Better Roads Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/440996
RoadScience by Tom Kuennen, Contributing Editor 6 December 2014 Better Roads T he Federal Highway Administration and its allies among the state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) are leading a new emphasis on pavement preservation for high-volume, high-level highways like dual- lane federal routes and interstates. With a goal of extending service life of high-traffi c volume highways, and identifying suitable techniques and methods – buttressed by active research from a SHRP2 project, R26: Preservation of High-Traffi c-Volume Roadways – the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is publicizing the benefi ts of select pavement preservation treatments for these critical highways. R26 is a nine-year program, for which the research is 90 percent complete, according to Thomas Van, FHWA pavement management engineer. Currently,13 states – Minnesota, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Maine, Washington State, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Delaware and Rhode Island, plus the District of Columbia – are participating in R26 proj- ects. Ultimately, 135 projects in 38 states will be included in the $130 million budget. Recently, two publications from the R26 project – Preserva- tion Approaches for High-Traffi c-Volume Roadways, and its companion report, Guidelines for the Preservation of High-Traffi c-Volume Roadways – have received wide distribution, and provide a template for state DOTs and other pavement owners to justify and execute preservation techniques for high-volume roadways. These publications represent the fi rst methodical and wide- ranging elaboration of the process of pavement preservation for high traffi c roads, and provide technical details and a structure for implementation of preservation for high volume highways. Both tomes were authored by D. Peshkin, K. L. Smith, A. Wolters and J. Krstulovich, Applied Pavement Tech- nology, Urbana, Illinois, and J. Moulthrop and C. Alvarado, Fugro Consultants, Austin, Texas, for SHRP2. These publications comprised the focal point for a practi- cal, applications-oriented meeting in Minneapolis in early September, the SHRP2 R26 Workshop for the Preservation of High Traffi c Volume Roadways, held in conjunction with the annual PAVEMENT PRESERVATION: Highlight on High-Volume Photo courtesy of Steve Muncy for BASF Corp. Micro Surfacing incorporating latex polymer modifi er is placed on I-35 in Iowa