Strategies for Separating Trucks from Passenger Vehicles: Truck Facility Guidebook

The purpose of the Truck Facility Guidebook is to assist Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) engineers in understanding and replicating the process used by researchers to determine the need for truck treatments. This Guidebook provides criteria to assist TxDOT in choosing among the three types of truck facilities: 1) lane restrictions, 2) dedicated truck lanes, and 3) exclusive truck roadways. The Guidebook primarily focuses on the third type, exclusive truck roadways, and guides users through a nine-step process to determine the need for these facilities. The nine steps are as follows: (1) Acquire truck and non-truck volume; (2) Predict future truck and non-truck volume; (3) Determine desired level of service; (4) Determine number of truck roadway lanes; (5) Acquire crash data and estimate crash costs; (6) Determine initial construction cost; (7) Determine costs of delay and fuel consumption; (8) Determine user perspectives and other measures of acceptability; and (9) Total all benefits and costs.