Public Roads: A Journal of Highway Research and Development, Vol. 44 No. 4

Tignor, Samuel; Lindley, Jeff; GangaRao, Hota V.S.; Moulton, Lyle K.; Gordon, Donald A. · 1981 · ROSA P / United States. Government Printing Office

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Summary

This document presents two distinct research articles from the March 1981 issue of *Public Roads*, a journal of the Federal Highway Administration. The first article, by Samuel C. Tignor and Jeffrey A. Lindley, investigates the safety impacts of resurfacing two-lane rural highways. The second, by Hota V. S. GangaRao and Lyle K. Moulton, establishes tolerable movement criteria for highway bridges to prevent structural damage and ensure serviceability. Tignor and Lindley address conflicting beliefs regarding whether resurfacing highways increases accident rates due to higher operating speeds. To resolve this, they analyzed accident data from 59 test sections (657 km) across nine states, derived from a broader skid reduction study, as well as supplementary data from 24 sections in Alabama. The study focused exclusively on two-lane, rural, uncontrolled-access highways that underwent resurfacing without other geometric improvements. Using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov two-sample test, the sign test, and the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed rank test, the authors compared accident rates before and after resurfacing. The results showed no statistically significant difference in accident rates at the 95 percent confidence level. Although average accident rates increased slightly (2.2 percent in the primary dataset and 11.85 percent in the Alabama dataset), these changes were determined to be random occurrences rather than systematic effects. The authors conclude that analysts should not estimate safety benefits or costs solely based on resurfacing for these highway types. GangaRao and Moulton present a design methodology for steel highway bridges to manage foundation movements. Combining field data with analytical studies, they developed criteria addressing both strength and serviceability. For strength, they propose a working stress design procedure where allowable stresses are reduced to compensate for stress increases caused by predicted differential settlements. They provide design equations and graphical aids to calculate these stress increases for continuous bridges with up to five spans. For serviceability, they established specific tolerable limits based on field observations: longitudinal angular distortion should not exceed 0.004 for continuous bridges and 0.005 for simply supported bridges; horizontal abutment movement should be limited to 38 mm (1.5 in); and deck cracking is controlled by ensuring total negative stress remains within AASHTO limits. Additionally, they provide a criterion for bridge vibrations, suggesting dynamic deflections are tolerable if the ratio of forced to natural frequencies is less than 0.5 or greater than 1.5. The authors note that criteria for concrete bridges require further research due to time-dependent material behaviors.

Key finding

Resurfacing two-lane rural highways without other improvements does not significantly change accident rates.

Methodology

dataset

Sample size: 59

Provenance

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Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

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• roadway lighting effects