Evaluation of the economic feasibility of weigh-in-motion in Canada

Over weighted trucks is the cause of many issues including pavement premature deterioration, mistimed maintenance, and high pavement life cycle cost. To comply with weight enforcement and to preserve highway, Weigh-In-Motion (WIM) has been focused on using state-of-the-art sensing technology to continuously collect vehicle weights, speeds, vehicle classes, and various types of traffic data as vehicles travel over a set of sensors (embedded or portable), without interruption of traffic flows. This paper will examine the capability and applicability of WIM from economy prospect in Canada. A complete benefit-cost study in three aspects, delay time benefit, safety benefit, and level of enforcement benefit, for Canadian road network are quantified. Variables that alter the magnitudes of the benefits and costs are carefully chosen. A sensitivity analysis and a break-even analysis are performed. An application of WIM in Canada is addressed to demonstrate the economic feasibility. The analysis result shows that an integrated benefit-cost ratio of 12 can be achieved. WIM deployment is economically feasible for the circumstances in Canada.