Demonstrating Crashworthiness of Bridge Railings in Maine

Abstract

The “New England steel bridge rail” family of bridge rails, which were designed and tested under the auspices of the New England Transportation Consortium (NETC), has been installed on roadways in New England for more than 20 years. Recently, guidelines for the assembly and analysis of in-service performance evaluation (ISPE) data were published in NCHRP Report 1010. An ISPE using the NCHRP Report 1010 data collection and analysis methodology was conducted for the state of Maine. This paper summarizes those findings. The crash dataset used in this ISPE included 99 crash cases that occurred over an 8-year period on public roads within the state of Maine. The objective of this ISPE was to evaluate the field performance of the NETC bridge railings with regard to occupant risk, structural adequacy, and postimpact vehicle trajectory under real-world conditions. The Maine ISPE demonstrated that the NETC bridge railings had similar or better field performance than other similar systems across all three performance outcomes. This field performance demonstrated the crashworthiness of the NETC bridge railings and supports their continued use. This paper summarizes the results of this ISPE.