About the Project
As part of the FHWA’s efforts to implement performance-based transportation measures as required by the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) Act, it contracted Applied Pavement Technology, Inc. (APTech) to identify more strategic next-generation measures to strengthen performance management and better link investments to long term performance. The objectives of the project were to identify, or conceptually develop, 1) more strategic pavement performance measures and their readiness for implementation and 2) methodologies to enable full implementation of a comprehensive asset management plan.
During task 1, APTech performed an in-depth literature review to identify potential pavement performance measures and investigate their feasibility. Considerations included how the performance data would be collected, analyzed, and presented, as well as potential costs and benefits of using the performance measure. Thirteen potential pavement performance measures were deemed worthy of more comprehensive evaluation. The proposed framework for further evaluation includes a condition metric, a life-cycle efficiency metric, and a financial health metric.
During task 2, APTech explored methodologies to enable full implementation of a comprehensive asset management plan by reviewing existing cross-asset trade-off and cross-asset allocation methods and documenting them in a technical memorandum. APTech then developed a methodology that uses the three common next-generation performance measures as the foundation of trade-off decisions and outcome reporting. The methodology was then described and conceptually illustrated in terms of its application with the pavements, bridges, and culverts asset areas.
During the work conducted during Tasks 1 and 2, it became apparent that there were gaps in available data and analysis tools to support the use of the most promising measures in transportation agencies, so APTech developed two work plans for future FHWA projects to further validate and test the proposed performance measures and cross-asset methodology.
