The Pennsylvania State University

Department of Civil Engineering

CE 321: Highway Engineering

Dr. Eric Donnell, Professor
Jung Yeol Hong, TA.

Preliminary Rural Collector Design,

Connecting PA SR 1025 and North Road

Fall 2014

Section 001

Matthew McTaggart

Due Date: November 21, 2014

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 Table of Contents

1. Introduction -----------------------------------------------------------------------3
2. Digital Terrain Modeling -------------------------------------------------------4
3. Horizontal Alignment -----------------------------------------------------------5
4. Vertical Alignment --------------------------------------------------------------8
5. Cross Section and Earth Work -------------------------------------------------10
6. Comparison of Alignments -----------------------------------------------------12
7. Conclusion ------------------------------------------------------------------------16
Appendix A -----------------------------------------------------------------------18
Appendix B -----------------------------------------------------------------------19
Appendix C -----------------------------------------------------------------------20
List of Drawings -----------------------------------------------------------------21

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1. Introduction

The purpose of this report is to assess the two options, a western or eastern road, to connect SR
1025 from the community of Tobymines to the community of Centerville on North Road.
Between these roads exists a series of state forest, historic properties, rivers/streams, and rolling
hills and mountains. The eastern road is subjected to flatter terrain and less state forest, but has
more impact on streams. The western road is subjected to difficult terrain and more state forest.
The design of these roads are critical in that they must minimize the amount of state forest
disturbed while not interfering with both the existing communities (and their buildings) and the
historic properties. They must avoid cultural and resource controversy, maintain a reasonable or
minimal unnecessary earthwork, reasonable bridge and drainage design, minimal environmental
impact, connect between roads seamlessly and be compliant with the ASSHTO Green Book.

This report will provide and discuss the design of both the western and eastern roads. Included
will be the horizontal and vertical alignments, cross-sectional views, cost estimating, safety
estimation, and a recommendation of which road is the best alternative. Each alignment is
designed as a 2 lane highway.

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2. Digital Terrain Modeling

To model the digital terrain, a surface was created from the existing contours within Autodesk’s
Civil 3D. On this surface, the existing features were overlaid along with spot elevations and
distinctive contour lines.

In general, the typography is gradually inclined towards the west where once it passes the
historical sites, it slopes upwards quite considerably towards a peak of a hill, then rolls down
afterwards. The majority of contour lines lay perpendicular to the connecting roads, so while
avoiding the historical sites, state parks and the existing community, the road will have to go
against the terrain rather than following some of its existing characteristics. In addition, roads
have to be designed to pass over streams. The west road may only need to pass over one, while
the east road may have to overpass two, or even three streams.

Difficulties that arise with the design of the roads is utilizing the existing terrain, and minimizing
the effect on the state forests. Due to the historical sites, the roads are forced to be designed
against the contours at an angle which would require more work to be put in and its presence and
effect to the environment. Moreover, due to design criteria for each road, is it not possible to
follow a contour to minimize earthworks required. Towards the west, there are considerable
changes in slope of the contours and poses a challenge to designing a road that does not cut
through too much earth or create a road that is uncomfortable and unsafe for the drivers.

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3. Horizontal Alignment

To first start, layers were created for both east and west alignments. Each starting station was
defined to start from 10+00.00 with a starting design speed of 45mph and a super elevation of
8%. Each alignment was drawn by using the “tangent-tangent (with curves)” tool from the
specified location along SR 1025 (shown by green circle) along an appropriate east and west
path, and connected within the specified location along North Road (again, shown by green
circle). Each alignment was drawn as a continuous line, avoiding all historical sites and existing
communities, along with minimizing the effect on the state forests. Labels were added to both
alignments in which specify the points every 1000 feet, or 10+00 stations, along with each point
of curvature (PC), point of tangent intersection (PI), and point of tangent (PT). Finally, curve
and tangent tables were generated for both the east and west alignments.

For the both the east and west alignments, the roads were designed with a maximum super
elevation of 8%. Furthermore, the shoulder width was designed to be 8 feet, the clear zone
beyond the shoulders were designed to be 10 feet, along with a maximum grade of 8% and
minimum grade of 0.5%. Each tangent length along the alignments must be a minimum of 200
feet and each curve length should be a minimum of 100 feet.

For both the east and west alignments, the minimum radius used for design was 587 feet. To see
an in-depth report for both the east and west horizontal alignments please see Appendix A.

The purpose of the east and west alignments were, again, to design routes to connect Tobymines
and Centerville. When designing these roads, it is important to consider more than one option,
ideally the one that minimizing the right of way costs, pavement costs, earthworks costs, and the
crash costs. In this report, it is evident that the east alignment is longer than the west alignment,
but however avoids steep and difficult terrain at the cost of an additional bridge over a river and
less impact to the state forest. The west alignment is shorter in length, but faces the difficulty of
following along a mountain side, and cutting through a considerable amount of state forest. The
design of the alignments is a preliminary step in planning the best route accounting for all said

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factors and designing the road to the design criteria to make sure that it is always above its
minimum requirement and lower than its maximum requirement.

By using the design criteria, the horizontal alignment designs the roads so that the super
elevations are sufficient for cornering and keeping the cars on the road. They also account for
adequate stopping sight distance so that drivers are able to perceive a danger and have adequate
time to react and to break at a comfortable rate without running into the danger or causing harm
to drivers around. Furthermore, it also designs for adequate offset viewing, or offset stopping
distance around curves, so that contractors/constructors know how much distance the edges of
the road, or right of way, should be cleared from the edge of the road.

The east alignment was drawn to minimize the amount of state forest affected by running
through the sections of little thickness. Due to wildlife, it is important to minimize the impact to
their habitat so they are minimally affected and traumatized by road construction, and a sudden
change to their surroundings. Moreover, it is important to minimize state forest area parallel to
the road for the drivers’ safety. Having a larger area of state forest surrounding the road
increases the chance and the amount of animals attempting to cross the road. This is particularly
important at night because drivers are limited to their headlights to spot anything, and if an
animal crosses from the side, the driver will most likely not be able to react in time to avoid an
animal. As this is a state forest, it is assumed that it houses many different animals from small
foxes and squirrels, to deer, bears and other larger animals. Smaller animals will typically cause
more road kills and maintenance because of their abundance, but larger animals will be much
more threatening if hit as it can considerably damage vehicles and injure drivers. Each driver
may react differently to an object or animal in the road, and inexperience drivers may panic and
risk other drivers in avoidance of such object. Another consideration to think about is speeding
when traffic volume is low. Drivers are inclined to drive beyond the safe design limits, so
minimizing risks from animals on the road will help lower chance on accidents in this case. Due
to trying to minimize the state forest destruction, the road is forced to approach contours and
terrain at an angle rather than following the terrain and to cross over two streams.
The east alignment was drawn to minimize the complexity of the road, or in other words, with as
little curves as possible due to the extra costs associated with building up the superelevation.

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The alignment does not meet the SR 1025 at a 90 degree angle because it was designed to not
affect the historical site nearby, and to provide adequate curve and tangent lengths to meet the
minimum design requirements.

The west alignment was designed to follow the terrain around the mountainous region towards
the left because to avoid the state forest in its entirety, would prove to be too costly and would
require a tremendous amount of earthwork in addition to the already large amount required, as
you will see. The energy and costs to avoid the state forest overweighs the cost to pass through
the state forest and the risks associated with it, as discussed above. In this case, economical
design prevails over the environmental and wildlife design; even though avoiding the state forest
can still be said to not be environmental due to the amount of earthwork that may need to be
done. Increased workload and earthwork will bring more dust, carbon emissions, and noise
pollution to the surrounding area. This will affect the surrounding landscape, plant life, animal
habitat, animal behavior, and disrupt the surrounding communities. Finally, it can be argued that
cutting down forest is a lot less intensive than cutting and filling through earth.

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4. Vertical Alignment

To first start off, an existing ground centerline was created so that a surface profile could be
made for each east and west alignments. Afterwards, the settings in the profile layer tools were
changed so that K values for crest curves was 61 and 79 for sag curves, in accordance to the
AASHTO Greenbook. The curve was drawn by using “draw tangents with curves”. Labels were
then added once the vertical alignments were complete.

For the vertical alignments, the curves were designed to have a minimum of 100 feet for the
curve length along with a maximum grade of 8% and a minimum grade of 0.5%. The maximum
grade that would be allowed within 200 feet of an intersection is 3%. The vertical curves must
have a minimum of 5 feet clearance over any streams that it crosses. Another design criteria, or
recommendation is that the curve length should be a multiple of 50, so values should be rounded
up to this value rather than rounded down. The design of grades are critical in highway design
because it is not ideal to have water settling on the roads. Water settling can cause issues with
cars skidding and can pose additional danger to animals and other vehicles because of it.

The combinations of horizontal curves should be considered carefully. First criteria is that a
horizontal curve should not begin or end at the top of a crest vertical curve. Secondly, the point
of vertical tangent (PVT) should not be at the same point of the point of (horizontal) curvature
(PC). Thirdly, sharp horizontal curves should be avoided at the low points of sag curves. Finally,
horizontal curves should be longer than vertical curves. All these design criteria were taking into
consideration when designing both the horizontal and vertical alignments for both the east and
west alignments. On all vertical alignments, the curve was carefully drawn so that the crest of
any curve does not lie on top of any blue lines of a PC or a PT from the horizontal alignment.
By inspection, generally all spans of the horizontal alignment (between subsequent blue lines)
are larger than the span of any vertical curve.

In addition to meeting the above design requirements, the alignments should be designed in a
way to minimize the amount of earthwork, such as cut and fill volumes. For this reason, the east
alignment follows the vertical profile of the road as much as possible. It can be argued that

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around the 150+00 station on the vertical alignment, that the road should have a safer or lower
grade going into the intersection rather than having a vertical curve right before the intersection
to level off the road. This was designed this way because by sacrificing a flatter grade (while
maintaining the maximum 3% grade at intersection), the amount of earth that would be filled can
be drastically reduced and would be a more economically sound decision. By flattening the
curve out, there would be a length from station 120+00 to 160+00 that would have a
considerably large amount of fill volume required.

For the west alignment, the vertical curve was designed to match the terrain as closely as
possible, but posed some difficult grades to design to, such as the 7.42% grade for the second
tangent. In contrast to the east alignment, the west alignment was designed to approach the
intersection at a steadier and lower grade so that the approach to the intersection is safe and to
meet the requirements. Due to this, it can be seen how much of the hill will have to be excavated
to meet such requirements, something that is hard to minimize with such a changing and
unsteady terrain.

For more information regarding the specific details of both the east and west vertical alignments,
please see Appendix B for the vertical curve reports. At the back of the report includes the
printouts of the vertical alignments for east and west.

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5. Cross Section and Earth Work

To first start, the cross section of the roadway should be determined. For this project, the travel
width of the roadway is 12 feet with a 2% slope (normal crown) towards the shoulders, the
shoulder width is 8 feet with a 4% slope towards the clear zone, the clear zone width is 10 feet
with a 4% slope towards cut and fill area. The fill and cut area is determined using a 2(x):1(y)
slope ratio.

Afterwards, for each alignment a corridor was created. By doing this, cross sections were also
created every 20+00 stations, and on the Civil 3D file the right of way is displayed. By using
this data, the footprint of each corridor could be determined. The polyline command was used to
determine the total area of the corridor, the impact the corridor has on state forest, undeveloped
land, the historical sites, and the existing communities.

To summarize the impact that the footprint of the east and west alignments have on the land are
shown below.
Land Feature East Alignment (Acre) West Alignment (Acre)
State Forest 4.9 74.8
Undeveloped Land 43.1 70.7
Historic Sites 0 0
Existing Communities 0 0
Total 48 145.5

We can see how the west alignment affects the state forest much greater than the east alignment.
Similarly to what is discussed in the horizontal alignment, this poses the drivers and animals at
greater risk to each other. For example, animal crossings put the animals and, particularly, the
drivers at risk. The cars produce some threat to the surrounding state forest because of carbon
emissions, noise pollution, and dust (construction or heavy equipment passing through) for
example. Unlike the west alignment, the east requires two bridges instead of one; which can have
both benefits and disadvantages. Some disadvantages would include added cost to construct the
bridges, but more importantly, the transport of pollution from cars downstream to water life such
as dissolved carbon dioxide, trash, dust and so on. The best way to mitigate this would be to
cross the river perpendicularly and minimizing the amount of the road running parallel or

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alongside it. However an advantage would be is that it would allow animals to cross a road
without necessarily crossing on the road, but passing underneath it along the banks of the stream
or river.

Without going into too much details about the specific values on the fill and cut areas, the
following table gives a summary of how much earth is removed and added, and again, the risk of
pollution to environment and state forest when undergoing the tasks.
Alignment Total Cut-Volume (cyd) Total Fill-Volume (cyd)
East 0 460,500
West 2,914,163 754,330

Not only does the west alignment have the largest amount of fill and cut, it is also the alignment
with the most exposure to the state forests.

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6. Comparison of Alignments

The when comparing the two alignments, we see that the pavement cost is higher for the east
alignment because it is longer than the west and both pavement costs are fixed at $132.50 per
linear foot of road. The length of the east alignment is 16,225.89 feet compared to 13,667.19
feet for the west alignment.

Both alignments do not affect any existing communities or historical sites, so they will not need
to displace any houses or interfere directly with the communities. The main complaints, such as
noise, dirt, traffic and so on, may arise when the intersection is being constructed for both the SR
1025 and North Road. Besides that, most construction will occur in the forest between the
communities and people will only notice trucks sporadically when they have to transport
material and equipment, or when it is the end of the working day.

Safety is an important thing to consider when comparing the two alignments, one alignment may
be quite cheap, but if it exposes a lot of drivers, or workers at high risk, then it is not worth being
cheap. In general, the east alignment is quite safe because of the steady, and relatively flat
terrain in comparison to the west alignment. This will allow construction equipment to operate
safely. Since the west alignment is very steep at certain areas, this may pose a risk to
construction operators if special precautions are not met. The east exposes the drivers to less
area of the state forest which would increase the safety along that road versus the west with
respect to dangers that arise from animal interactions, such as unexpected animal crossings.
Conversely, the less area the road is subjected to the state forest also increases the safety for the
animals from human interactions, such a pollution, noise and collisions.

The cost of safety can be estimated by considering an area crash cost. In this project, it is
determined primarily from the length of the alignments considering each tangential and curve
components. The costs were associated over a 20 year period with an average daily traffic of
1500 vehicles for the first 10 years (2015-2024) and an average of 1600 vehicles for the next 10
years (2025-2034). With this information, the number of roadway segment accidents per year
are determined taking into consideration accident modification factors for both the vertical grade

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and the horizontal sections. From this, it is determined that fatalities contribute to 1.5% of this,
severe injuries contribute to 5.3% of this, evident injuries contribute to 12.4% of this, possible
injuries contribute to 13.9% of this and finally property damage only contributes to 66.9%. Each
category has a specific cost associated with each crash, with fatality being roughly $4 million
and property damage only being $7,400 per crash. With all these things combined, we can see
that the west alternative is the better option costing $2 million and the east alternative costing
$2.2 million.

On the other hand, east has a considerably less earthwork cost associated with it because it
follows the terrain much better than the west alignment due to the fact that the terrain is much
flatter and that the roadway is restricted to design requirements. To compare numbers, we find
that the west alignment has a larger footprint by a factor of 3, which is 145.5 acres compared to
the 48 acres of the east footprint. More specifically, the west alignment is exposed to 74.8 acres
of state forest compared to the 4.9 acres exposed by the east alignment. Due to reasons
discussed in the horizontal alignment, the east alignment is a much better alternative because it
exposes the drivers less to animal dangers, and exposes the animals to less dangers of the
construction, pollution and so on, from the roadway. Another factor to consider is how each
road will affect the animals’ accessibility to streams or rivers. Both alignments allows animals in
each section of state forest that it intersects, accessibility to water without needing to cross the
road. Both alignments meet this criteria, however east is the better option. East will have much
less earthwork and right-of-way costs associated with it. Likewise, the right of way can look
completely foreign to animals, so the strange terrain will deter animals from crossing that and the
road, limiting the movement of the animals and creating isolation.

It is important to note that earthwork estimates are much more accurate for the east alignment
than the west alignment. This is because projections of the cross section between stations were
considered in the calculations of the cut and fill volume. This limits the west alignment because
the cross sections only shows 200 feet to the side of the roadway, and in some instances, the cut
and fill volumes may not intersect to existing terrain. We would have to provide, say a cross
section that was 600 to 800 feet to the side of the roadway for this to be much more accurate. To
illustrate this, the following snippets are shown below.

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This is an example of a west alignment where the cross section is too small to determine the
accurate area of the cut volume because the cut area does not intersect the existing terrain.

All of the east’s cross sections intersect the existing terrain and hence calculations are much
more accurate. See below:

Nonetheless, this does not directly affect the decision of which option is best for the earthworks
category because this will only increase the west alignment’s cost, and it is already astronomical
in comparison to the east. We can deduce that east is clearly the best option.

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In the grand scheme of thing, will the $0.2 million more for safety and the $0.3 million for
pavement costs be worth it? Ultimately the answer is no. The additional costs for the east
alignment is pennies compared to the effect that the west alignment has to the overall cost. The
table below shows the summary of the costs associated with both the east and west alignments.
Design Analysis Summary
Alternative Area Crash Cost/20yr Earthwork Cost Pavement Cost Right-of-way Cost Total Cost
East $2,207,894 $3,366,251 $2,149,930 $1,229,469 $8,953,544
West $1,986,864 $23,873,382 $1,810,903 $12,829,432 $40,500,580
East/West 111% 14% 119% 10% 22%
West/East 90% 709% 84% 1043% 452%

Finally, in addition to costs, it is important to consider how each route will affect user delays.
For transporting heavy equipment, it is best to keep the grade as minimal as possible because the
road does not have a passing lane, unless the driver overtakes, which is depended only on
whether there is enough distance on a straight segment or tangent. Also, if the road is too steep,
then heavy equipment will travel over it slower because the engine has to fight gravity. Also,
alignments with more curves will delay traffic due to drivers sometimes needing to break.

If the east alignment is analyzed, it has much flatter grades which would favor heavy equipment
travelling on it. With respect to west, the east alignment will have less user delay due to heavy
equipment driving. Both alignments however, have the same amount of curves and are relatively
straight with large radius curves, besides when it comes to an intersection. With respect to user
delays due to curves and straight segments, they will be relatively similar.

In the end, the east alignment will be the more desirable option for the user delays, the overall
cost, and the overall impact to the wildlife and the environment as discussed in this section, the
horizontal and vertical alignment section, and the cross-section and earthworks section.

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7. Conclusion

Without going into much detail, it is clearly evident that the East Alignment (route) is the much
better alternative, the numbers speak for themselves: $8.5 million versus a minimum of $40.5
million for the west alignment. Now could the comparison have been much more difficult to
determine?

Looking back on the process used in this report, there is one distinctive area that could be
improved for the west alignment so that the difference was not night and day. The vertical
alignment could have matched the existing terrain much better than what was done in this report.
For example, see the following snippets below:

The roadway cuts through a tremendous amount of earth to keep the grade around 2%. To meet
design requirements, but to go more extreme, the road could be designed as follows. The
following is a demonstration of grades and earthwork cut and fill, it does not show specific curve
design details.

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This slight modification will decrease the cut and fill volumes for the earthworks and ultimately
reduce the costs of that and the right-of-way.

Apart from this area of improvement, the verdict still stands that:
The East Alignment is the desirable option.

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 Appendix A

Attached to this Appendix Are:

1. East Alignment Horizontal Curve Report Table

2. West Alignment Horizontal Curve Report Table

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 Appendix B

Attached to this Appendix Are:

1. East Alignment Vertical Curve Report Table

2. West Alignment Vertical Curve Report Table

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 Appendix C

Attached to this Appendix are:

1. Safety Functions
2. Safety Costs
3. Pavement Costs
4. Right of Way Costs
5. Earthworks Calculation Table
For both the East and West Alignments.

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 List of Drawings

East Horizontal Alignment ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 of 7

West Horizontal Alignment --------------------------------------------------------- ------------------2 of 7
Typical Cross Section --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 of 7
Plan/Profile East Alternative ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 of 7
East Alternative Cross Sections ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 5 of 7
Plan/Profile West Alternative ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6 of 7
West Alternative Cross Sections --------------------------------------------------------------------- 7 of 7

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