Austin, TX N.W. Garrick April 2008 CE 254 Highway Design Project Spring 2008

Introduction Due date: Friday, April 25 The purpose of this assignment is to help you gain a greater understanding of how the alignment of a highway is constructed. You will do this through a processing of “reverse engineering” a number of existing highways. We now have the capability to do this relatively easily with the power of new tools such as Google Earth. The highways chosen represent both Connecticut highways and a number of highways from other states which have been praised for the quality of their design. From this exercise you will gain an appreciation of the wide variation in approach taken in developing highways and learn about some of the factors that distinguish these different approaches to design

Assignment: Horizontal Alignment 1.Determine minimum and maximum radius used over the section of highway from A to B. 2.Produce an engineering oriented sketch of the horizontal alignment of the highways showing i) station of the PC, PI, PT, ii) the radius (and degree of curvature), and iii) deflection angle (Δ), for each curve on the section of highway. 3.Develop a table comparing maximum and minimum radii and the tangent to curve length ratio for each of the designated highways. 4.Write a short synopsis comparing the alignments in terms of appearance and relative use of curves and tangents. Do this assignment for all four alignments given. You can find the alignments by searching in Google World using latitude and longitude in the form 41 10' N 73 20' W.

Assignment: Vertical Alignment 1.Produce a plot showing the vertical profile along the highway (you will need to get the elevation directly from Google Earth). 2.Produce a 1/R and 1/K plot for the alignment. These plots should be placed so that you can compare the relative position of vertices of the horizontal and vertical curves. 3.Write a short synopsis comparing the extent to which the horizontal and vertical alignments seem to have been coordinated in the alignment design. Do this assignment for the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Merritt Parkway between stations 1 and 2. Use a larger scale than that shown in the accompanying maps – do not worry about attaining a great deal of accuracy.

5000 ft A B I-95 East Lyme

1000 ft A B 1 2 Blue Ridge Parkway

5000 ft A B New York Thruway

5000 ft A B 1 2 Merritt Parkway