This paper was presented at the session titled `Assessment of user costs in pavement infrastructure life-cycle costing'. There are various traffic staging alternatives available for resurfacing four lane divided highways. Traditional practice on resurfacing projects has been to close one lane and designate a work area adjacent to traffic. With increasing traffic volumes, increasing traffic speeds, increasing driver frustration and increasing attention to traffic related construction zone accidents, it is worthwhile providing a detailed evaluation of the alternative traffic staging options. This paper analyses the advantages and disadvantages of three traffic staging alternatives, the traditional practice outlined above, the aforementioned method with full time police protection to provide additional protection and detouring of traffic away from the work area to the other side of the highway and separating the opposing traffic with temporary traffic delineating posts. The analysis considers the impacts to worker safety, constructability and provides a cost breakdown based on construction costs and user delay costs. The analysis indicates that generally the conventional method of resurfacing is the most economical staging method. However, when traffic volumes approach the capacity of a single lane adjacent to a designated work zone, the high user costs make the detour alternative the most economical. The paper provides several recommendations for a responsible transportation agency to consider when selecting the optimum construction staging alternative. (A)
Abstract