Haul Road and Detour Maintenance

Summary:

Highway detours route heavy trucks onto local roads not designed for the frequency of heavy weights, which results in accelerated pavement consumption. Reimbursements to counties are often not enough to restore the roads to their pre-detour service life condition. This project investigated methods to predict pavement consumption and developed an algorithm to map detours away from the most vulnerable roads. While this framework represents a promising starting point to map cost-savings detour routes, the outputs are based on many assumptions, and better-quality data is needed for more accurate assessments of pavement condition and traffic patterns used in the model.

Final Deliverables:

• Haul Road and Detour Maintenance (Report #2026-06)
• Limiting Pavement Damage from Detours (Research Summary)

Related Materials:

• Limiting Pavement Damage from Detours  (Blog Post)

Related Research:

• MnDOT Haul/Detour Routes - Impacts on local roads

Project Personnel:

Principal Investigator:  Mihai Marasteanu

Co-Principal Investigator:  Michael Levin

Technical Liaison:  Timothy Andersen

Project Coordinator:  Marcus Bekele

Panel Members: 
Charles Kremer - District 7
Christine Dulian - District 6
James Roberts - District 6
Paul Johns - Construction & Innovative Contracting
Scott Zeidler - District 3