Better Roads Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/102915
RoadScience by Tom Kuennen, Contributing Editor Preserving the Unpaved Road 'Gravel,' stone-surfaced and dirt road preservation helped by new techniques, guidelines, RAP A clogged corrugated drainpipe under this Texas road results in water flowing across it, eroding the surface and creating a ford in wet weather. Photo courtesy of Tom Kuennen f I f you don't drive them often, it's easy to overlook unpaved roads. After all, they carry significantly less traffic than rigid or flexible pavements in areas where most people don't live. Typically, unpaved roads carry less than 150 vehicles per day, and those vehicles tend not to put excess stress on the road structure. That is, unless it's during harvest time, when a limited number of overloaded trucks put very heavy loads on these dirt and gravel surfacings. Unpaved roads aren't limited to rural areas. In December 2012 the residents of Ft. Lauderdale's South Middle River neighborhood – located off the busy Andrews Avenue corridor, just blocks from downtown Fort Lauderdale, Fla. – demonstrated for reconstruction of their dirt streets by removing road construction signage from an adjacent work zone and using it to direct motorists down their dirt street. The demonstration continued for 40 minutes before police 16 January 2013 Better Roads broke up the gathering, reported the Ft. Lauderdale SunSentinel. In recent years, declining road funds, rising traffic and loads have combined with natural calamities like floods to stress the nation's unpaved roads. Significantly, the boom in fossil fuel extraction of oil, oil sands and natural gas from states from Pennsylvania to Texas to Wyoming, and in Canada's western provinces, has put new stresses on unpaved roads as they carry construction equipment inbound, and extracted resources outbound. Fortunately this new boom is providing a fresh stream of tax revenue for road repair. Even the boomlet in windmill-powered electricity generation has stressed unpaved roads. Often, access to agricultural areas where wind farms are located is entirely via unpaved roads, which suffer under heavy traffic from 50,000-pound concrete mixers, and trucks hauling 800-ton cranes.