Suitable Pavement Design for Bus Rapid Transit (Case-study- Tehran)

Several years after operation of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in Tehran, considerable problems have been appeared in pavement structure of stations and routes. This research collects and evaluates pavement distress in high traffic Tehran BRT lines, using pavement management system (PMS) method to find out the fundamental and crucial problems. It was found that the major damage which needs considerable attention is the pavement rutting. Other distress in AC pavement are longitudinal and transversal cracking, polished aggregates, shoving, fatigue cracking (e.g., alligator cracking), and joint and slab breaking in the rigid pavement. The study eventually suggests and consequently designs suitable pavements based on the pavement distress types in BRT’s stations and routs and several other considerations such as Tehran’s climatic conditions, existing equipment executive concerns and facilities, pavement construction speed, quality and performance, capital costs and overlay and maintenance costs. The designed Pavements discussed in this paper are asphalt pavement with black base layer, roller compacted concrete pavement with AC surface layer, jointed reinforced concrete pavement and fiber reinforced concrete pavement.