Goddard, Brent Donald2023-06-072023-06-071991https://unbscholar.lib.unb.ca/handle/1882/32910The roughness of highway pavements in New Brunswick are a major concern to road users. The impact of road roughness on vehicle operating cost must be reduced to lower the total cost of the road mode. To alleviate road user costs investments in the construction and maintainance of pavements must be increased to control th eproblem of rough roads getting rougher faster. The New Brunswick Department of Transportation (NBDOT) has purchased road roughness monitoring equipment to set higher standards for pavement construction procedures. Therefore factors that directly affet the rate of deterioration of a pavement such as traffic, environmental and pavement thickness are examined. The report includes a fairly in depth description and operation of the equipment that NBDOT has employed in monitoring road roughness. The study involved a comparative analysis of current Riding Comfort Index (RCI) data with historical RCI data. The data were compiled from road life diagrams and the analysis provided roughness rates that were categorized corresponding to volumes of traffic and geographical locations. The factors such as pavement layer thickness and traffic loadings were not available to determine the deterioration of highway pavements from construction roughness. The results of the study indicate the importance of maintaining a complete monitoring program of highway roughness, construction records, and traffic loadings.electronicen-CAhttp://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ecsenior reportHildebrand, EldoE., HildebrandCivil Engineering