Time-Series Review of Highway Performance Monitoring System Data

Abstract

The passing of the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act required the FHWA to adopt pavement performance measures for evaluating the condition of the interstate highway system (IHS) and the national highway system (NHS). In January 2015, the FHWA issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to establish performance measures to assess pavement conditions on the IHS and NHS, with the final rule published in January 2017. The four measures were 1) Percentage of pavements on the IHS in good condition; 2) Percentage of pavements on the IHS in poor condition; 3) Percentage of pavements on the NHS (excluding IHS) in good condition; and 4) Percentage of pavements on the NHS (excluding IHS) in poor condition. Pavement condition is determined by the following metrics in the Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS): International Roughness Index, cracking percent, rutting, and faulting. FHWA commissioned a study to collate a statistically significant sample of the IHS to evaluate the efficacy of the HPMS and to recommend improvements in data collection and reporting processes to meet NPRM requirements. As part of the referenced study, a time-series review was conducted of the HPMS to identify changes in the data from 2013 to 2015 and to determine how these data compare with the study-collected data. This paper discusses the review of HPMS data, identifying changes in the pavement condition metrics, and overall condition. In general, the HPMS database exhibited improvements, with more complete data and fewer anomalies, in 2015 compared with 2013.