Innovation of the Month:
Pavement
Preservation
(When, Where, and How)
Transportation agencies across the
country are deploying pavement preservation
strategies to extend pavement service life, keep road networks in good repair,
and save money.
Elmore County, AL, for example,
uses a 100-point scale to grade its 800 miles of paved roads every 2 years and
applies preservation treatments such as fog seal, slurry seal, microsurfacing,
and cape seals to improve the road network over time. In 2018, 80 percent of
the county’s paved roads were graded at 80 or above, compared to 45 percent in
2004.
The Puerto Rico Highway
and Transportation Authority (PRHTA) developed a pavement preservation plan, which
included new pavement preservation specifications. The plan will help PRHTA
determine when and where to apply preservation techniques versus major pavement
rehabilitation based on the level of traffic, pavement condition, and
environmental aspects.
The Tennessee Department of Transportation
(TDOT) is loading pavement construction project segment data into its pavement
management system, including historical project locations, costs, and types,
such as mill and inlay, microsurfacing, and thin lift overlay. TDOT developed
deterioration models for each major pavement construction and pavement
distress. The agency built project selection decision trees to use with
deterioration models to predict future pavement conditions at various funding
levels.
Read the
Missouri Department of Transportation’s “Concrete
Repair Best Practices,” a
report consolidating case studies from several States on six concrete pavement
restoration techniques. Also see technical briefs for each technique: cross-stitching, dowel
bar retrofit, diamond
grinding, full
depth repair, partial
depth repair, and slab
stabilization.
For information and technical assistance on pavement
preservation, contact Jason
Dietz of the Federal Highway Administration Resource
Center, Thomas
Van of the FHWA Office of Infrastructure, or Antonio
Nieves of the FHWA Office of Asset Management,
Pavements, and Construction.
Free Webinars on
EDC-5 Innovations
Register for 10 orientation webinars to learn about
the Every Day Counts round five (EDC-5) innovations that the transportation
community will deploy in 2019 and 2020. Scheduled in September, the 90-minute
webinars will describe the benefits of each innovation, provide examples of how
the innovation is being used in transportation programs, and identify resources
available to facilitate deployment. See the
schedule and register for individual sessions at the EDC-5 innovation orientation webinars page.
Florida Expands Deployment of Automated
Traffic Signal Performance Measures
The Florida
Department of Transportation (FDOT) and local transportation agencies continue
to implement automated traffic signal performance
measures (ATSPMs) to
manage traffic more effectively and improve mobility. After the initial
installation of 22 signals on the U.S. 90 corridor, the city of Tallahassee
expanded ATSPM implementation to 40 additional signals. The city plans to
address its main challenge of data consumption by moving to virtualization,
which allows for a physical server to host one or more virtual servers,
reducing hardware costs and improving system robustness and adaptability.
With data storage support from FDOT, Seminole County
implemented ATSPMs for its 383 signals in less than 2 years. The county reports
that ATSPMs have reduced the need to conduct traffic counts, making funding for
data collection activities available for other initiatives. FDOT also installed
ATSPMs on the Fowler Avenue corridor in Tampa and Hillsborough County using
virtualization, with one physical server hosing the database and another the
website and applications. For information, contact Raj Ponnaluri of FDOT.
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