Land Use and Transport Modeling to Support Transportation Asset Management: Case Study of the New Brunswick Road Network and its Regional Interactions

Traditional models for infrastructure management fail to capture the dynamic interactions of traffic flows generated from land development and economic growth. Performance deterioration is traditionally modeled as a static mechanism that in the best of the cases respond to traffic counts and historically observed growth. Traffic is not only responsible for deterioration of roads but also correlates to road safety and mobility. This paper proposes the integration of land use and transport models to support a more reliable estimation of traffic for the management of a provincial road network since three conflicting objectives: condition, safety and mobility. A case study of the New Brunswick road network which serves as the regional link to connect four Canadian Atlantic provinces with Quebec and the United States is examined. A generation of traffic flows as derived from spatial economic theory is used to estimate traffic growth at major road corridors. This in turn serves to obtain more reliable performance models for safety and condition capable of responding to provincial policies and strategies on land development and industry attraction. Both measures are subsequently used to represent the level of service which in turn supports resource allocation of required annual investments to maintain and upgrade provincial highways. Variations on deterioration and safety performance before and after the integration are measured through an economic estimation of required expenditure to achieve target levels of service.