The British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Highways, Highway Engineering Branch produces a Ministry Design Manual that contains the geometric design standards used on provincial highways. Any deviation from these standards must be explained in the project's design criteria documents that are signed off by the Chief Highway Engineer. The use of full current standards is easily justified for new highways and on major upgrades of existing highways. However, in the case of rehabilitation works, when the prime purpose is not necessarily to improve the geometry, funding limitations often force the designer to do selective improvements to the geometry that go only part way toward the current design standard. The Highway Engineering Branch has produced a document to assist designers in deciding which design improvements would be most effective within the funding available. This paper contains selected portions of the document that is being used as interim guidelines until these can be supplemented and improved using new field experimentation and data reflecting British Columbia conditions. (A)
Abstract