Procedure for Statistical Categorization of Overweight Vehicles in a WIM Database

AbstractRecently observed increases in the numbers of permitted and illegal overweight trucks travelling over U.S. highways have raised concerns over their contributions to the reduction in the service lives of pavements and bridges and the costs of maintaining, upgrading and replacing the highway infrastructure system. Cost allocation studies are used by transportation officials to help their asset management processes and to establish truck traffic and permitting policies taking into consideration information on the composition of overweight trucks and their permit categorization. In recent years, cost allocation studies have heavily relied on data assembled by weigh-in-motion (WIM) systems which provide information on traffic counts, truck axle configurations and weights for various highway classes and economic regions. However, WIM data by themselves do not provide information on the numbers of illegal overweight trucks because many of the overweight trucks may have been issued permits that allow them...