The establishment of a long-term pavement performance study on the New Zealand State Highway network

• Published in: Road & transport research Vol. 13; no. 2; pp. 17 - 32
• Main Authors: Henning, T F P, Costello, S B, Dunn, R C M, Parkman, C C, Hart, G
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Nunawading A R R B Transport Research Ltd 01.06.2004
• ISSN: 1037-5783

As part of the national implementation of Pavement Deterioration Modelling, Transit New Zealand recently established 63 long-term pavement performance (LTPP) sites throughout the State Highway Network. These sites were chosen to represent the spectrum of pavement construction, traffic composition and climatic zones experienced in New Zealand. The long-term objective of this study is to calibrate the pavement deterioration models currently used on the State Highway network. These models are a combination of the World Bank's HDM-III and HDM-4 models, but also include a number of locally developed models. This paper explains the rationale behind the design of the site selection matrix before proceeding to discuss the establishment of the sites and specification of the survey contract. The paper then presents an analysis of instrument repeatability for the first two years of survey in order to confirm the validity of contract specifications. A comparison between the manual LTPP measurements and the network-level high-speed data measurements is also presented, confirming the original project assumption that the level of accuracy required could only be achieved with manual measurements. For those countries and road controlling authorities considering LTPP studies or calibration experiments for pavement deterioration modelling, it is believed that this paper will prove valuable in providing a framework for the design of the site selection matrix, its establishment and the survey methodology.