Safety of transporting granular road construction materials in urban environment

Abstract

This paper reviews how the technical transport traffic density impacts the safety of the overall urban traffic near road construction and repair sites. We demonstrate that there is a correlation between the load capacity of the dump trucks that are used in construction, the cost of construction, and traffic safety along the granular construction materials’ transportation route. We propose a safety evaluation for the traffic flow that includes construction dump trucks, based on the route safety index. We also develop a methodology for rationalizing the preferable load capacity of dump trucks as part of an excavation and transportation machine fleet operating in an urban environment, accounting for the traffic safety along their routes. Our study includes a practical example of using our methodology, based on road repair works at a specific site in Saint Petersburg.