Traffic Generating Development and Roadway Life Consumption

This report describes the development of a tool to estimate the impacts to pavements associated with heavy vehicle traffic related to the construction of large wind turbine developments. In a growing number of areas, large wind farms are constructed in a very short time, often resulting in extreme impacts to the pavements on which the construction traffic must travel. This report attempts to assist the local agency in estimating the damage expected due to the sudden influx of construction traffic and in predicting the associated maintenance and rehabilitation costs to the road network used by the traffic. The Traffic Generators calculation tool for estimating pavement impacts, developed as part of this project, is a spreadsheet based tool that takes user input from the agency as well as the developer, and combines this information into an estimate of pavement damage. This is done in three ways – difference in granular equivalent pavement design, Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) overlay design, and percent of pavement life consumed. With guidance in this report, the agency can select which of the three methods is most appropriate for their particular situation. The tool then provides an estimate of cost required to repair the roadway network to its condition prior to the heavy influx of construction traffic.