(intro music)
- [Narrator] Research has demonstrated that
Portable Weigh-in-Motion, or WIM technology,
is a cost effective and accurate tool
for TxDOT to measure and collect the traffic
and axle load specific data used
for pavement designs, maintenance,
or rehabilitation of the roadways,
especially in heavy energy development areas of the state.
And now working with a Texas A&M Transportation Institute
project team, TxDOT has implemented a portable version
of these systems in districts across the state.
- [Tom] What was developed here was a system
for going out to any highway,
and putting some sensors on the ground,
and counting and weighing every truck that drives over this,
this system.
It is new technology that was developed
as part of the research program,
and it was implemented with a primarily focus
on the energy sector.
- [Robert] Especially within the energy sector area.
We can probably have a good handle on the ADT,
the vehicle counts, and the truck percentage.
But if we don't know the weight of the vehicles,
then that traffic projection is gonna be off.
So we designed with the wrong traffic data.
Then we can see premature failures very quickly.
- TxDOT's system has been in place for many years,
it's traffic counting system,
but what what was happening with the energy sector was
they really needed project specific data.
- So anytime there was a district need
for project level data,
there was a Portable Weigh-in-Motion study that was
conducted to give them exactly the numbers they needed
for pavement design purposes.
In addition, also training districts, but this research
project for implementation project gave the districts
a little bit more training on what the data means
and how the data's processed to get the most
accurate numbers for using the pavement design.
- To improve the system,
you know, one step further, we're talking about new sensors
which actually can classify trucks.
So we can put a low cost sensor
which can supplement the data that TxDOT collects
at the moment, which are the tube counts,
and tell you the percentage of trucks.
This is all a sort of an incremental improvements here.
So we're busy looking at new sensors
to do truck classifications.
- What this implementation project did was take the findings
from the original projects and just expand given districts'
traffic data that they need for their projects.
And also training them in what the data means
and what is the most accurate data
that they need for their pavement designs.
- [Narrator] For more information,
and to find the publications for this project,
please visit the TxDOT research library
at the link shown below.