The Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) technology offers technical possibilities to build high speed transport networks and enables the operator to react quickly to the customers' capacity requirements. Furthermore the advanced SONET equipment, with standardized control and operation features, provides opportunities for new services, such as broadband services, and cost-effective ways to enhance existing services, such as network survivability improvement. But SONET technology can also create a certain degree of complexity in building cost-efficient network, especially in case of SONET Self-Healing Ring (SHR). It is a challenge for network planner to find an effective way to select the most economical SONET ring, or combination of rings, for given demands between a set of nodes that are supposed to be connected in a certain type of ring configuration. Three types of ring are standard today: path unidirectional, 2-fiber line protection bidirectional and 4-fiber line protection bidirectional. For a given network, the choosing of ring architecture based on economical considerations involves two major factors. They are capacity requirement and equipment cost. Capacity requirements of different SONET ring architectures depend upon different conditions. While facility line rate, which is a key factor in deciding what kind self-healing ring can be deployed economically on these requirements. Routing decisions play a key role in deciding the ring capacities required, especially for bidirectional rings. In the paper, we will make the economic study on how SONET SHR architecture works out with a variety of demand patterns, to find criteria for ring selection. We first present two efficient demand loading algorithms for BSHR capacity calculation, and then analyze the results from their application on a variety of demand patterns. The economic study for SONET SHR networks based on different architectures are also discussed.