Planning and Design of Highways According to AASHTO Standards Using Remote Sensing Technology (Samarra City as a Case Study)

The design of highways linking urban areas represents the largest economic cost to the municipality, in addition to the time, effort and high cost in providing field surveys and data needed for design and implementation purposes. Therefore, this research focused on proposing a path and design for a highway linking two urban areas within the city of Samarra, in the Salah Al-Din Governorate, northern Iraq. The first area is Qadisiyah neighborhood, which meets the highways that enter the city of Samarra. The second area is the Old City, which is characterized by a large number of historic and archeological sites, and need a highway connecting them with the Qadisiya neighborhood to facilitate the arrival of visitors and residents to their archaeological sites. The route and design of the highway have been proposed according to AASHTO's international design standards, with a high capacity and level of service. It achieves easy arrival between the two areas and their associated regions by choosing the best path for this road, taking into consideration the geometric design of the road that represents the shortest path, the lowest junctions (two junctions), the lowest number of horizontal and vertical curves. The research was based on remote sensing techniques for design purposes, using modern satellite images for the city of Samarra, in addition to the specialized programs in road design (GIS & Civil 3D Land Desktop), thus its main outcome was planning a route according to AASHTO standard and hierarchy of transport levels to reducing the time, effort and cost of data collection purposes that pertain to the design, and outputs with accurate results ready for implementation.