of toll charges as a method of highway funding has returned.

The question of whether public or private funding should be used to construct a highway facility is a complex political issue. Some feel that public ownership of all infrastructures is a central role of government and under no circumstances should it be constructed and operated by private interests. Others take the view that any measure that reduces taxes and encourages private enterprise should be encouraged. Both arguments have some validity, and any responsible government must strive to strike the appropriate balance between these two distinct forms of infrastructure funding.

Within the United Kingdom, the concept of design–build–finance–operate (DBFO) is gaining credence for large-scale infrastructure projects formerly financed by government. Within this arrangement, the developer is responsible for formulating the scheme, raising the finance, constructing the facility and then operating it in its entire useful life. Such a package is well suited to a highway project where the imposition of tolls provides a clear revenue-raising opportunity during its period of operation. Such revenue will generate a return on the developer’s original investment.

Increasingly, highway projects utilising this procedure do so within the private finance initiative (PFI) framework. Within the United Kingdom, PFI can involve the developer undertaking to share with the government the risk associated with the proposal before approval is given. From the government’s perspective, unless the developer is willing to take on most of this risk, the PFI format may be inappropriate, and normal procedures for the awarding of major infrastructure projects may be adopted.

1.4 Highway planning

1.4.1 Introduction

The process of transportation planning entails developing a transportation plan for an urban region. It is an ongoing process that seeks to address the transport needs of the inhabitants of the area and with the aid of a process of consultation with all relevant groups strives to identify and implement an appropriate plan to meet these needs.

The process takes place at a number of levels. At an administrative/political level, a transportation policy is formulated, and politicians must decide on the general location of the transport corridors/networks to be prioritised for development, on the level of funding to be allocated to the different schemes and on the mode or modes of transport to be used within them.

Below this level, professional planners and engineers undertake a process to define in some detail the corridors/networks that comprise each of the given systems selected for development at the higher political level. This is the level at which what is commonly termed a transportation study takes place. It defines the links and networks and involves forecasting future population and economic growth, predicting the level ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Sources
• Chapter 1: The Transportation Planning Process
• Chapter 2: Forecasting Future Traffic Flows
• Chapter 3: Scheme Appraisal for Highway Projects
• Chapter 4: Basic Elements of Highway Traffic Analysis
• Chapter 5: Determining the Capacity of a Highway
• Chapter 6: The Design of Highway Intersections
• Chapter 7: Geometric Alignment and Design
• Chapter 8: Highway Pavement Materials and Loading
• Chapter 9: Structural Design of Highway Pavements
• Chapter 10: Pavement Maintenance
• Chapter 11: The Highway Engineer and the Development Process
• Chapter 12: Defining Sustainability in Transportation Engineering
• Index
• End User License Agreement