Work Zone User Impact Reference Charts for Bridge Lane Closures

Accelerated bridge construction (ABC) techniques are increasingly deployed in bridge rehabilitation or replacement projects to reduce the onsite construction time. Higher costs of using ABC techniques is often offset by road user cost savings through reduced construction time. The decision to consider/select ABC techniques as viable/preferred alternatives in a project is typically established during the project development stages, where the project-specific information is often unavailable or inadequate for detailed work zone road user cost (WZRUC) computations. This speaks of the need for simple, ready-to-use reference charts for WZRUC estimation based on basic project characteristics, such as such as traffic volume, functional classification and available number of lanes. To aid the decision making process of practitioners, reference charts of daily WZRUC estimates were developed using the project characteristics in the National Bridge Inventory. Developing reference charts involved estimation of work zone mobility impact measures and converting these anticipated impacts into cost estimates for various scenarios. This study presents simple, ready-to-use reference charts for estimating WZRUC for bridge projects involving lane closures. This study also presents a discussion on the methodology used in the WZRUC computations and the steps involved in using the reference charts, with an example.