Ride Specification Review for the Montana Department of Transportation

Abstract

This report covers the activities that were performed to enhance the current Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) ride specification for flexible pavements. The project team reviewed the MDT ride specification for flexible pavements and compared it with current literature and state of practice. An extensive state-of-practice survey of other Departments of Transportation (DOTs) was conducted and the results were utilized to provide recommendations to MDT for improving its ride specification. This report provides detailed information on the review of MDT current ride specification, literature review, state-of-the practice survey, and recommendations for improvements. The recommendations cover the proposed improvements to the current ride specification, tolerances, project classification levels, analysis tools and indices, and methods of acceptance. As part of the recommendations, a series of new documents [i.e., Profiler Operations Manual, Quality Control/Quality Assurance (QC/QA) Plan] have been developed to enhance future profile data collection and analysis. Based on the findings of this project, the project team have revised the document entitled “Method of Sampling and Testing (MT-422)” and the document “MDT Ride Specification For Flexible Pavement”. An implementation plan has been developed and presented in this report to provide MDT with a road map for implementing the findings of this project.