The Wyoming Technology Transfer Center in cooperation with the Wyoming Department of Transportation and Sheridan, Johnson, and Carbon Counties undertook a three-year pilot asset management program. These counties were selected because of the significant impacts to their road networks arising from oil and natural gas drilling activities. One objective of this programwas to assess the impacts to the counties roads from drilling activities. This paper describes this assessment. Based on surface conditions, improvement recommendations were made for roads with inadequate surface conditions for their functional class. The cost of these recommended improvements was examined for both the roads serving predominantly drilling activities and for the rest of the counties roads, along with the distresses driving these recommendations. By comparing the rate at which improvements were recommended on the drilling and non-drilling roads, conclusions about the impacts of drilling traffic are drawn. The portion of drilling roads insub-standard condition for their functional class is much higher than that for the other county roads. The greatest impact in terms of the cost of improving these roads to adequate ride conditions is on the Collector roads, with lesser impacts to Local roads. It is clearly demonstrated that heavy traffic associated with drilling activities has done significant damage to these three counties roads, above and beyond what would be anticipated from typical traffic loads. The methodology presented here could easilybe adapted to other road systems experiencing a significant influx of heavy truck traffic to assess the additional traffic’s impact.
Abstract