Administration of Abnormal Vehicles

 

In Ireland, vehicles which do don’t comply with the weight or dimension limits specified in the regulations must apply for a permit before they are legally allowed to travel on the roads. As part of the processing for issuing these permits it is important that due consideration is given to the bridges which they will traverse on their journey  Commissioned by the Irish National Roads Authority (NRA) ROD-IS has developed a software tool which can be used to enable local authorities and law enforcement agencies to administer and manage the issuing of these permits on the Irish Major Inter-Urban (MIU) Network.  The software has been developed to be user friendly so that it can be used by technically competent engineering staff of the local authority that do not necessarily possess any specialist knowledge of bridge analysis algorithms and optimisation procedures.

 

As part of this work ROD-IS carried out;

 

  • A detailed statistical analysis of UK Weigh-in-Motion records;

  • A detailed statistical analysis of the Eirspan database (database of bridges in Ireland);

  • A detailed statistical analysis of Irish abnormal vehicle permit records;

  • and subsequently;

  • Developed a suite of abnormal vehicle ‘silhouettes’;

  • Developed a software tool which can be used when issuing permits for abnormal vehicles;

  • Classified a ‘Green Motorway Network’ in Ireland, a network on which the studied types of -abnormal vehicles up to 100 tonnes are likely to be issued a permit.