Safe, smooth, and long lasting are attributes of pavements that appeal to owners and users alike and are also commonly promoted benefits of pavement preservation. But how well do the pavement performance measures commonly collected by roadway agencies allow us to track preservation benefits such as these? Here’s a quick look at safety, smoothness, and pavement life, and how the desired properties can be measured.

Safety consistently ranks at or near the top of the list of attributes the public wants from their roads. If we focus on the surface characteristics in particular (and not other impor...

One of the most common terms used to describe pavement treatments for preservation or rehabilitation is seal (e.g., cape seal, chip seal, crack seal, scrub seal, slurry seal). Pavement treatments, for good reason, aim to associate themselves with the ability to keep water out of pavements because excessive amounts of water entering into and remaining in a pavement is detrimental to longevity. There are a few ways to measure permeability or infiltration into pavements as shown in Figure 1. This note focuses on the Mississippi Permeameter (MSP) as it has been shown to be a fairly universal metho...

Emulsified asphalt, also referred to as liquid asphalt because of its liquid state at ambient temperatures, includes both cutback asphalt and asphalt emulsion. A cutback asphalt is made by adding a diluent, typically a petroleum distillate, to refined asphalt. Cutback asphalt has reportedly been used in road construction since the 1800s. And there was a major expansion of cutback asphalt from the 1930s through the 1970s. Although still utilized for various applications, new developments over time and ultimately a push to mitigate uncontrolled hydrocarbon emissions in the U.S. specifically led ...

The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) coined the phrase “good roads cost less.” In essence, this is to emphasize the long-term financial savings that agencies gain when roads are kept in good condition through timely preservation and maintenance. As such, slowly but surely, we have come to realize there is a fundamental need, and subsequent benefit, to preserve our Nation’s transportation assets. Still, some may or do take transportation infrastructure for granted. According to a previous report from the House Committee on Transportation, only 2% of the Nation’s Gross Domestic Product ...

Over the past 20 years, the term sustainability has flirted with a buzzword status. There is agreement among many that the roots of development are in the United Nations (UN). In 1980, the UN produced the World Conservation Strategy1 which focused almost exclusively on environmental perspectives. However, in 1987, the UN produced the Brundtland Commission Report2 which started pivoting away from only an environmental focus to a more holistic focus. In the report, the Commission defined sustainability as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to ...