Texas Transportation Institute

Tech Report

Texas

789664728

Technical report; Sept. 2009-Aug. 2011.

Texas Transportation Institute

NTL-ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT-ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT ; NTL-PLANNING AND POLICY-PLANNING AND POLICY ; NTL-GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS-GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS ;

In recent years, Texas has experienced a boom in energy-related activities, particularly in wind power

generation and extraction of oil and natural gas. While energy developments contribute to enhance the

state’s ability to produce energy reliably, many short-term and long-term impacts on the state’s

transportation infrastructure are not properly documented. Examples include the impact of frequent

truckloads on state highway infrastructure such as pavement structures and shoulders, as well as impacts on

roadside infrastructure such as driveways and drainage facilities. There is also a lack of documentation on

the impact on TxDOT’s ability to manage the state highway right-of-way effectively, e.g., with respect to

driveway access and utility crossings.

This report describes the work completed to measure the impact of increased level of energy-related

activities on the TxDOT right-of-way and infrastructure, as well as develop recommendations to reduce and

manage TxDOT’s exposure and risk resulting from those activities. The report addresses a number of topics,

including the process to develop a geodatabase of energy developments in the state, field visits, pavement

impacts, roadside impacts, operational and safety impacts, and economic impacts. The geodatabase includes

non-renewable energy datasets, renewable energy datasets, energy use datasets, and geology-related datasets.

The recommendations for implementation were grouped into the following categories: early notification and

coordination (five recommendations), road maintenance and repair (four recommendations), roadside

management (two recommendations), and funding (five recommendations).

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Project 0-6498

US Transportation Collection