A Mechanistic Methodology for Estimating Permit Costs for Overweight Trucks

The implementation of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) opened the borders to international traffic coming from both Canada and Mexico. As a consequence, highway networks will be subjected to trucks with new axle configurations and heavier axle loads, causing concern on the impact of super-heavy vehicles on highway’s infrastructure. The truck size and weight has been an issue of concern to federal and state agencies, and for the general public for many years. Different agencies view the issue of truck dimensions and loads from different perspectives a primary concern is how much more do heavy trucks should pay in comparison to standard trucks since they cause more damage to the pavement. In order to address these issues a methodology was developed. This methodology implemented allows us to calculate the permit fee according to the truck configuration. A software package with the capacity to calculate pavement distress for pavements under any type of traffic load, and to make a comparison of the level of distress caused by a standard and a non-standard truck has been developed and reported in the previous reports. In this report, a cost module to estimate the cost of permit for heavy trucks based on the mechanistic analysis is added.