In the widening gulf between municipal budgets and road pavement quality, is there any hope the roads will get fixed?
Every mayor in America – and Canada and much of the rest of the world – gets elected on a promise to fix potholes. But when elected officials settle into the executive suite they often find out they have about 30 cents available for every dollar needed to fix those potholes – and that putting off those repairs for three or four years will mean the math gets much, much worse. The pavement deteriorates exponentially over time while road maintenance budgets shrink.
Making matters worse, the throw-and-go method of using hot mix has two additional deficiencies. One is that its use is restricted in cold and rainy conditions. The other is because a low-quality hot mix rarely lasts more than a few months. Reapplication of hot-mix in warmer months multiplies material and labor costs several times over. Meanwhile, those mayors and their departments of streets get an earful from dissatisfied citizens who have damaged cars and drive in slower traffic due to rough pavement.

A growing number of cities, counties and businesses, however, are working with a new kind of asphalt that solves these problems. A <a href="http://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/">polymer-modified cold mix asphalt</a>, already in use for more than 15 years in a variety of applications across the U.S., is being used in the northern reaches of Canada as well as other extreme environments around the world. The results are encouraging.
Polymer-modified asphalt applied in temperature extremes 
This cold-mix asphalt, provided exclusively by The EZ Street Company (based in Miami, Florida with worldwide distribution in more than 20 countries), has been largely marketed as a permanent pothole repair material. More recently, it is used as a top layer in larger scale paving projects. With operational and performance advantages that translate into net cost reductions, it has been described as "a game-changing product" by Aggregates & Roadbuilding, Canada's Rock to Road Magazine.
In their November/December 2010 issue, the magazine provides a case history of a project in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, where a resurfacing project where the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/ezstreetcanada#p/u/0/4lldSs7bof0">EZ Street product</a> was used on a 10 meter x 100 meter section of roadway, which was laid over a layer of gravel in -6 degree Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) air temperatures. Compaction with traditional equipment application reduced two 2-inch lifts to about 3 inches of pavement. No heat process was used. The road was reopened immediately after compaction.
As Aggregates & Roadbuilding explains, the cold mix product is also hydrophobic, meaning it can be installed in standing water – a key point given the propensity of puddles to happen in potholes. Other product features: permanency (repaired utility cuts and potholes from the 1990s are still intact), it can be stockpiled (available for use at any time, without carefully-timed trips to the hot mix plant) and it is traffic-ready immediately after installation.
In other words, if it works in the subarctic, it will work to fix potholes in Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, Minneapolis, New York, Boston and Chicago. In fact, many smaller communities near these large cities have used the product for many years.
Near wet Vancouver, British Columbia, where frequent freeze-thaw cycles are tough on pavement, a December 2010 application was both successful and yielded another benefit: noticeably quieter pavement. The contractor using the materials said, "It is like pressing a mute button when traffic passes over the pavement."
Another extreme application was in the El Teniente Copper Mine, roadways that run deep inside this mine at 2,300 meters (7,500 feet) above sea level in the Chilean Andes. About 375 kilometers of the subterranean roads are paved, which was traditionally done every six to twelve months (with hot mix asphalt) because constantly running water and heavy equipment wore it down quickly. The <a href="http://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/projects/073008_el_teniente_mine.html">polymer-modified cold mix</a> was first used in 2001. Mine managers found that material, equipment and labor costs were less expensive and provided a more uniform surface. The road is still in use today in 2011.
Back in the U.S., the polymer-modified cold mix asphalt was used to <a href="http://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/projects/2008_07_cdot_hwy36.html">repair longitudinal cracking on highway</a> I-36 outside of Boulder, Colorado. This was applied under warmer conditions – air temperatures were 70 degrees – and during the night so as to minimize traffic disruption. Three tons of the asphalt effectively repaired the seam over a 2-mile stretch of highway in a single application. This was after a different, lower-quality cold mix asphalt formulations and hot rubber crack fillers had failed to complete the job.
Application advantages of polymer-modified cold mix asphalt
As paving contractors and department of transportation administrators understand, the costs of road building and repair includes four factors: machinery, materials, labor and material waste. A fifth factor, traffic interruption before and during repairs, is a cost borne by the public and no less a consideration when planning pavement maintenance.
<a href="http://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/">EZ Street cold asphalt</a> requires no special equipment, other than to disable heating machinery, needs to be used. As a material, the polymer-modified cold mix is about 20 percent more expensive (variable by region), but labor costs are generally less because there is no "race the clock" requirement to rake and level a cooling hot mix. Note this offers a worker-safety advantage as well, and the learning curve for work crews is relatively short and flat. Waste is virtually eliminated because the product stores up to six months, often longer, in stockpiles.
Those advantages are multiplied if they reduce the need to re-repair rough pavement, as is often the case with hot mix – particularly for potholes repaired in adverse conditions in winter or spring, which frequently must be redone in summer. A 2010 study published by Trevecca Nazarene University under Porter King, PhD. by student James Gregory Bearden looked at these factors of man-hours and materials required with <a href="http://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/about/asphalt-repair-costs-savings.php">traditional hot mix and the polymer-modified cold mix</a>. The study concluded that the latter provided a 72 percent reduction in net costs.
As the Yellowknife, N.W.T. experience shows, winter-set repairs are just as permanent as those done in June – which is particularly important in climates where the summers are short.
Resilient enough for jet aircraft
If anywhere there is a stretch of pavement that matters, it is on airport runways. For example, officials at Chicago's Midway Airport had to close one runway in January 2011 for several hours after an epoxy material used to patch a pothole became dislodged. An Internet search shows that potholed runways are a scourge in developing nations such as India and several countries in Central America and Africa.
The Miami-based company's polymer-modified cold mix has been used effectively at <a href="http://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/projects/072908_santiago_intl_airport.html">Santiago (Chile) International Airport</a>, <a href="http://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/projects/2009_langar_airfield.html">Langar Civil Airfield</a> in Nottingham, UK and Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, DC. According to Aggregates & Roadbuilding, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers evaluated the product on its use for expeditious pavement repairs and it earned the highest stability scores among nine materials tested.
Over the next few years, cities, counties, states and the federal highway administrators – as well as owners of private property such as shopping centers and residential developments – will give close scrutiny to the difficult equation of aging pavement and thinning budgets. A rational approach will be to consider all costs, beyond materials, involved in pavement maintenance.
Polymer-modified cold mix asphalt might just change the game, as Aggregates & Roadbuilding predicts.

Polymer-Modified Asphalt a “Game Changer” in Cold, Hot and Wet Conditions

Temperature extremes have a way of driving innovation. The Inuit, centuries before there were Ray Bans, would strap bone, tusks or bark to their faces, with a thin slit cut to allow their eyes to peer out. This would protect them from snow blindness, a real malady when a landscape of clean white snow and blinding sunshine would coincide. Perhaps it was something far ahead of its time: They looked like something that might easily be worn today by pop singer Lady Gaga.
Researchers in Minnesota, another snow-swept land (albeit a bit further south), are being equally inventive about how to fix potholes in the future. They are testing microwave technology to heat potholes in midwinter as a method to fix pavement before springtime – when those potholes will be larger, more dangerous and more expensive. Taking it a step further, the researchers are looking at using locally mined and recycled materials as a means of making the technology work even better.

Fixing smaller and icier potholes nearly impossible
To understand why this is important, think about a cold, icy pothole. Just about everyone knows that water expands as it freezes, which is why a pavement crevice will get bigger when temperatures hit 32 degrees (F) or cooler. Add to that the cycles between temperatures above and below freezing – which can happen 40 times or more in a season, such as during the months of February, March and April in places like Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, the Dakotas, northern New York and New England. Those little cracks of February become the potholes of death by April.
But with traditional pothole repair methods, only a temporary hot-mix asphalt is typically used in the winter months. These are the "throw and go" pothole fixes that are simply intended to mend road hazards for a few weeks or months, until a better filler can be used when the weather warms. Compounding the problem is how most hot-mix asphalt will not adhere when the hole is wet – it needs to be cleared of debris and moisture in order to last, which under most winter conditions is all but impossible to accomplish. The practice is wasteful, as both the asphalt filler and labor costs are doubled or tripled with return trips in the months that follow.
Another additional cost happens when the asphalt trucks carry hot mix that cools before it is used – it must be returned to the plant for reprocessing and reheating. In colder regions, the process is so ineffective that hot mix plants just shut down entirely for the winter.
Heat, dry and fill that pothole – for good?
This is why microwave technology proves to be tempting. Microwave Utilities, Inc. (MUI) of Monticello, Minnesota worked with Roseville, Minnesota consultant David Hopstock to test a pothole repair method this past winter at a handful of locations in the state, including Duluth, in the winter of 2010-2011. The test was conducted under the auspices of the Natural Resources Research Institute of the University of Minnesota Duluth.
MUI more typically is in the business of thawing frozen-solid ground during winter to service gas and electric utility companies. But in this project, a 950 megahertz transmitter was aimed at potholes to heat and dry them, then to heat patch materials that variously included standard hot-mix asphalt, recycled roof shingles and taconite tailings, a coarse waste product from Minnesota's Iron Range taconite plants.
The taconite makes good pavement filler but also happens to interact well with microwaves. "We used taconite to keep microwave energy focused on potholes by attracting microwaves," explains MUI's Kirk Kjellberg. "This helps heat surface area and the mix faster while helping to keep the microwaves from penetrating too deep into the ground."
The researchers tested a variety of pothole filler mixes in Duluth and Anoka County, some distance away. While a full analysis will not be complete until later in 2011, all holes have reportedly held up without requiring a second or third application – already an improvement over standard mid-winter temporary fixes.
When their analysis is complete, we might discover these researchers are as forward thinking as the ancient Inuit.

Minnesota Test Nukes Potholes

One sign the pothole problem in Europe is increasing is when researchers come up with new and novel ways of managing them. In this case, it involves brightly colored asphalt.
In Europe, potholes are no less a problem than in the U.S. Roads built there before and after World War II are reaching the latter stages of their expected lifespan, and money is lacking to keep up on repairs.

The website WhatCar.com reports that motorists in the U.K. are spending £3 million per day on car damage caused by potholes. Average repair bills per car include £277 for wheels and tires and £312 for suspension work. On the heels of a particularly bad winter in the 2010-2011 winter, the country has added an additional £100 million ($159 million US) to fund road repairs. (These numbers are roughly comparable with the costs of pothole damage to cars in America, it should be noted.)
Finding potholes would not seem to be the problem, what with cars sustaining so much damage as they ply their way across the roads, straßen, straten, rues, strade, ulice, gator, utcákon, улицы, δρόμους, and strydoedd* of Europe. But at least one preventive measure being pursued is toward early detection of road wear through a color-coded system.
Automotive website <a href="http://www.caradisiac.com/Technique-du-jaune-fluo-pour-eviter-les-nids-de-poule-sur-la-route-39553.htm" target="_blank">Caradisiac.com</a> reports that Italian researchers are testing a way to put in a fluorescent yellow layer just under the top layer of asphalt. As a road wears or when cracks develop, the yellow will appear as a sign that asks for a repair on that precise spot. Presumably, road repair crews can simply drive the highways and byways, looking for the yellow color.
"The idea is not to propose an invincible tarmac (pavement)," says the site. "But rather to prevent potholes that form due to wear and time." Early detection of fissures and other breaks in pavement can prevent larger and more expensive problems from developing when those nascent potholes are filled or otherwise repaired with sealants.
Presumably, the neon yellow also serves as warning to motorists before the pothole is actually repaired.
*"roads" as translated into the languages of Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Czech Republic, Sweden, Hungary, Russia, Greece and Wales.

Europeans Test Neon Asphalt Layer As Pothole Alert

When the City of New York repaved a section of Fifth Avenue twenty years ago along the front of the Plaza Hotel with something called glassphalt, the pavement sparkled from tiny flecks of recycled glass in the aggregate mix. But it was neither the recycled nature of the glass, nor the resilience with which the material can stand up to the traffic and temperature swings of the Big Apple, that caught the attention of the hotel owner, Donald Trump. The famous real estate magnate just liked how the street glistened.
And he wanted more of this glassphalt, according to a 1991 Knight-Ridder wire story. True to form, Trump demanded that the other streets ringing the hotel get the same shimmering, glass-infused pavement.
Glassphalt has been used in other parts of the U.S. and across the world in the twenty years since. In fact, it first arose in the 1970s as a potential way to recycle the considerable volume of amber, blue, yellow, green and clear glass bottles in the waste stream. Annually, approximately seven million tons of glass are disposed of in landfills.
The problem with recycling glass is that mixed colors in the recycling stream mean that a specific color cannot be achieved – clear bottles cannot use amber material, for example. Which is what led, 40 years ago, to exploration of other uses of glass where color would not be an issue. Researchers found that by mixing it into pavement, where color was irrelevant, it could work functionally and possibly in a cost-effective way.
The economics of turning that tonnage of waste glass into pavement is enticing. Using it could reduce municipal costs associated with disposal. And on a pound-for-pound basis, crushed glass processing is sometimes less expensive than gravel and sand. And while extensive data on the durability of asphalt roads seems lacking, we know anecdotally that some of those roads from the 1970s on forward have held up pretty well. It just might be better pavement in certain applications.
So why is glassphalt not used routinely in road building? There are several problems:
Variable rock economics. At the most, the glass content would comprise between 10 and 20 percent of the pavement. So standard asphalt-making equipment and procedures would always be used, but this would reduce the costs from aggregate (crushed rock) that makes up the bulk of asphalt. Aggregate pricing varies from location to location, a function of raw sourcing and the distance required for transport. So in some areas, glass provides a cost-effective dilution, but in other areas not.
Municipal variables (recycling and asphalt manufacture). According to the Glassphalt Paving Handbook (Asphalt Institute Manual Series No. 4, 1989, University of Missouri-Rolla), "The best possibility for sustained production of glassphalt is in communities with municipal asphalt plants, because the community can make a direct correlation between the extra costs incurred in glassphalt installation and the savings from diverted solid waste tip fees." The handbook goes on to say this is not the case in most of the U.S.
Not a simple substitution. The Glassphalt Paving Handbook also makes a point of how you cannot simply feed broken or crushed glass into the aggregate. After collecting the glass (by whichever method the municipality uses), it needs to be processed to a specific size (aggregate), after which batch modifiers must be altered along with the asphalt manufacturing operation.
Limited applications. While the presence of glass in the pavement presents no danger to humans or damage to vehicle tires, the skid resistance of glassphalt pavement is slightly less than that of standard asphalt. This then limits its use to lower-speed roadways – and prevents it from being used to build 65 mph highways.
In summary, the Clean Washington Center, a Seattle non-profit group that serves as a clearinghouse on recyclable materials of all kinds, says that "a great number of glassphalt demonstration projects have been performed in cities around the country. Most of these projects have not progressed past the pilot state because of economics."
Separately, a 1999 study conducted (by the NYC Bureau of Management Audit) of glass recycling programs in eight major cities – New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, San Diego, Philadelphia, Baltimore and San Francisco – found that only New York was sending its glass to glassphalt plants, and by that time it was not actually used by the city but sold to contractors working elsewhere. The program has apparently been discontinued since then because, according to Adrienne Esposito, executive director of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment, "it made the roads too slippery in the rain and too shiny."
Donald Trump might take issue with Esposito on the latter problem. Since when is there something that sparkles too much?
Durability of glassphalt
But even if used only for slow-zone streets, or as pothole fill, might the economics of glassphalt change if considered over the life of the roads?
Donald Schaefer, once the mayor of Baltimore, later the governor of Maryland and after that the state comptroller, believes it was a high-quality, long-lasting material. In 2000, he told Baltimore City Paper writer Charles Cohen, "If I had to do it all over again, I'd do most of the streets in the city of Baltimore with glassphalt. It worked out well." Only one Baltimore area contractor was using the material as of ten years ago, and only as a pavement undercoating.
An article (January 2005) in Resource Recycling bemoans the fact that recycled glass is subject to commodity market pricing fluctuations and thus most uses for the material make for unreliable customers. But that's not always the case. The article cites Adams County, Wisconsin, where the price of cullet (crushed glass) is lower than hauled-in stone aggregate. The county claims their parking lots made with glassphalt "feature no potholes and require much less maintenance compared to projects constructed with gravel, saving even more money in the long term. Glass is also much easier to move around than gravel, according to contractors."
So while glassphalt can be cost effective and perhaps superior to standard asphalt in some applications, it is hard to imagine it becoming a widespread substitution for crushed stone in making durable roads. The relative economics simply do not work.
And there's no one that Donald Trump can fire to change that.
If not glass, how about polypropylene fabric?
Paving fabrics are another "unusual" road building technique that is used on 100 million square yards of road every year, according to Ray Myers, the executive director of the Asphalt Interlayer Association.
While there are some variations between the handful of manufacturers of paving fabric, the make up of waterproofing membranes (also known as paving fabrics or reinforcing fabrics) as originally developed by Phillips Petroleum Company in the 1970s are a non-woven polypropylene sheet, non-woven but needlepunched, that is heat-bonded on one side, along with a liquid asphalt tack coat. It is typically laid onto old pavement, especially where there are cracks, and then overlaid with new asphalt. An important feature of this material is its flexibility.
Pavement fabrics have one, very important job with regard to pavement preservation: to prevent moisture from entering. Studies show that use of paving fabrics extend the life of the pavement by 100% to 300%. But they cannot be placed on any existing pavement: this system can only work when placed on stable, even if cracked ("alligatored"), roads. It is not a pothole repair method.

Glassphalt: Have Roads Made with Recycled Glass Changed Pavement?

Pothole.info continues to be the go-to source of information on potholes and how they affect our lives.
According to television news reporter Mark Albert on KSAX-TV in Minneapolis, “The website Pothole.info says, ‘drivers will spend $330 each year repairing your car from these hazards.’”
That was the bad news. But there may be better news on the prairie horizon, says Albert. He notes that the potholes in the Twin Cities in 2011 are “historic.” Addressing that problem, <a href="http://ksax.com/article/stories/S2011729.shtml?cat=10230">Albert spoke</a> with a road crew working with pothole repair material from a Mendota Heights, Minn. company, TCC Materials. They are testing a pothole repair method using taconite aggregates, derived from iron ore mined in the considerable iron range areas of Minnesota.

Reportedly a more expensive patching material than typically used by most municipalities, it was developed by researchers at the University of Minnesota Duluth, who are working on efficient and economic uses of mining byproducts. The Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI), based at the University, hopes to transform 125 million tons of these byproducts into environmentally responsible and economically viable road construction and repair materials. In a study published in 2009 (“Using recycled taconite as alternative aggregate in asphalt pavements,” by Raul Velasquez, Mugurel Turos, Ki Hoon Moon, Larry Zanko and Mihai Marasteanu, Construction and Building Materials, Volume 23, Issue 9), one tested taconite aggregate was found to “perform slightly better than the mixtures prepared with standard aggregates” currently used in pothole repair.
Pothole.info provides news and analysis of how companies, institutions, individuals and local, state and national governments in the U.S. and abroad are addressing the challenges of pavement preservation and pothole abatement. The site includes a news feed as well as original articles and other content as a resource to individuals and organizations looking for solutions to the increasing number of potholes and other aspects of infrastructure decline. Part of this reporting includes coverage of emerging technologies in pavement construction and maintenance.

Will Iron Ore Byproducts be the Next Pothole Repair Material?

The New York City Department of Transportation and motorists on Staten Island, New York experienced last fall what has become a common problem in an increasingly wired world: A utility cut was made to a recently repaved stretch of road. The cut was filled with temporary-patch asphalt, but it was deteriorating rapidly just weeks later – and drivers were not happy.
This has happened countless times in recent years, as businesses and residential areas demand greater access to broadband cable. DOTs and utility companies try to coordinate schedules to the effect that paving is done last, after the various utility lines are laid. But it doesn’t always work out that way. Paving and utility companies work on separate timetables for unrelated reasons.

But as a utility company in the Cayman Islands and its cable-installation contractor proved recently, there’s a smart way to work around this problem. It’s called micro trenching, which involves a narrow, almost imperceptible slit cut into the pavement to accommodate thin cables. It enables quick installation of the cable with minimal damage to the pavement.
Two innovations have enabled this streamlined approach to utility cable installation, which involves a cut less than an inch wide for a 12-inch-deep channel.
One technological advancement is with the cable itself, a “micro conduit” that has up to seven channels for seven wires, vertically stacked on top of each other instead of a rounder, fatter bundling as is found in traditional cable.
The second innovation is how the trench itself is cut. An air-cooled saw cuts the narrow trench to a width just wide enough to accommodate the stacked-up cable. To do this, an advanced blade manufacturing process provides a narrower blade that is just as strong as thicker blades. Traditional pavement cutters are cooled by water, which is a messy process that takes up more time in the clean up phase.
Less traffic disruption during and after under-pavement cable installation
Micro trenching might radically change this difficult marriage between utilities and pavement for the better. It’s faster, so there is less time spent holding up vehicular traffic on the roads where it is being used. While a relatively new process without a lot of experience on which to base a cost-analysis, it appears to be a less expensive process than with the four-inches-to-six-foot wide cuts that plague fast-moving vehicles. The pothole-like shocks to cars traveling over utility cuts are eliminated, as are the opportunities for new potholes to form.
One such micro trench was installed by Slimlines Trenching Ltd. in the Cayman Islands. The contractor was working for Logic, a voice-Internet-cable TV utility on the islands.
Richard Corbin, managing director for Slimlines Trenching, shared with us how the micro trenches were dug, why they are possible – and how these road cuts were later filled to avoid pavement deterioration and pothole formation further down the line.
<div class="indent">
Pothole.info: What are the dimensions – width and depth – that make up the micro trenches?
Corbin: We are currently cutting a .75" x 12" deep trench in the center of our capital and business district of George Town, Grand Cayman and have also cut .95" x 12" in some areas as well for the installation of two conduits which are placed side by side for increased capacity as required.
Pothole.info: I read that microtrenching about eight years ago was problematic, in part because the trenches weren’t as deep. What is new today that enables micro trenching to be workable?
Corbin: Advances in equipment and conduit manufacturing processes have enabled equipment manufactures the ability to scale down the size of the equipment and trenching attachments required. Advances in the blade manufacturing process enabled blades to be narrower while maintaining their strength, along with the use of high volume vacuum systems allowing the blades to be air cooled, therefore extending the life of the blade while eliminating the need for water cooling and the messy clean up and residue associated with the same.
Another improvement is the availability of micro-conduit, which is narrow and vertically rigid, along with advances in fiber technology, which have reduced the overall size of fiber. Is it about flat cables versus round? In our case it is more so about the conduit, with the conduit being narrow, flat and vertically rigid. It was perfectly suited for our customer’s needs.
Pothole.info: From a construction costs perspective, does the method compare favorably to traditional trench cuts?
Corbin: It is hard to say with certainty, but based on our experience and the feedback we are receiving it seems to compare favorably (this is the first trenching project we have been involved in – [there are many] variations in conditions and requirements involved in trenching). Micro-trenching has a considerably lower impact on the environment and is neighbor friendly, with minimal disruptions to vehicular and pedestrian traffic due to the reduced size of the required work zone. In some cases it requires only half a lane to be closed; reinstatement is completed simultaneously with the lane being reopened to traffic immediately following the reinstatement, which in most cases is a matter of two to three hours.
Pothole.info: You used cold mix asphalt for sealing. Is this a material you have worked with in the past?
Corbin: As mentioned above, this is the first microtrenching project we have been involved in. Therefore it is also the first time we used asphalt for reinstatement. However, based on our research the <a href="http://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/video/micro-trenching-features-ez-street.php">EZ Street cold patch was the product best suited to micro trenching</a> and available for our needs and conditions (relating to the reinstatement of the narrow trench while satisfying the requirements of our local National Roads Authority).
Pothole.info: How was it to work with and did you find it preferable over a hot mix?
Corbin: We found the product consistent and easy to work with from the manageable 35-pound bag size. It almost creeps into the trench by itself, as it has a pliable nature and is easy to cleanup.
Pothole.info: Do the costs and performance features of microtrenching suggest easier, less expensive installation of cabling overall, that it might extend broadband and other services further and faster?
Corbin: Overall the micro-trenching process seems to be faster resulting in realized time savings. When delivering new services it can mean the difference between being first to market and third or fourth.
</div>
While there can be many factors that lead to roadway congestion and gridlock, construction-related projects is one of the major contributors to traffic tie-ups. As Slimlines Trenching illustrates, cutting down those times and spaces where lanes need to be blocked can reduce motorist inconvenience – and costs.
In a study conducted ten years ago, the Texas Transportation Institute determined that in the 75 largest metropolitan areas of the U.S., delays wasted $67.5 billion in lost worker productivity and 5.7 billion gallons of gasoline (21.6 billion liters) during 3.6 billion vehicle-hours of delays each year. Costs to individual drivers in such delays range from $200 per year in smaller cities to $1000 in more populous metro areas.
In other words, what’s good for reducing costs to utilities for cable installation is also good for municipalities and states that are responsible for pavement quality and pothole prevention. Motorists benefit in reduced traffic tie-ups during the construction, lower costs for car repair from pothole and utility cut damage to tires and axels – and, those motorists may get better and less expensive utility service, too.
Our bet is that there are residents of Staten Island in New York who would wholly support use of micro trenching in future cable installations.

An End to the Utility-Cut Bump? Micro Trenching Emerges as Kind to Pavement, Motorists

Few words send chills up the spine of landlords like “premises liability.” This is an area of personal injury law that enables an injured party – renters, guests of renters, even delivery people – to sue the owner of the property for failure to provide a safe environment. Every day, there are 25,000 slip, trip and fall accidents in the U.S., which account for 21 percent of all ER visits, according to the National Safety Council.
So what could lead to such accidents and the possible lawsuit to follow? Broken sidewalks, rotted steps and slippery, just-mopped floors are among them.
But just because something like a sidewalk has a few chipped up, loose or otherwise deteriorated sections should not require a complete reconstruction of that walkway. The labor and materials involved could costs many hundreds and even thousands of dollars, which is not something most property owners relish in a time of significantly-reduced real estate values.

This landlord found a creative solution in <a href="http://www.ezstreetasphalt.com">EZ STREET cold mix asphalt</a>. The product comes in 35 and 50 pound bags, which are handy to keep on premises for times when needed. It also requires no messy mixing or heating. You literally can use a garden shovel or a small hand trowel to drop the asphalt into cracks and holes (remove loose debris with the same trowel and maybe a broom before filling).
From there, it’s a simple matter of tamping down the mix, which can be done easily and gently with a sledgehammer and flat board or any other heavy blunt object. In areas of heavy traffic, such as a frequently-used driveway, leave a slightly raised crown so that the car can tamp it down further. But a flush-finish is safest where only human foot traffic is involved.
Did it matter that the do-it-himselfer was repairing concrete with asphalt? No, this cold mix asphalt will adhere just as well to adjoining concrete as it would other hard surfaces. Aesthetically, it might be appear different (doesn’t that one crack look a little like a map of Italy?). But compared to the gaping cracks and weeds that were previously growing there, it’s a marked improvement. And no lawyer can say you neglected the safety of the sidewalk.
<div id="attachment_261" style="width: 578px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.pothole.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Landlord-1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-261" class="size-full wp-image-261" title="Landlord-1" src="/uploads/landlord-1-79a0c2f5.jpg" alt="concrete sidewalk pothole patch" width="568" height="289" /></a>The repair in the photo took less than 20 minutes to do by an inexperienced, non-professional. </div>
The repair was done in the waning days of a Chicago summer – anticipating the snow shovels to scrape this pavement a few months down the road. But what if a hole or crack opens up during the winter? This brand of cold mix asphalt works in all weather conditions, and can even be pressed into place in standing water.

Landlord Worried About Broken Sidewalks, Finds Permanent Fix With Cold Mix

Anyone who ever leaves home knows the problems with roads, highways, parking lots and driveways. Most aging pavement in America, due to use, time and neglect, is in dire need of <a href="http://www.asphaltrepair.net" target="_blank">asphalt repair</a>. But highway maintenance is so lagging that many people assume it is a losing battle.
That assumption is wrong. Fixing any kind of pavement, public or private, as it begins to show the signs of deterioration proves the axiom, that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The fact of the matter is that cracks left untended become potholes. Potholes not repaired, or patched poorly, can lead to complete road deterioration.
The Federal Highway Administration says that state transportation departments spent $17.7 billion on new roads in 2006, compared to $32.7 billion (about 50 percent) on existing road pavement preservation. While this proportion reflects good sense in maintaining the significant ($1 trillion) investment in roads built since the middle of the 20th century, most departments of transportation concur it falls short of the need.
Smart asphalt repair uses the best materials at the right time, which defines smart pavement management. A dollar spent on small pavement preservation methods can save seven dollars a few years later. This fact cannot be overemphasized. Asphalt repair is the equivalent to nutrition and exercise in human health. Do it right every day and not only will repair costs be lower in the future, but the vitality and performance of that road will be better throughout the lifespan of the road.
But beyond budgetary savings, timely asphalt repair can bring economic advantages. Consider what quality roads can do for a city, state or region:
Tourism: Americans take approximately one billion domestic trips per year, which generates $471 billion in expenditures. Additionally, more than 50 million international visitors land on our shores and spend weeks exploring our country. When destinations are more accessible, those tourists and their dollars reach beyond core urban centers to suburbs, exurbs and wilderness locations.
Limit accidents: There are many causes of car and truck accidents, poor pavement among them.More than 3.3 million people are injured, and 45,000 people are killed, in transportation-related accidents every year. Costs associated with traffic accidents are in excess of $150 billion.
Reduce congestion: Time lost to standstill traffic annually tallies more than 4.5 billion hours, while gasoline consumption exceeds 6.8 billion gallons. Hot-mix asphalt fixes to potholes, done the old-fashioned way, typically employs a “throw-and-go” approach that ties up rush hour traffic and leaves a stretch of rough pavement that lasts weeks, months or years. But innovations that bring advanced pavement preservation methods (EZ Street Cold Mix Asphalt is one) creates a smoother road on the first repair, is easier to use and lasts longer than hot mix asphalt. What might otherwise be monthly road repairs becomes something far less frequent.
Some think that keeping up the quality of roads, highways, streets and parking lots may be a hopeless task. But a thoughtful analysis of strategic asphalt repair reveals that the benefits can easily outweigh the costs.

Asphalt Repair — Fixing the roads is possible, economically beneficial

[vc_row type="in_container" full_screen_row_position="middle" column_margin="default" scene_position="center" text_color="dark" text_align="left" overlay_strength="0.3" shape_divider_position="bottom" bg_image_animation="none"][vc_column column_padding="no-extra-padding" column_padding_position="all" background_color_opacity="1" background_hover_color_opacity="1" column_link_target="_self" column_shadow="none" column_border_radius="none" width="1/1" tablet_width_inherit="default" tablet_text_alignment="default" phone_text_alignment="default" overlay_strength="0.3" column_border_width="none" column_border_style="solid" bg_image_animation="none"][vc_column_text]As States Turn to Pavement Preservation, Road Repair Methods Improve
The economics affecting road building and road repair in the current economy are pretty straightforward. Costs for everything are up, funding is down – and road disintegration continues its natural course, unabated.
Federal funding assistance for new roads and road preservation is now stimulated with an infusion of cash from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009. Often, however, red tape and politics add speed bumps and lead to dead ends. Fortunately, some states are finding ways to make it work.
Population growth and economic recovery, when it comes, will only create a greater need for navigable roads, free of hazardous and <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/case-studies/pothole-repair/pothole-vigilante/">damaging potholes</a>. The present way we build and maintain roads and bridges will be difficult to sustain – unless new technologies are developed and adopted.
This is a concern that is echoed by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) in a joint report it issued with the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) in 2009. It says highway funding is "in an unprecedented crisis." In summary, the Highway Trust Fund – which comes from the national 18.4 cents per gallon gas tax – is "just about broke," purchasing power for road building and repair have been eroded by inflation, and the political climate is unlikely to allow increased revenue from drivers (with per gallon taxes and tolls). Environmental concerns, while laudable, are directing more funds toward public transit and railroads, further challenging America's aging highway system.
<blockquote>
VMT – vehicle miles traveled – increased from 2.4 trillion in 1993 to 3.0 trillion in 2007 (the current recession has reduced that slightly to about 2.9 trillion).
</blockquote>
Time, weather, and moisture are the enemy of road maintenance, but so is population increase, which is about as likely as rain in Oregon. People use roads, as do manufacturers and merchants who ship products to ever more populated cities and towns. Some facts to consider:
<ul type="disc">
<li>The current U.S. population of 305 million is projected to increase to 420 million by year 2050.</li>
</ul>
<ul type="disc">
<li>VMT – vehicle miles traveled – increased from 2.4 trillion in 1993 to 3.0 trillion in 2007 (the current recession has reduced that slightly to about 2.9 trillion).</li>
</ul>
<ul type="disc">
<li>Truck freight is expected to double from current levels by 2030.</li>
</ul>
<ul type="disc">
<li>Optimally, road and highway maintenance should receive $166 billion from government funding. Current spending on surface transportation (roads and highways) is less than $90 billion per year.</li>
</ul>
<ul type="disc">
<li>The 2009 federal economic stimulus funds add an additional $27 billion to the surface transportation budget, but those funds are to be spent over at least two years, and so the annual allowance remains well below ideal.</li>
</ul>
It is not enough, not by a long shot, and the problem will only get worse. Solutions are sorely needed.
Preserve and save 
Roads are like people in that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, in that routine maintenance can significantly prolong the life of a road. Preventive maintenance is economically smart, as long as the plan for pavement preservation is smartly devised and implemented.
In 2008, Michigan Department of Transportation Director Kirk T. Steudle told the Pavement Preservation Journal, "It costs $1 to keep a road in good shape for every $7 you would have to spend on reconstruction." Steudel also noted how bad pavement diminishes road safety, which places further economic burdens on individuals, families, healthcare systems and insurance companies. "It's another drag on the economy."
One organization working for solutions is the Foundation for Pavement Preservation (FPP), a non-profit industry group that looks at roads as investments. Rather than regarding maintenance as a cost – how it is typically seen in a budget line item, subject to political costcutting – FPP urges local, state and federal government decision makers to consider money spent on preservation as a means of maximizing the original investment.
Cutting through the red tape 
The Illinois Department of Transportation, IDOT, takes the position that preventive maintenance treatments are a means to improve the functional condition of the road network, "reducing the overall rate of deterioration of the pavement asset." IDOT also prioritizes maintaining a high level of service and minimizing what it calls the "network's life-cycle cost," a multi-year calculation that facilitates long-range, comprehensive highway quality management. The state agency also provided guidelines and training to local municipalities on road preservation, and it involved private industry in the overall program.
What Illinois does that many states do not is use federal funds for pavement preservation; other states instead reserve those funds for large projects undertaken every few years, such as new road construction.
This is where it gets tricky: Bidding procedures in Illinois and other states often differ from federal bidding requirements, which often stands in the way of using federal funds for pavement preservation. IDOT particularly encountered difficulties using hot mix asphalt overlays due to its high expense and perceived long-term ineffectiveness.
Pavement preservation best practices 
Still, some states are finding ways to do it right. The Asphalt Pavement Alliance makes an annual award to states that maintain roads that are at least 35 years old and which had at least 13 years between paving resurfacing. Other criteria for the award are excellence in design, quality in construction and driver value, factored against traffic levels on the section of road being evaluated for the honor. Here are 2009 award recipients:
Washington State: The Washington State Department of Transportation says its entire highway system would cost $266 billion to replace, including smaller bridges and the purchase of land. Starting from this asset management standpoint, WSDOT invests in infrastructure as a matter of safety, environmental concern and mobility.
WSDOT won its Perpetual Pavement Award for a four-mile section of Interstate 5 near the city of Everett, Washington. This particular stretch of highway handles more than 60,000 vehicles per day, 4,400 of which are heavy trucks.
According to WSDOT's press release announcing this award, the agency's "pavement preservation goal is to preserve state highways at the lowest cost per year of pavement life." WSDOT's 2007 pavement condition survey found that 93 percent of state-owned roads rate as "fair" or better. The state has budgeted $328 million for 2009-2011 in pavement preservation projects.
Mississippi: This state received its Perpetual Pavement Award for a 10.9-mile section of U.S. Highway 90 in Jackson County, which connects coastal communities of Ocean Springs and Gautier. The road was built in two phases, completed in 1960, with overlays applied in 1973 and 1989 only. In an official MDOT long-range research planning document, it says that pavement preservation is the state's number one priority among 29 research subjects.
Minnesota: Awarded the Perpetual Pavement Award for a 1970-constructed, six-mile stretch of Highway 71, which received an asphalt overlay in 2005. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) is designating more of the department's FY 2011 budget to pavement preservation than ever before due to "extraordinary inflation in paving materials and rising project costs." Criteria for long-lived, cost effective fixes are a life expectancy of 15 years or more.
Tennessee: Honored for five miles of westbound State Route 1-US 11 in Grainger County, the state is known for well-maintained scenic highways, with 14,000 miles under the aegis of TDOT. Statewide they use micro surfacing methods among other technologies, and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officers recognized Tennessee in 2009 as number one in the country with the smoothest overall system.
Necessity is the mother of invention 
Given the sheer economic and cultural pressures on having a workable road and highway system, engineers and scientists have applied themselves to finding better solutions to road deterioration.
An important program authorized by the U.S. Congress two decades ago began looking for innovations in road design and preservation. Called the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP), it is the engine for the development of scores of products and methods, many of which are already in use.
One category of products from SHRP is Superpave®, which combines innovations in asphalt binders and a design/analysis system tied to the volumetric properties of the asphalt mix, all subject to models for mix-analysis tests and performance prediction.
While pavement preservation is often defined as paving resurfacing, pothole repairs traditionally fall into another category. Usually done with hot mix asphalt, this expensive and ineffective method is widely regarded as a bandage approach. However, innovations in recent years, included permanent cold-mix asphalt products, can serve as a permanent repair. Operationally simple, it can be applied as an overlayment, to utility cuts, joint repairs, outer edge repairs, surface patches and in "throw and go" pothole repairs. Because it is a cold mix, work crews have greater time-use latitude – days and weeks instead of hours for hot mix – which ultimately reduces associated labor costs. This cold mix is much more resilient, lasting for years (the experience with traditional hot mix asphalt pothole fillers is they are seasonal bandages, sometimes deteriorating in just a few weeks).
What a handful of states and many road technology researchers show is that there's more than one way to build and maintain a road – better, cheaper and longer lasting. Innovation – supported by experimentation – is the best bet for smoother, lower-cost highways and byways.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Focus On Preservation

The problem is all the old streets and highways. But thanks to the SHRP program, better fixes are here.
Man first went to the moon 40 years ago, and today Space Shuttle flights are commonplace. Scientists are beginning to grow spare body parts from stem cells, and the computing power packed into our cell phones continues to evolve at a dizzying pace.
So why are there so many problems with roads and highways? Potholes stretch from Honolulu to Chicago to Nashville and Miami, and the problem only seems to get worse. Can’t we figure out how to make better pavement?
Actually, the roads being built today are better than ever. Human nature recalls the bad potholes, ruts, seams and construction tie-ups that punctuate our travels, but when traveling on good, nicely-paved highways and byways – which are either new or older and well-constructed and maintained – we might just remember the scenery or something else.
Going back a bit further, before the federal highway system was authorized and funded by Congress in 1956, roads were far more dangerous. The national fatality rate was 6.05 deaths per 100 million miles traveled. Today on the nation’s interstates it is 0.8 deaths. Factoring in secondary roads, that number goes up to 1.46 deaths per 100 million miles traveled, but this is still a vast improvement. This has come about through not only safer cars, but also technological advances in road design and maintenance that include wider shoulders, better guardrails, “breakaway” signposts and utility poles, improved signs and pavement markings, pavement that is slid-resistant, and clearer sight lines for drivers.
The problem is that every inch of America’s four million miles or highways, roads and streets, and 660,000 bridges, are aging. Most were built in a frenzy of construction after the passage of the Interstate Highway Act during the 1950s, in the post-World War II era when mobilization of the masses was happening on a huge scale. Over the years, more than $129 billion have spent on construction alone, an investment never questioned because of its vital importance to the economy, national defense and the American way of life.
That was a full fifty years ago for the first generation of roads, which presents a very specific problem: Roads are built to last about 50 years. Even under the best conditions, these roads are getting older, even while the population is concurrently growing and increasingly mobile. Old roads plus more traffic equals road deterioration at an accelerating rate.
Clearly, road engineers and the research and development people who came up with safer road features have a Herculean task in front of them where it comes to pavement longevity. How do they make pavement more resilient? How can our roads be made to last longer and be less costly?
Congress got involved – and it worked! 
Because of the investment that federal, state and local governments have made in roads – and the absolute dependence of commerce, safety and national security in a functioning highway system – a great deal of resources and study have gone into road building and maintenance.
In other words, the government agencies that build and maintain the roads are just as frustrated as everyone else with pavement deterioration.
<blockquote>In 1987, Congress funded a five-year, $150 million research program that focused on improvement of the nation’s highways in terms of performance, durability, safety and efficiency.</blockquote>
In 1987, Congress funded a five-year, $150 million research program that focused on improvement of the nation’s highways in terms of performance, durability, safety and efficiency. Officially known as the Surface Transportation and Uniform Relocation Act, it established the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP, called “sharp”). The program dissects the roads we travel on and what improves the quality of our ride in four essential areas:
Concrete and structures: How best to mix, build, assess, protect and rehabilitate existing concrete roads and bridges.
Asphalt: Identify new approaches to asphalt. Roads made of asphalt are traditionally built with a hot asphalt mix, yet good performance over time was sporadic while maintenance is costly, unwieldy and disruptive.
Highway operations: Improve snow and ice control, find better ways to do preservation work and increase work zone safety.
Pavement performance/The Long Term Pavement Performance Program (LTPP): This ultimately became a 20-year study of 2000 test sections of American and Canadian roads, which identified best practices in building and maintaining pavement.
From the SHRP program, more than 100 new products were identified as furthering pavement performance. A full third of the budget ($53 million) was spent on asphalt research – and for good reason. Asphalt is the predominant building material in roads. It is easier to put down than concrete, and the raw materials – largely aggregates of stone, sand and gravel, and petroleum byproducts – are readily available. About 4000 asphalt mixing plants across the country use the traditional hot mix method, the nature of which forces construction and repair work to be completed within a window of hours, before the mix cools.
What came of the asphalt research in the SHRP program was something called Superpave (Superior Performing Asphalt Pavements). Overall, Superpave is an asphalt mix-design process that accounts for the differences in local conditions found in, for example, Minneapolis versus Miami. It prescribes an ideal asphalt binder, also known as the PG asphalt binder specification, which more accurately addresses conditions where a road is built. This includes factors of climate and use, the latter of which includes how physical properties of the road (such as viscosity) age, how the road deforms (or doesn’t) to form ruts or cracks, and the road’s relatively volatility (flammability).
One researcher who worked on the Superpave program, Mike Anderson, associate director of research at the Asphalt Institute (Lexington, KY), says, “Within volumetric mix design, materials selection and development of aggregate structure are vital. Once these are set, the determination of binder content and moisture-sensitivity just flow from the other conditions.” Key characteristics of Superpave mixes are:
<ul type="disc">
<li>Clean and angular aggregate</li>
<li>Controls on the amount of rounded, natural sand in a mix that could lead to instability; the Superpave mix is coarser than conventional mix.</li>
<li>Binder selection according to local weather data, physical property tests and other guidelines.</li>
<li>Mix according to a road’s known or anticipated traffic levels, defined in the SHRP program according to three degrees of road use (light, medium and heavy).</li>
</ul>
Cold mix asphalt has been a Holy Grail of pavement research, in part because its application can reduce many of logistical issues in new construction and, especially, pavement preservation and reactive pothole repair. Traditional hot-mix asphalt can cool in a matter of hours, from plant to roadwork, thus requiring work crews to schedule around the temperature of the mix, not the work itself. Performance of hot mix asphalt in, say, a spot pothole repair is notoriously dismal as well, yielding poor road conditions even after motorists endure traffic delays when road repair crews block lanes.
Improvements like this are never as exciting as a Shuttle launch. Heck – the opening of a new highway is guaranteed to get more press than a road repair that simply doesn’t disintegrate over a few decades.
But when the ride is smoother, when there are fewer repair crew traffic delays, and when long-term maintenance costs come in under budget, the news can’t get better for motorists and taxpayers.

Why Can't They Make Better Roads?

Introduction:
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.  It’s a popular cliche that, in the current economic climate especially, holds significant bearing on how people spend their money.  In an attempt to stretch dollars already spent, there is a tendency to postpone maintenance until the last possible moment.  For example, a car driving down the road with squeaking brakes.  So long as they aren’t grinding, the driver is content wearing the pads right down to the rotors.  Or the person with a toothache that puts off seeing a dentist until it is unbearable.  Even though the tooth is uncomfortable, so long as it’s tolerable, it can wait.  While the subjects in these hypothetical situations can keep a few extra bucks in their pockets for the time being, the implications of putting off such issues can be much more expensive than adhering to a proactive, routine maintenance approach.  Eventually, the driver with worn brake pads will begin to wear into his rotors, requiring immediate repairs costing twice as much as brake pads alone.  The person suffering from a toothache will eventually find out what was initially a simple filling procedure now requires a more expensive root canal.  In retrospect, an investment at the first sign of deterioration would have been much cheaper, not to mention less painful. 
The same principle applies to road maintenance.  As much as commuters are annoyed by poor roads, most loathe infinitely more the construction induced traffic jam.  What most commuters don’t take into consideration is the sheer size of the road systems they use every day.  The United States has 3.95 million miles of public roads, with an estimated worth of a massive $1.75 trillion.  Traditionally, a "worst-first" approach has been applied to pavement maintenance.  Referred to as reactive maintenance, this philosophy prescribes to fixing roads once significant structural damage has already been incurred.  The end result necessitates more severe rehabilitation projects that are expensive, cause significant traffic delays, and unsafe road conditions prior to completing such repairs. 
There is, however, a proactive solution to maintaining roads: Pavement preservation.  The National Center for Pavement Prevention defines pavement preservation as "a cost-effective set of practices that extend pavement life and improve safety and motorist satisfaction while saving public tax dollars."  Essentially, a pavement preservation program seeks to create a system of implementing relatively small scale repairs on roads prior to structural degradation to avoid the necessity of full blown road reconstruction.  Successful pavement preservation will result in long term savings, reduced traffic congestion, and safer roads.  This essay will discuss the fundamentals of pavement preservation, the techniques used for pavement preservation, and discussion of current pavement preservation practices; finally, an objective analysis of the benefits and criticisms will lead to a conclusion.
Pavement Preservation Fundamentals: 
While the techniques of pavement preservation are pivotal, as will be discussed in the following section, for any pavement preservation program to succeed there are several philosophical and strategic elements that must be determined prior to taking any maintenance measures.  First, and foremost, is embracing the philosophy of pavement preservation; the traditional mentality of "worst-first" repairs needs to be replaced with one of prolonging the investments already made to road systems.  Pavement preservation needs to be seen as a long term process.  A short term analysis may suggest that preservation based maintenance is an unnecessary expenditure, but in the long run up to six dollars can be saved for every one dollar put into pavement preservation, a significant amount considering the cost of maintaining road ways. 
Once the philosophy of pavement preservation is embodied, strategies must be developed to execute a successful preservation program, certain questions must be answered: How can dedicated funding be secured?  How can quantifiable data be collected to both account for present road conditions and to monitor the program’s success?  How and when should actions be taken to efficiently prolong the life of the current road systems?  Unfortunately, there are no universal responses to any of these questions, they are unique to every individual road management agency; there are, however, some basic points to consider when making these decisions.
<blockquote>Without dedicated funding, pavement preservation projects frequently get pushed to the last tier of priority, and a variety of factors from backed up "worst-first" repairs to severe weather can be enough to sabotage an entire pavement preservation program.</blockquote>
First, there is a difference between funding and dedicated funding.  Without dedicated funding, pavement preservation projects frequently get pushed to the last tier of priority, and a variety of factors from backed up "worst-first" repairs to severe weather can be enough to sabotage an entire pavement preservation program.  A common phrase when discussing pavement preservation is "applying the right treatment to the right pavement at the right time," and if preservation projects are delayed, roads can incur structural damage in that time, making any attempt to preserve the road obsolete.  This being said, finding ways to eliminate competition for funds is essential to ensuring proactive measures. 
Data collection and management is also crucial to a successful pavement preservation program.  Data provides a quantifiable means of assessing road ways and the preservation program as a whole.  Again, the means of collecting such data is in the hands of the agencies managing the roads, but the end objective is simple: Provide precise and unbiased information that can be used to determine when preservation measures should be taken and how effective previous maintenance actions were.  There are various indexes that can be used to quantify road conditions, including the Pavement Condition Index (PCI, measured visually on a scale from 0 to 100), the Present Serviceability Rating (PSR, measured by quality of ride on a scale from 0 to 5), and the International Roughness Index (IRI, measured by the vertical deviation of a vehicles suspension in units of millimeters per meter).  Regardless of what method is used to quantify data, it is important to be consistent and use it effectively. 
Finally, there is determining where and when to implement pavement preservation techniques.  Successful pavement preservation programs need to be efficient and effective.  Again, the saying about the right treatment, the right pavement, the right time has significant value.  Maintenance to prolong road life must be executed with precise timing.  As mentioned before, putting off maintenance to preserve road ways can lead to a "too little, too late" situation; once the structural integrity of a road is compromised, reactive maintenance is necessary.  Similarly, executing preservation techniques too early will result in a waste of time, money, and resources, all of which could have been used for a more appropriate preservation project.  Taking these two points in to consideration, there is a specific window of time when preservation techniques are effective and efficient.  By identifying when such a time span will exist on specific road segments, road management agencies can coordinate and facilitate several preservation projects, optimizing their production factors, and, sequentially, optimizing their pavement preservation program.
Pavement Preservation Techniques 
The maintenance techniques used for pavement preservation are unique from reactive maintenance in that they are significantly smaller scale projects, focusing primarily on a road’s surface rather than structure.  These techniques prolong the life of road ways by addressing surface imperfections before they are allowed to deteriorate the subsurface structure of the road.  Even though there is no way to make pavement last forever, addressing minor issues significantly reduces the wear on the road’s structure.  The maintenance procedures used for pavement preservation are formally categorized into three categories: Routine maintenance, preventive maintenance, and minor rehabilitation.  Though the actual techniques that fall into each specific category are different, their objectives are the same; they attempt to make existing road systems last as long as possible. 
As defined by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), routine maintenance "consists of work that is planned and performed on a routine basis to maintain and preserve the condition of the highway system or to respond to specific conditions and events that restore the highway system to an adequate level of service."  As the name implies, routine maintenance are tasks that are planned and performed on a regular basis.  These various maintenance techniques include surface cleaning and clearing of debris, maintaining lane lines and other various pavement markings, and minor surface repairs such as filling cracks, patching potholes, or small scale overlays.  While not all routine maintenance techniques are strictly considered to be a part of pavement preservation, they will fall into this category when used to specifically to prolong the life of a road. 
Preventive maintenance is the most intuitive component of pavement preservation.  It is defined, again by the AASHTO, as "a planned strategy of cost-effective treatments to an existing roadway system and its appurtenances that preserve the system, retards future deterioration, and maintains or improves the functional condition of the system."  These techniques are the primary tools used for pavement preservation.  They include tasks that are specifically implemented with the intentions of protecting the investment made in already constructed roads by addressing surface flaws that threaten to jeopardize the structural integrity of the subsurface, essentially preventing reactive maintenance.  Preventive maintenance includes multitude of procedures, including sealing cracks, chips, or joints, slurry seals, and thin asphalt overlays.  In short, preventative maintenance aims to address problems as they form so that minimal input of time, money, and resources can be used to prevent a larger problem in the future. 
Minor rehabilitation is a subset of a more general category of maintenance called pavement rehabilitation.  Pavement rehabilitation is defined by the AASHTO as "structural enhancements that extend the service life of an existing pavement and/or improve its load carrying capacity."   The distinction between minor and major rehabilitation is fairly straightforward; minor rehabilitation does not involve structural enhancements, as opposed to major rehabilitation.  Minor rehabilitation is often more drastic from preventive maintenance, frequently addressing a more deteriorated surface, however, since it does not involve repairs to the structure and instead aims to prevent structural damage, it is classified as an element of pavement preservation.  Restoration treatments and larger scale overlays fall into the classification of minor rehabilitation.
Current Pavement Preservation Practices 
As long ago as 1997, the AASHTO released a survey revealing that most state highway agencies embraced the notion of pavement preservation.  As nearly half of the interstate system at the time was considered to be in sub par condition, it is no surprise that the principles of pavement preservation began to be taken more seriously as a practical solution to the always deteriorating highway system.  Several states went on to implement such a plan, with some of the most successful being California, Georgia, Michigan, and Texas.  While the benefits were not noticeable immediately in the short term, in time the results of utilizing a pavement preservation program proved quite favorable. 
These states realized a variety of benefits, as reported in a 2000 publication by the Federal Highway Administration.  Texas found it to be comparatively inexpensive and gradually improving the overall status of their road systems.  Georgia also noted an improvement throughout their collective highway systems and also found that the transition from reactive maintenance to preservation projects was fairly seamless, hassle free, and had little effect on their ability to tend to larger scale repairs.  California estimated that they were getting about five to seven additional years of usage out of their already existing highways.  Michigan concluded that preventive maintenance was nearly 14 times cheaper than reactive maintenance per lane-mile; they figured, in eight years of practicing pavement preservation, they had saved in excess of $700 million in comparison to using reactive maintenance. 
As pavement preservation programs are adopted by new agencies and refined by those already using such programs, there is increasing demand for better materials with more efficiency, versatility, and eco-friendly.  As both road management agencies and material manufacturers continue to improve, so too will the benefits of pavement preservation.
Criticisms and Conclusion 
As established by the reports of agencies using pavement preservation programs, the advantages of a proactive, preventative approach to road maintenance has proven to be as successful in practice as it is in theory.  It costs less, produces less traffic congestion, and makes roads safer longer.  It is a curious concept that such a philosophy is not universally embraced.  While the premise of pavement preservation maybe strike some as straightforward and logical, there are certain criticisms that stand in the way of a universal acceptance of the concept.  The public may have difficulty understanding why they are waiting in traffic while a construction crew repairs a relatively small imperfection.  The layman will not understand the consequences of allowing what he deems a superficial crack in the road go unattended to.  Also, like any change in an organization, accepting change is difficult.  Convincing every component of an agency, from the stakeholders to the work crews, that they need to change their ways poses the epic task of shifting paradigms.  Finally, the nature of the research data used to assess the performance of a pavement preservation program is not concrete.  For example, asserting the financial benefits of a preservation approach over a reactive approach requires that a hypothetical projection be made for how maintaining a reactive approach "could" have been.  Certainly historical figures or comparisons to similar systems could be referenced, but ultimately, because of the unique circumstances of every agency, there can be no true comparison without speculation. 
Still, the enticing elements of a pavement preservation program exist.  Despite criticisms, several road management agencies have implemented a preventative approach with great success.  Research surveys show an increase in the general public to support a more financially sound model, as opposed to the "worst-first" model.  As the concept of pavement preservation is better understood, the more and more support it receives.  While states like Texas, Georgia, California, and Michigan reap the benefits, others continue to implement dated models of reactive maintenance.  Taking all of this into account, there is one question that needs to be answered: Aren’t the long term benefits of pavement preservation worth the investment in being proactive? 
References 
The National Center For Pavement Preservation 
<a href="http://www.pavementpreservation.org/">http://www.pavementpreservation.org/</a>
Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center 
Article: Pavement Preservation: Preserving Our Investment in Highways 
<a href="http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/jan00/pavement.htm">http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/jan00/pavement.htm</a>
Washington State Department of Transportation 
Article: Pavement Evaluation – Roughness 
<a href="http://training.ce.washington.edu/wsdot/Modules/09_pavement_evaluation/09-2_body.htm">http://training.ce.washington.edu/wsdot/Modules/09_pavement_evaluation/09-2_body.htm</a>
US Department of Transportation – Federal Highway Administration 
Memo: Pavement Preservation Definitions 
<a href="http://www.pavementpreservation.org/library/getfile.php?journal_id=482">http://www.pavementpreservation.org/library/getfile.php?journal_id=482</a>
Foundation for Pavement Preservation 
Article: Pavement Preventive Maintenance Guidelines 
<a href="http://www.fp2.org/pdffiles/PavPrevMainGuides.pdf">http://www.fp2.org/pdffiles/PavPrevMainGuides.pdf</a>

Pavement Preservation: A Proactive Approach to Road Repairs

There are nearly 3.95 million miles of public roads in the United States , valued at more than $1.75 trillion. The NCPP will provide a valuable resource to help educate others about the benefits of pavement preservation. It can enhance pavement preservation knowledge through research and assist owner agencies to establish effective programs. These programs extend pavement life and improve motorist safety and satisfaction while saving public tax dollars.
<a href="http://www.pavementpreservation.org/about/" target="_blank">Click here to learn more</a>

Repair & Materials