Examining the Impact of Pavement Rehabilitation Treatment Trigger Values and the Annual Rehabilitation Funding on the Long-Term Network-Level Pavement Condition: A Case Study with the Indiana State Urban Road Network

Management of highway assets, including pavements, is immensely challenging in an era of uncertain funding for transportation agencies and increasingly demanding service expectations from the public. Furthermore, maintaining pavement assets in serviceable condition is one of the most costly operations for a highway agency. This research presents the option of strategic modification of the treatment trigger values at which pavement projects are implemented, as a potential way to aid agencies in pavement performance management in the face of budget restriction. However, such an option should be utilized only after careful evaluation of the long-term influence of varying the project-level treatment trigger value on the pavement conditions at the network level. This paper demonstrates a case study of the impact of modifying the pavement rehabilitation treatment trigger value and changing the available budget on the network-level pavement roughness condition of the Indiana State Urban road network. Three pavement rehabilitation treatment trigger policies are devised to vary the conditions at which a road section is labeled “deficient” and placed on a candidate list for possible treatment implementation. Project prioritization by the benefit-cost ratio occurs to determine which treatments can get implemented under different budget restriction scenarios. The analysis conducted reveals that as the budget level increases, the policy being applied to trigger pavement rehabilitation remains a significant factor in affecting how many road miles have a smooth pavement surface but becomes less relevant in affecting how many road miles have a rough pavement surface.