USE OF THE HIGHWAY PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEM TO DETERMINE NEEDS AND TRAVEL COST ON NORTH CAROLINA HIGHWAYS

Providing current information about the performance of an existing highway system has become an important engineering task. Another perhaps equally important task is to predict the operational and conditional effects that alternative highway policies and programs would have in the future. Analytical procedures within the Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS) were designed as a policy-planning tool capable of accomplishing tasks of this nature at the state or national level. This paper provides a description of how the HPMS was applied in a statewide study to (a) estabish relationships between investment levels and performance of the existing highway system, (b) estimate highway needs for that system over a 10-year analysis period, and (c) estimate future highway system user costs as a function of investment. There was no attempt to critique either the function or the philosophy of the HPMS. The study results reported in this paper constitute a general assessment of the North Carolina highway system that verifies or identifies, or both, highway statistics, deficiencies, and needs over time. Many of the study findings should provide indispensable information to North Carolina highway administrators and decision makers. On the basis of those findings it was concluded that the HPMS can be used to quantify program needs that, if met, would lead to optimal achievement of a state's highway transportation goals.