County Perspective on Pavement Preservation
NACE President Duane Blanck addressed the "County Perspective on Pavement Preservation"at the Forum for the Future, A Pavement Preservation Forum, held in Kansas City, Missouri from October 26-28, 1998. It was sponsored by Foundation for Pavement Rehabilitation and Maintenance Research and Federal Highway Administration. We are pleased to include the text of this speech on the NACE website for your information and reference.
"County Perspective on Pavement Preservation"
I want to say thanks to the forum organizers and the meeting coordinator for including the National Association of County Engineers, or NACE as we are commonly referred too. It is indeed a pleasure to be here. It seems to me that communications is a big part of what we are about here at this forum...communicating so that we can outline "'where we are" and determine "where want to be" in the arena of Pavement Preservation.
INTRODUCTION
First let me tell you a little bit about NACE. The National Association of County Engineers is a one-of-a-kind national organization. We were founded in 1956 and today have about 1800 members representing 1400 counties, which is about two-thirds of the counties that have county engineers or road superintendents. We have 29 affiliate state organizations, and in 10 states all the county engineers or road superintendents are members. The mission of NACE is to promote the use of recognized engineering standards for design, construction and maintenance of public works; to promote the spirit of cooperation between city, county, state and federal agencies; and, by the exchange of ideas, to give all counties, in each state, the advantage of qualified professional engineering services in all phases of public works.
To fulfill our mission, our prime focus is education and training, networking and cooperative efforts, and legislative - the latter we accomplish as an affiliate of NACo (the National Association of Counties) by serving on various committees and providing expert input on matters affecting counties and in particular county roads. Our education and training efforts have resulted in a series of Action Guides and Training Manuals such as this one entitled Road Surface Management. Our networking and cooperative efforts are reflected in our annual conference, working relationships with a number of groups and various activities, such as participating in a forum like this one.
ROLE/RESPONSIBILITIES
Secondly, let me tell you why counties are interested in and concerned about Pavement Preservation. Counties across this great country of ours own and maintain nearly 50% of all road mileage. This equates to approximately 1.8 million miles of roads with 219,000 bridges, and we are responsible for one-third of the mass transit systems - let me repeat that, 1.8 million miles of roads. And on that 1.8 million miles of roads we have traffic ADT's that range from but a few cars per day to several thousand vehicles per day. But these local roads or county roads are important to the nation's transportation network since every trip for all practical purposes starts and ends on a local road. The county roads are fundamental in maintaining our lifestyle, and are critical to the economic well being of our nation. I have often used my own county as an illustration of the importance of county roads. Crow Wing County is located in the geographic center of Minnesota, in the lake country, which means we are very much a recreational area. Our permanent population is about 50,000 people and quadruples in the summer time, so that from Memorial Day to Labor Day we accommodate the equivalent of Minneapolis & St. Paul on our county roads, not on interstate highways or the NHS. Pavement or road surfaces represent the largest single share of the transportation investment in most counties. It has been estimated that 40 percent or more of the public funds spent on highways are spent on road surfaces. It is easy to understand why pavement preservation is important to counties.
MAINTENANCE PRESERVATION
Highway Maintenance has been routinely defined by the industry as: the preservation of all types of roadways, roadsides, structures, and facilities as close as possible to their original conditions, and consists of performing the services and operations necessary to provide satisfactory and safer highways. I like this additional bit of definition of maintenance, which is the skill of keeping all roads in full service with minimum expense and the least inconvenience to traffic.
Pavement performance depends on what, when, and how maintenance, or the preservation effort, is performed.
Drainage
It is well understood that water is the major cause in creating surface deficiencies. Since counties have a large number of unsurfaced or natural soil roads, drainage issues or defective drainage become a large part of pavement or road surface preservation activities. Drainage systems for roadways are much like those found in a house - a roof or relatively impervious surface to keep water out, a sloped roof or crown to run water to the edge, a gutter or ditch to take it to a collection point, a downspout or outtake ditch to discharge collected water, and a cutoff trench or drain tile to intercept subsurface flow. The failure to meet these basic drainage requirements can result in surface breakup, roadbed saturation and eventually the loss of the integrity of the roadway. So counties are involved in ''back-to-basics" in maintaining roadway drainage systems. I have had the opportunity to serve on a technical advisory panel for the Low Volume Road Selections of the MN/ROAD project in Minnesota, and this BASIC issue has been clearly demonstrated under controlled conditions.
Aggregate Surfaces
There are five BASIC activities involved in the maintenance of aggregate surfaces. These are: dust control, stabilization, adding aggregate, blading or smoothing, and reshaping. Although these are basic activities, they consume a considerable amount of time and effort from county road departments and as a result, must be accomplished in an efficient, productive and cost effective manner. As traffic increases on our aggregate surfaced roads, there is an ever-growing demand for dust control, not only for traffic safety but also for environmental reasons. It is becoming more and more difficult to maintain aggregate surfaced roads with ADT's of 100 or less without some effort made in surface preservation through means of dust control.
Flexible Pavements
Maintenance or preservation activities for counties on flexible pavements can be divided into two groups: sealing and repair.
Sealing, of course, is preventive maintenance, or preservation, done before defects occur. Since sealing protects a pavement from deterioration and does not restore structural strength, it is absolutely necessary to apply before deterioration in fact sets in. Counties are familiar with and use a number of types of sealing techniques - sand sealing, chip sealing, slurry sealing and thin overlays. A key to the use of all of them is to apply some BASIC considerations such as selecting the proper time to do the work, proper site preparation, and proper procedures in accomplishing the work.
Repair, although perhaps not preventive maintenance, is preservation by correcting those defects which have occurred. Potholes do need to be patched - larger holes need patching perhaps with skin patches, and we know that cracks need, or ought, to be sealed - and there is planing and milling that must be done from time to time for restoration. An ever-increasing activity for counties with flexible pavement preservation work is crack sealing or filling, a BASIC consideration, and there is always an interest in how to do it better at less cost.
Rigid Pavements
Just as with aggregate surfaces and flexible pavements, maintenance or preservation of rigid pavements begins with finding and correcting the cause of a defect, not simply repairing the symptoms. The major activities or BASICS involved with rigid pavement maintenance or preservation are: partial depth patching, dull depth patching, joint and crack sealing; grouting, jacking and undersealing, and grinding, grooving and milling. As traffic continues to increase on major county roads, more and more counties find themselves involved with rigid pavements, which develops the need to become more knowledgeable in proper preservation techniques. However, since these activities generally require the use of specialized equipment, work is usually done under contract by qualified contractors.
PRESERVATION ISSUES
Coordination
An important first step with any preservation effort is documentation and coordination of what the condition of any road system is. A pavement management program, a surface condition rating scheme or condition assessments are effective ways to determine the overall condition of a road network, to weigh alternatives, and to establish long-term programs as to how much money and effort is necessary for preservation activities. Such "tools" establish a realistic basis for a county highway maintenance budget allowing for the application of the right preservation work to keep a road system in good condition.
Choice
Counties are not managing just one section of pavement or one type of road surface but rather a whole network of roads, all at different levels of condition and experiencing different rates of deterioration. Thus, choice in the type of preservation activity becomes a common issue and a systems management approach is necessary in order to answer a number of questions. Questions like "should maintenance efforts be used on our best or worst roads", "what will happen to our roads if maintenance funds are reduced by 10 percent", "is it more cost-effective to repair, seal, overlay and recycle or to completely reconstruct a particular road", "what are our maintenance or preservation requirements over the next 5 years" and "how can the money available be spent in the most cost-effective way?"
Quality
The quality of preservation work performed on roads directly determines service life, future maintenance costs, ride quality, and user costs. Thus, it is critical to obtain a reasonable degree of quality assurance in such work through a BASIC means of inspection, sampling and testing, and compliance certification. Counties are no different than our state partners in establishing minimum design standards and specifications, and enforcing them. We want them to apply to any preservation work on a county road, whether performed by county forces, contract forces, utility companies or developers since our primary responsibility is to ensure that the tax payer gets his money's worth.
IMPORTANCE AND CHALLENGES
Safety
There is no question that a major reason for road surface maintenance or preservation is to give motorists a smooth and safe ride. Safety - the people side of transportation - is clearly an important element of pavement preservation and must be given priority consideration.
Level of Service
The level of service, although similar to safety, is another significant reason for road surface maintenance or preservation. It is, quite frankly, built into the definition of highway maintenance when performing preservation services and operations, which are necessary to provide satisfactory and safer highways. Maintenance or preservation maintains a desirable level of service and it increases the life span of a roadway through a continuing program of correcting wear and deterioration caused by traffic and the environment. Preservation should be regarded, not as a temporary policy, but as an investment and insurance against costly repairs.
Costs and Resources
As noted earlier, maintenance or preservation activities are a substantial part of every counties highway funding. In today's era of government downsizing resources at the county level are not increasing. This, along with the demand for lower taxes, especially property taxes, and the importance of many other local social issues have caused the cost of preservation work to become a major concern. Unfortunately, in many areas, the road surfaces, which were acquired at a great cost, are being allowed to deteriorate. The challenge becomes knowing what, when and how preservation work is performed at a cost that is affordable so we can enjoy the "biggest bang for the buck". A recent headline in our local newspaper illustrates one of the real challenges before us, it read: "Car damage from bad roads tops cost of fixing them" and the article went on to say that "...the failure to fix roads adds nearly $2,000 in maintenance costs over the life of a car." Thus a realistic challenge is to reverse this situation so that cost effective preservation efforts reduce unnecessary maintenance costs.
CONCLUSION
Let me say in conclusion that in many respects pavement preservation is not "rocket science", it is BASICs. But new technology is always welcomed so that counties can control costs, be more efficient and do a better job with preservation activities. We need to build on our past strengths or experiences for new strength and success with our future preservation efforts. We need to be involved in education efforts about preservation. We need to inform our users and policy makers, and we need, at the county level, to advise our county boards that there is a cost of ownership in maintaining our road systems. The failure to recognize the importance of pavement preservation is a recipe for user dissatisfaction and an unsafe highway system, things we all want to avoid.