For the project of an asphalt pavement through mechanistic methods, two different ways of characterizing the traffic can be considered for design purposes: through the determination of the number of equivalent standard axles of 80 KN expected in the design lane, or through the implementation of the load spectra, for the different configurations of axles expected during the service life.In both approaches, the aim is to determine the state of stresses to which the pavement structure will be subjected, in order to be able to determine, based on fatigue laws representative of the properties of the materials, the deterioration consumption due to fatigue of the asphalt layers and permanent deformation in the subgrade.In this work, the modeling of a proposed asphalt pavement structure for the Riohacha -Maicao road corridor has been carried out, for which the BISAR program from Shell and the TRRL fatigue laws have been used.According to the results obtained, it could be established that in cases in which the type of design traffic is characterized by a low proportion of vehicles circulating with axle loads above the legal maximum, the required design thicknesses are essentially the same for the two forms of traffic representation.