12 Months

The recovery continues. Slowly. Slowly.

It’s frustrating (again) to have to say it, but it appears that this new year will offer us more of the same. Last year virtually repeating itself, as did the year before that and the year before that.

But this time there appears to be at least some optimism that the economy’s vicious cycle may be approaching its end, albeit with more of a whimper than a bang. And within a handful of bright, or at least not gloomy, spots there may be opportunities for transportation agencies and highway and bridge contractors to be pro-active in their fight against the agonizingly slow recession climb-out.

Not only is reauthorization a pivotal event (whether it happens or doesn’t) but also the states’ struggles to fund even essential work, and the need, that can no longer be put off, to do repair or maintenance work will be key influences. And then there is an election in November. As one leading transportation industry group analyst told Better Roads in Washington, D.C., in December: “2012: It’s a make-or-break year for transportation infrastructure.”

As the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA)’s Dave Bauer points out, there are “50 autonomous markets” out there, making it not only difficult to come up with a single estimate for the United States, but also meaning that amid a sea of gloomy news there can be patches of economic sunshine that could make 2012 a very different place for some local or regional contractors and agencies.

A look at some of the leading forecasts for 2012 find a general agreement on the course the year will follow.

If economic forecasting is something of a crystal ball process, 45 professional forecasters surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia may be the best gazers in the business. These forecasters, surveyed by the Fed in November, predicted, on average, a real GDP growth of 2.4 percent in 2012 (the same figure that the National Association for Business Economics predicts; but Morgan Stanley and Kiplinger estimates are closer to 2 percent) and a 2012 unemployment rate of 8.8 percent. The Fed’s forecasters predicted growth of 2.7 percent in 2013 and 3.5 percent in 2014. The forecasters also predicted unemployment at 8.4 percent in 2013 and 7.8 percent in 2014. They expect nonfarm payroll employment to grow at a rate of 123,200 a month in 2012, compared to 106,500 a month in 2011. These same Fed forecasters estimate core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation in 2012 will average 1.6 percent, and 1.8 percent in 2013.

A Wall Street Journal survey of 52 economists in November put GDP growth in 2012 at 2.3 percent and 2.6 percent in 2013, with unemployment at the end of 2012 at 8.7 percent, and at 8.1 percent at the end of 2013.

But there seems to be little doubt the unemployment rate in construction, including transportation infrastructure, will exceed the national average through 2012 as it did, by a wide margin, through 2011.

Because the Federal Reserve is keeping the lid on short-term interest rates and also trying to bring down already low long-term rates, various estimates suggest there will be little significant movement of rates in 2012.

The election has the potential to be very influential to highway and bridge industries both before and after the polls close. “2012 is an election year, which does not body well for meaningful action in Washington,” says Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) President Dennis Slater. “Both sides are already in full ‘campaign mode,’ it seems, and this presents a real danger of a stalling economy.” But the November elections may also offer some possible cause for optimism. A late-winter or early spring reauthorization, increasingly finding bipartisan support and looking more and more likely, might well help cement the idea in the public mind that transportation infrastructure is one of the essential investment programs for America’s future. This in turn may well become a position that might replace the refuse-to-spend-anything stands of some hardline politicians. Transportation investment may also be reasonably popular in the new Congress of 2013 which could be more supportive of transportation infrastructure funding than this one.

One thing that did happen in 2011 and that must continue in 2012 is the role of contractors in pressing Washington. Pressure in 2011 helped build the bipartisanship that unlocked stalled reauthorization negotiations. Industry groups urged contractors to be aggressive with members of Congress when they came back to their home districts, and get them out to jobsites and company facilities. Just how much of an effect such visits had is hard to pin down, certainly there have been major political and economic pressures, but there’s little doubt that contractor visits by congressmen helped start the ball rolling away from intransigence and towards bipartisanship. One leading Washington industry group lobbyist told Better Roads in December, “You can tell when you walk into the office of a member of congress who has made visits and who hasn’t, it’s a different atmosphere. They get it.” But as another said, “Our message is still not compelling enough.”

Our Survey

A Better Roads’ December survey of both agency and contractor readers reinforces the impression of uncertainty in the near future. But it also reinforces a growing hope for the long term, something that has been largely absent in our last two surveys. It’s almost as if the respondents were in a holding pattern mindset, working with less of everything – money, equipment, manpower, jobs – and looking beyond 2012.

From the Better Roads 2012 Outlook survey

Contractors

Do you expect changes next year in dealing with government agencies, e.g. contract bids, environmental regulations, sustainability requirements, etc.?

It’s a fine distinction, but interestingly, government agencies are a little more optimistic than contractors. But when it comes to specifics, the uncertainty is equally shared.

Only a few contractors (9.7 percent) plan to increase spending on new equipment or fleet replacements, 43.1 percent expect to spend the same as 2011 but 47.2 percent expect to spend less. A lot of contractors (43.1 percent) expected their financial results in 2012 to be about the same as 2011, with little more than a quarter (26.4 percent) predicting better results, but 30.6 percent expecting to fare worse.

Both surveyed groups expect more maintenance and less big new projects, something we have come to expect in these times.

It has been my sense that the industry is changing and will never return to a pre-recession structure, that changes wrung by the recession will exert a long-term influence. Precisely how is, of course, still largely guesswork as the economy still barely avoids stalling. Our survey shows a majority of contractors (56.9 percent) are unsure what changes will happen to the industry in 2012, but only a few (8.3 percent) expect it to return to the way it was before the recession. More than a third (34.7 percent) believe the industry has changed forever. Slightly less than half (45.8 percent) of contractor respondents anticipate that the kind of highway and bridge construction work put up for bids by their state will change in 2012. Among agencies, 33.9 percent say they expect to make changes to the kind of work they out up for bid.

From the Better Roads 2012 Outlook survey

Contractors

Do you expect your financial results this year to be better than last year, about the same, or worse?

Survey comments suggest contractors expect changes to include more maintenance and repair work and less new construction, smaller job packages, and relatively more bridge work as older bridges can no longer be left unworked. Or, as one respondent puts it, “What $ they have will be to band aid [sic] today’s problems.” Agencies looking at how the job mix may change also commonly see more repair and maintenance, smaller projects and more bridge work. Innovative bidding and “more quick fix, less rebuild” are also responses. One response suggests that, “projects will likely be those that can be advanced quickly, and will be projects that can be constructed within the existing footprint.”

From the Better Roads 2012 Outlook survey

Contractors

Do you anticipate that the levels of highway and bridge construction work put up for bids by your state in 2012 will increase, decrease or stay about the same?

Almost half (48.6 percent) of contractor respondents say they expect the levels of highway and bridge construction work put out for bids by their state agencies to stay about the same, and almost 40 percent (38.9 percent) expect it to go down. Only 12.5 percent saw a raise, perhaps reflecting the fact that some regions may actually buck the trend either through better income streams or by addressing needs that can no longer be avoided. Among agencies a majority (53 percent) expect the amount of work they put up for bid will stay about the same, but 26.8 percent expect it to fall, with 20.2 percent looking at an increase, again possibly reflecting regional or local factors.

From the Better Roads 2012 Outlook survey

Government Agencies

Do you anticipate that levels of highway and bridge construction work put up for bids by your agency in 2012 will increase, decrease or stay about the same?

Looking back at their operations over the past five years, most contractors say they have become leaner and more efficient, and those changes came not in the pursuit of expansion or profit but in the struggle for survival. In the coming year a majority of companies say they are seeking out new areas of work (51.4 percent) and nearly half (48.6 percent) say they would work in cooperation with other companies more than they have in the past. More than a quarter (26.4 percent) of contractor companies intend to use more software and digital planning and tracking, and almost one-fifth (19.4 percent) say they will bid a narrower range of work, i.e. specialize more. When asked where they see their companies in three years, a lot of respondents said they expected to be in much the same position they are in today, facing uncertainty and fighting for survival. But some expected to be beyond that stage and expanding.

When it comes to hard numbers, a little over a quarter of contractor respondents believe their financial results will be better this year than last year (26.4 percent), 43.1 percent percent results to be about the same and 30.6 expect a worse year.

Among surveyed agencies, 45.2 percent anticipate that transportation infrastructure in their area a year from now will be in “about the same” condition and 32.7 percent predict it being “worse.” This leaves only 22 percent of agencies who see the state of their infrastructure better a year from now. And nearly two-thirds (64.3 percent) of the agencies expect to make changes in the way they operate in 2012, as they continue to respond to economic pressures. One agency respondent says, “Hope I’m wrong!” and another, “We have already changed operations to a ‘new normal.’”

One major concern among contractors for 2012 is dealing with changing government regulations and practices. Asked if they expected changes in dealing with agencies, a huge 59.7 percent say yes. But how? Uncertainties seems to be present here too, with contractors expecting changes but not really sure what they’ll be. Comments in the survey suggest contractors expect more environmental restrictions, a possible backlog in processes as fewer people in government departments handle the same amount of regulation, and more sustainability requirements. One happy camper reports wryly, “Sure, there is never enough government regulation,” and another responds, “MORE, MORE and MORE REGS.” Says another, “Our government is always changing the way we do business. It is shameful how much time and effort is spent in reinventing the wheel.”

Outside Looking In

FMI, a company that describes itself as the largest provider of management consulting and investment banking for the engineering and construction industry, succinctly sums up the domestic construction market for this year by saying that “the broad picture is not dramatically different from last year.” The company sees a long and slow recovery in construction markets with put-in-place construction volume pushed out to 2015 before it matches the prior peak of 2007. Housing, says FMI, is a cloud hanging over an economic recovery, and another key issue is the expected decline in public spending.

FMI’s President and Chief Executive Officer Hank Harris tells us that he expects “a fairly slow crawl” out of the recession, but he is optimistic about the heavy-highway sector. “I think there’s a lot of good news looking out there five years. There’s bad news, too, of course. There’s government spending being down, continued uncertainty from government until at least after the elections at the earliest and there’s reauthorization. But I think if you had to pick a sector of construction to be in, heavy highway would be a good one.”

One reason for Harris’ optimism: “I think there is immense pent-up demand out there.”

And, says Harris, “If you look at the intermediate and long-term, there’s some very smart money betting on infrastructure, for example, some of the investment banks. People see we are underinvesting in infrastructure, that’s we are way behind. We’ve taught Americans that seeing orange barrels every five miles is normal. It’s not.”

Alison Premo Black, senior economist for the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, says that “no matter how you slice it, the outlook for the 2012 transportation construction market is mixed.” There is, she says, “good news and bad news for 2012, depending on the mode of transportation.” The bad news? “The highway and bridge construction market is expected to contract 6 percent, to $72.6 billion from an estimated $77 billion in 2011.” The value of bridge work is expected to drop by 10 percent from $26.3 billion to $23.6 billion, says Black, “primarily because nearly all projects that include ARRA investments are finished or underway, and state and local DOTs are pulling back on new projects. This is, she says, likely due to a combination of the delayed federal reauthorization bill and the continued state and local budget challenges.

The good news is out there in the form of more investment for ports and railroads. But, says Black, there is also good news in that, “the transportation construction market sector will remain the most stable industry sector as it has been for the past five years.” Black says between 2007 and 2011 the real value of highway and bridge construction, adjusted with the ARTBA Price Index for material prices, wages and inflation, fell only 10 percent. Over the same period, the real value of total construction work in the United States fell by one-third, from $1.1 trillion to an estimated $769 billion. “The historical stability of the transportation market is in large part due to the role of public-sector financing,” says Black.

And “public-sector financing” means reauthorization, which Black calls a “wild card,” and state budgets.

“I am as optimistic as I have ever been about the chances of getting a surface transportation bill done in 2012,” says Janet Kavinoky the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s leading transportation expert. “Six months ago it would have been a very different story. The House was looking at doing a bill with only Highway Trust Fund money, which would have been a 35-percent cut. There was a lot of talk in the Senate but in fits and starts. In the fall, a lot of things changed, especially when House Speaker John Boehner announced he wanted to move a multi-year transportation bill and was willing to look for the money for it. I can’t tell you how significant that was – especially coming from someone who has never voted for a surface transportation bill. All of this is movement in the right direction. If no one believed a bill was going to get done, I don’t think we would see this progress.

“So I’m going to be positive – it’s been about five years since I said that,” says Kavinoky. “It’s nice to feel good about it for once.”

‘A Sigh of Relief’

But reauthorization is not going to turn on the light switch in a room darkened by the economy. It will take time to begin to help lift transportation infrastructure work back toward old levels.

“We are talking about bills that substantially change federal programs and structures, for example provisions designed to speed up project delivery and others to move more private investment into the system,” says Kavinoky, “and it will probably take a couple of years to get things implemented, and remember we are not talking about adding funding for transportation we are talking about trying to keep levels the same. We’re not seeing a sea change but at least a sigh of relief – so states can move forward with some projects instead of standing around waiting. I’ll take half full.”

Opportunity

Contractors do have some choices this year, says FMI’s Hank Harris, which may be accessible with an entrepreneurial or innovative mindset. Two possibilities in particular that Harris mentions stand out to Better Roads: partnering and unsolicited bidding.

“If you have private jobs,” Harris asks, “how do you get to the markets where the spending stream is likely to be healthier and get yourself participating? We’re not out of the woods in heavy highway. Clients tell us it’s very, very tough, but the good ones are getting through it and doing okay. Margins are not good, and there are very significant challenges. It’s tough, but they are finding work and staying in the black. The key is to avoid taking imprudent risk because you get panicked about your market. Manage your risk and be ready to hit it when things get better, as we think they will. Labor and equipment are the two biggest risks to manage; costs here must be managed and controlled. It’s blocking and tackling, but that’s what isnecessary now.

“But also be ready for growth. And opportunity.”

For example:

“There is a lot of partnering opportunity in this industry; some domestic, some with international firms trying to enter the U.S. market. And you can also work for smaller partners,” says Harris. “There are some gigantic jobs out there so big that they need more than one bonding company, let alone one contractor.” A lot of contractors responding to our survey (48.6 percent) indicate that partnering is one of the tactics they intend to pursue this year.

Harris also sees opportunities in 2012 for companies that approach the market without their usual routines and methods. “Companies all have their own culture; engineering firms tend to be analytically oriented and look at how they may project themselves into certain markets.” If contracting companies want to respond to private markets, says Harris, their culture in many cases needs to be more market driven. “Companies that do [transportation infrastructure] work are heavy on equipment and heavy on labor, and, by necessity, very operationally driven cultures. Compound that by them trying to be the low bid on any given day, the mindset of the companies can become a little insular and they can think that that is the only way to work. But there are companies that can do a very good job getting out there and making opportunities and getting in the way of opportunities.”

For example:

“We have clients that do unsolicited proposals. Basically that’s going, unasked, to a public entity and saying, ‘Okay there’s been no bids coming from you in while, but you need to do something and you know it, so here’s our design-build, design-build-operate, design-co-own, or whatever structure they present, and it would solve your problem.’ There are mixed reactions, yes. It’s successful in Canada and we are seeing more companies in the United States look into it.”

An Expert Opinion:

Edward J. Sullivan, vice president and chief economist, Portland Cement Association

A year ago the economy seemed poised for stronger, sustainable economic growth. And then, due in large part to the European sovereign debt crisis and rising energy prices, consumer and business confidence waned. Private-sector growth, as a result, entered a period of slowdown. Furthermore, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) stimulus decreased as a positive for economic growth, forcing the Federal Reserve to enact a new round of monetary stimulus (QE2) to avert the potential of a double-dip recession. This was supplemented with fiscal stimulus including the “payroll tax holiday” and extended unemployment benefits.

Real GDP, job growth and confidence recovered. Seemingly, the economy was again on a sustainable path of stronger growth and job creation in excess of 200,000 monthly. Once again, however, this proved to be a false start to stronger, sustained growth. The political games played by Congress over the debt ceiling exerted adverse influence on near-term growth. The debt ceiling debate injected new uncertainty and risk onto the economic landscape. Consumers, business and bank confidence was already weak and this added dose of risk hindered real economic activity.

Only recently has better economic news begun to surface – accented by the decline in the unemployment rate. This news could represent another false start. This first quarter of 2012, for example, could represent a significant challenge to economic growth. The payroll tax and extended unemployment insurance benefits will expire year-end. Federal aid to the states has already expired. Furthermore, the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects energy prices will rise. These conditions, and others, could result in significant first-quarter weakness. While PCA expects sustained, tepid economic growth, the potential for a new recession in 2012 cannot be dismissed.

If such a path develops for the economy, it does not imply a further significant step down in construction activity. Quite frankly, residential, nonresidential and public construction activities are already near floor levels. Rather, such a scenario suggests a longer recovery period for construction activity – perhaps by a year or more.

Perversely, it could very well be that weakened economic conditions could result in a shift in political thinking and add pressure to result in a comprehensive new highway bill that addresses the country’s future needs – and not just a patchwork of fixes. Demographics don’t lie. In 20 years the United States’ driving age population is expected to grow by 50 million more licensed drivers. Congestion will worsen and the adverse consequences associated with infrastructure neglect will multiply. The invisible taxes associated with inaction in expanded highway investment will increase.

An Expert Opinion:

Dennis Slater, president, Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM)

Sales of construction equipment continue to rebound from the depths of the recession, but there’s still uncertainty in the marketplace, both in the United States and globally. For a significant segment of our industry, there is still too little meaningful action on infrastructure funding. Our annual “outlook” survey cites highway funding as a major factor influencing future business.

With 2012 as an election year, this usually means campaign rhetoric instead of real action. But politicians are talking about jobs. It is a chance to put construction jobs “front and center” with not only presidential hopefuls but also legislators as they campaign in their districts.

We’ve used the “I Make America” pro-manufacturing campaign to spotlight infrastructure investment as a proven way to create and maintain jobs for American workers, for a sustainable recovery. We need to continue to frame the discussion for the general public and lawmakers: Infrastructure investment is not just a “potholes” issue that only benefits the construction industry; it is a critical business and quality-of-life issue. It affects every community, company, family and individual. An adequate transportation system translates into safer and more efficient travel that advances commerce and quality of life.

Congress needs to focus on policies that create and maintain jobs, not unnecessary and excessive regulatory and tax burdens. We have a special website – A Day in American Life (found at adayinamericanlife.com) – with real stories from real people in our AEM member companies that underscore how companies are collections of hard-working people, not faceless entities, and they make a positive difference in their communities.

Priority number one in 2012 is making more noise in Washington – a key issue is working to gain bipartisan understanding of and real action on transportation infrastructure legislation. We need Democrats and Republicans alike to stand up and have the political will to do what is needed for the long-term benefit of our economic well-being. And, especially in the current economic environment, we need to realistically look at where the money will come from. We know the current Highway Trust Fund is inadequate; we must look for other practical solutions that ensure the nation’s transportation needs are met.

An Expert Opinion:

John Horsley, executive director,

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)

While the federal highway and transit programs have been operating under a series of eight extensions since expiration of SAFETEA-LU in September 2009, recent developments in Congress are providing encouraging signs for 2012.

First, House and Senate leaders have publicly stated their preference to maintain the current annual funding level for surface transportation in the next reauthorization, which is about $40 billion for highways and $11 billion for transit. The knotty question of identifying politically acceptable taxes or fees to enhance the Highway Trust Fund revenues or finding the right “offset” from elsewhere in the federal budget remains unresolved. However, this funding commitment, combined with the multiyear length of the bill, will send an unmistakable signal to all transportation stakeholders that there will be much greater stability and predictability to solidify transportation’s already indispensable role in driving the nation’s economic recovery for years to come.

Second, the proposed Senate legislation, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), and the House outline, place great emphasis on consolidating the number of federal programs. For example, MAP-21 focuses resources on key national goals and core formula programs by reducing the number of program categories from about 90 today down to less than 30. Similarly, the House is looking to eliminate “nearly 70 programs by consolidating duplicative programs and eliminating programs that do not serve a federal purpose.”

Finally, there is strong bipartisan support in Congress to speed up the delivery of transportation projects — a process that currently takes more than a decade for many projects. MAP-21 includes provisions to expedite project delivery while maintaining important environmental safeguards. Similarly, the House is looking at allowing concurrent project reviews, delegating project authority, and placing hard deadlines for decisions on permits and project approvals.

From the perspective of state departments of transportation, all of these elements represent significant improvements to the federal surface transportation program that we look forward to seeing in 2012.

An Expert Opinion:

Pete Ruane, president and CEO, American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA)

Winston Churchill once said: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

In the hyper-partisan cloud hanging over Capitol Hill, the transportation design and construction industry was faced with its share of difficulties during 2011. In January, House Republicans changed an internal rule that had existed since 1998 to eliminate the requirement that all incoming Highway Trust Fund revenues be spent annually. In April, the House took aim at the highway and transit program again with a budget resolution blueprint that called for a 30 percent cut in overall transportation investment levels for FY 2012.

In the face of these major obstacles, ARTBA, industry coalitions and Capitol Hill allies could have folded the tent and gone home. But, we didn’t because we saw the “opportunity in every difficulty.” The industry’s grassroots activists kept fighting … and hammering home the point that increasing investment was essential for U.S. job creation and economic recovery; outcomes both parties and the President proclaimed were their top priorities.

By the fall, we had successfully turned back the tide against such a massive infrastructure investment cut. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee agreed on a bipartisan reauthorization bill that maintains current investment levels, plus inflation, for the next two years. House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.), with support and direction from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), is now working on a multi-year bill for early action in 2012 that the GOP says is a key component of their job creation agenda.

As a result, we remain cautiously optimistic about the prospects for action by both chambers on a long-term bill in early 2012. It will continue to be challenging, but if we stick together and keep the heat on all members of Congress to do their jobs as well as do the right thing, better days lie ahead for our industry.

An Expert Opinion:

Mike Acott, president, National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA)

Contractors are the original “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” people. They’re entrepreneurs and they know how to spot opportunities.

In this spirit, contractors have harnessed the pressures of the recession to ramp up innovations in recycling. In the past few years, the asphalt industry – already America’s number one recycler – has sharply increased the use of both reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) and reclaimed asphalt shingles (RAS). In 2005, about 12.5 percent of the asphalt pavement material used was made up of RAP. According to a survey that NAPA performed on behalf of the Federal Highway Administration, that number increased to 17.6 percent in 2010. Use of RAS increased 57 percent from 2009 to 2010. The asphalt industry is also the country’s largest user of recycled fuel oil (RFO).

Altogether, the recycling efforts of the asphalt industry, including both the incorporation of RAP and RAS into pavements and the use of RFO in production facilities, saved America more than one billion gallons of oil in 2010.

NAPA continues to advocate at the national level in favor of a robust, multiyear highway program. The “multiyear” aspect is critical to both those who own pavements and those who build them. Many major infrastructure projects are constructed over a period of several years, and capital costs are considerable. If funding in future years is uncertain, agencies and private owners will not be able to commit to projects. If owners do not commit to projects, some workers may lose their jobs and contractors may be reluctant to purchase new equipment. In the absence of a multiyear federal-aid highway program, we at least know the level of federal funding for 2012: $41.6 billion, about the same as 2011.

This economy has provided plenty of lemons – and NAPA’s members are ready to make lemonade.

An Expert Opinion:

Toby Mack, president and CEO, Associated Equipment Distributors

Aside from some isolated bright spots, the overall picture remains weak for most U.S. dealer markets.

However, if you’re in geography with active energy exploration and production, and with the right products, business is good. Particularly in the Marcellus and Utica shale-gas plays in Pennsylvania, Ohio and (one hopes soon) New York, business is actually great or will soon be. It’s the same with other horizontal drilling/hydraulic fracturing areas in the South Central and West. If you’re in North Dakota or Montana and supplying the Bakken oil fields, you’re maxed out: You can’t find enough people and you can’t get enough product to meet demand. If you’re in strong agricultural areas and, again, have the right products, you’re likely benefitting from strong demand and high prices for corn and beans – largely driven by ethanol production. If you’re in underground products that support broadband expansion, that’s good too. And if your area of responsibility covers coal, copper or gold mining, the same is true. Also reasonably healthy is government-funded institutional building construction such as for education, healthcare or government facilities.

Despite the best efforts of the Obama administration and its regulators to throttle any activity that disturbs the dirt, water or air, or encourages consumption of fossil fuels, I believe the compelling economics of our new-found energy abundance will trump absurd attempts to run the country on windmills and solar panels.

For most of the traditional – and more universal – drivers of demand for construction machinery – residential housing, commercial construction, transportation and water infrastructure – the news for 2012 isn’t much better than it was in 2011. None of these markets appear ready to rebound in 2012.

Thus, for many dealers the challenge remains to keep product support operations – parts and service – at the forefront to support equipment owners keeping old fleet running until a better outlook supports the purchase of new. Rentals will also improve as the jobs that are out there require them, but with little follow-on work in the pipeline to support purchase.

We will see robust demand return in 2013, provided we get a federal government in Washington that understands how to encourage rather than stifle private-sector growth. AED is working hard on this and welcomes any support our industry can offer.

An Expert Opinion:

Ken Simonson, chief economist, Associated General Contractors of America

Construction should finally reverse its five-year slide in 2012. However, the overall increase will be modest and very unevenly distributed among project types.

Rental apartment construction may be the biggest winner. By late 2011, rents were rising and vacancy rates falling in nearly every metropolitan area. Permits and starts were up sharply. These indicators virtually guarantee a strong rate of spending on new rental construction in 2012. In contrast, the much larger single-family market appears to have bottomed out, but has yet to post any sure signs of improvement.

Private nonresidential construction will be led by power and energy projects; manufacturing plants; and warehouse, distribution, trucking and rail facilities. Hospital and private higher-education construction may also rebound modestly. But the once-large retail and office categories are likely to remain in the doldrums, driven by remodeling rather than new stores, shopping centers or office buildings.

Two developments will have a particularly strong influence on the types and locations of construction activity in 2012 and beyond. First, the exploitation of shale-based natural gas and oil formations in Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, North Dakota, several parts of Texas and other states is generating demand for construction in those regions and “downstream.” Downstream activities include new interstate pipelines and storage facilities, factories that will use the gas as a feedstock or fuel and export terminals. Second, the widening of the Panama Canal is leading ports, distributors, railroads and truckers to improve capacity and efficiency along the East and West Coasts, and also inland destinations.

Unlike the generally improving private segments, public construction appears headed for a third consecutive year of decline. Federal government programs that kept some contractors afloat in 2009-2011, such as military base realignment and stimulus projects, have largely ended, and Congress is holding down regular appropriations for both building and infrastructure spending. State tax revenues have been increasing, but not enough to restore funding for most construction. School districts and local governments, which depend heavily on still-shrinking property tax receipts, are cutting construction budgets even more deeply.

Combining these pluses and minuses suggests that construction spending will grow enough in 2012 to overcome the 2- to 3-percent decrease expected for 2011 when the year’s figures are finalized. But the total will remain as much as 30 percent below the peak reached in 2006.

Words like sustainability, carbon footprint and environmental stewardship have dominated the construction industry for the past half-decade, driving some highway engineers to protest the buzz and beg their information sources to go back to covering advances in materials and technology that make roads better.

More and more, those topics are intertwined: advances that make pavements perform better or cost less – or both – usually also bring advances in sustainability.

The other remarkable aspect of pavement sustainability is the pace of change. In the past few years, under the press of economics, science and marketing forces, the science of sustainable concrete and asphalt pavements has evolved quickly, with advances in everything from production and technology to communicating best practices.

To keep pace with the changes, Better Roads reviewed recent developments with representatives from the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) and the American Concrete Pavement Association (ACPA).

In terms of conventional methods of measuring carbon footprints, concrete pavement’s great strength is its inherent longevity. Its greatest vulnerability is the amount of carbon dioxide released in the production of Portland cement.

“The cement industry has taken dramatic steps to reduce any environmental impact of the manufacturing process, reducing the amount of energy to make a ton of product by more than 33 percent since 1972,” notes Leif Wathne, PE, ACPA vice president of highways and federal affairs. He adds that the Cement Manufacturing Sustainability Program is pledged to reduce CO2 emissions by another 10 percent per ton from 1990 levels by 2020.

In addition, he notes, research is underway at MIT’s Concrete Sustainability Hub to achieve future carbon reductions through nanotechnology. “Science is looking for a better understanding of Portland cement — at the molecular level,” says Wathne. “There are some pretty exciting prospects on that front.”

Meanwhile, the concrete paving industry is focusing on pragmatic solutions to the challenges of the day — sustainability and cost reduction.

“One obvious tactic is reducing the amount of Portland cement in the mix,” says Wathne. “We’ve been substituting industrial waste products like fly ash and steel slag for decades. A lot of our work now is aimed at stimulating wider adoption of these products by communicating to agencies what kind of substitutions are possible for various applications.”

When fly ash or slag resources are located near a project, the substitution of either product can substantially reduce concrete’s carbon footprint and its cost while enhancing or preserving its pavement qualities.

Like the asphalt industry, concrete interests work to convince agencies with prescriptive specifications for mix content to think more in terms of performance specifications. Wathne notes, for example, that the average DOT probably allows fly ash concentrations of 20 to 25 percent of the cementitious material, while others allow less, and others, like Delaware and Florida, use concentrations of 50 to 70 percent.

Wathne’s group is also trying to reduce costs and enhance sustainability by encouraging mix optimization and reduced pavement thickness.

Reductions in pavement thickness are expected to come from widespread adoption of AASHTO’s newest edition of the Mechanical Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG).

Mix optimization focuses on creating a combination of materials that allows the engineer to minimize the amount of cement in the mix. “The biggest factor here is aggregate gradation,” notes Wathne. “The goal is to find sizes and shapes that pack together in an optimal way, so you can use less ‘paste’ and thereby save on cost and carbon.”

Reductions in pavement thickness are expected to come from widespread adoption of AASHTO’s newest edition of the Mechanical Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG), the software version of which is known as DARWin-ME. The concrete paving industry, like the asphalt industry, hails the potential this pavement design discipline has for eliminating “over-designed” pavements and the waste they represent in unneeded materials, energy and cost.

Of course, cautions Wathne, some of those overdesigned pavements performed extraordinarily well when estimates of traffic loads turned out to be dramatically low, so improved practices in forecasting traffic loads is an essential part of the goal of efficient design.

Getting Warm

In the asphalt paving industry, the past two years has brought a flurry of advances in recycling practices and mix design. The elephant in the room – the development pavement engineers must understand – is the warm mix phenomenon.

Imported from Europe a decade ago on a trial basis, NAPA saw warm mix as a way to reduce fumes and enhance the working environment for paving crews. The product was demonstrated at the 2004 World of Asphalt and trialed around the country over the next several years, during which time a variety of other benefits were discovered, most notably: easier compaction, less sensitivity to ambient temperatures and haul distances, and an excellent medium for high-ratio RAP (reclaimed asphalt pavement) blending.

Not to mention: a reduction in carbon footprint of 10 percent or more based on energy savings alone. Using the greenhouse gas calculator on NAPA’s website (www.asphaltpavement.org), Howard Marks, Ph.D, JD, MPH, director of environmental and regulatory affairs for NAPA, demonstrated a conservative example of the savings.

“If a plant produces mix at 250 F rather than 300 F, the calculator shows a 10-percent fuel savings” says Marks. A 10-percent fuel savings will reduce CO2 emissions by 10 percent, from 45.5 pounds per ton mix to 41 pounds. But we’ve seen up to 15-percent fuel savings documented during field trials.”

The use of warm mix has mushroomed. “In 2009, warm mix production hit 17 million tons in the U.S., and in 2010 it went to 47 million tons,” notes Margaret Cervarich, NAPA’s vice president of marketing.

Usage is being driven by the mix’s construction virtues. “In states where contractors can use hot or warm mix, many contractors are opting for warm mix because it yields a nicer work environment and it’s easier to compact,” notes Kent Hansen, PE, NAPA’s director of engineering. “Even if there’s a slight increase in the cost of warm mix, they make it up in eliminating penalties or getting bonuses for density.”

Asphalt’s already low carbon footprint will decline even more as the warm mix marketshare grows, and it is expected to continue its rapid growth curve for the foreseeable future. NAPA forecasts that warm mix will claim 50 percent of the asphalt market in three to five years.

Pragmatic Solutions

Like the concrete paving industry, asphalt’s emissions-reducing progress is also being fueled by a need to reduce pavement costs.

For asphalt, the leading edge on this front centers on integrating ever-higher concentrations of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) into mixes and on the use of reclaimed asphalt shingles (RAS) to counter the impact of higher costs for virgin asphalt cement.

Growing sophistication in engineering RAP mixes – and increased confidence in them among DOT pavement professionals – has brought a steady increase in RAP ratios. NAPA’s Kent Hansen says RAP currently comprises about 18 percent of asphalt placed in the United States, up from an estimated 12 percent in 2007.

The upward trend seems certain to continue as pioneering states are allowing 35- to 50-percent RAP mixes for base and intermediate courses, and up to 25 percent for surface courses. Some states have no limit — contractors just have to meet design standards set by the state.

The industry has also aggressively adopted recycled shingles in mix designs to supplant a portion of the virgin asphalt cement and thus reduce costs.

Asphalt advocates, like those for concrete, are working to reduce pavement thickness as a way to reduce costs and carbon footprints. In addition to supporting the adoption of AASHTO’s DARWin-ME, the industry has used Auburn University’s National Center for Asphalt Technology to establish new structural values for modern mix designs. The new values substantially reduce the thickness required for various load projects.

Porous/Pervious Pavements

Perhaps no pavement development has won more friends in the environmental community than the advent of porous asphalt and pervious concrete.

Designed to allow stormwater to drain directly through the paved surface and percolate into the subbase, these pavements are winning favor in environmentally-sensitive areas and in developments where space for water retention is at a premium.

Where the technologies of the two industries clash, the conflict is almost always about cost-effectiveness and service life, and sustainability usually benefits from the competition.

They have become an important option for parking lot design, but road agencies are finding creative applications for them, too, from the City of Chicago’s “Green Alley” — a program which employs pervious concrete or porous asphalt for alleys to mitigate storm water run-off — to California’s experimentation with porous asphalt for road shoulders to enhance water quality.

No matter what pavement material is used, a significant factor in the sustainability of any pavement depends on the ability of pavement engineers to stay current with – and open-minded about – advances in materials, technologies and techniques that lower costs and enhance the environment.

Advocates for asphalt and concrete alike focus much of their efforts on communicating best practices to DOT and consulting engineers.

Often times, the best-practices message regards technology that has been proven in one place, but not adopted in many others.

For Leif Wathne and ACPA, one example of this is educating the road industry on today’s best practices for partial-depth repairs of concrete joints. While construction delays caused by concrete or asphalt pavement maintenance are a relatively small portion of the pavement sustainability picture, reducing repair times improves service to the motorist and usually reduces costs – and reduces carbon emissions from traffic slowdowns.

“This isn’t magic pixie dust,” Wathne says of ACPA’s Partial Depth Repair of Concrete Pavements. “This is proven process and methodology from states that have developed real expertise in this area, incorporating newer technologies like precision mills to get the job done more efficiently.”

Similarly, NAPA’s Hansen and Marks labor to educate engineers on the design and application of high-RAP/RAS mixes.

Some of the most interesting areas of education are where concrete and asphalt come into direct conflict. This includes ACPA’s campaign for unbonded overlays as an alternative to asphalt overlays. It also includes NAPA’s campaign for Perpetual Pavement, a full-depth asphalt pavement designed for long service life.

Where the technologies of the two industries clash, the conflict is almost always about cost-effectiveness and service life, and sustainability usually benefits from the competition.

Looking Forward

While most future advances in pavement sustainability will likely come from incremental improvements in materials, methods and technology – and the communication of those advances to pavement engineers throughout the country – there is the potential for revolutionary advances down the line.

In concrete circles, the MIT research to apply nanotechnology to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the production of Portland cement is certainly a case in point.

On the asphalt side, publicly- and privately-funded research is exploring the potential for organic products derived from materials like vegetation waste or algae to replace asphalt cement.

Pavement preservation expert Larry Galehouse talks about tools and strategies that make sense for surviving the Great Recession

By Kirk Landers

“In times like these, the pavement manager’s most basic strategy is to keep sound pavements sound and keep bad pavements from becoming unsafe or unusable.”

So spoke Larry Galehouse, director of the National Center for Pavement Preservation, in an interview with Better Roads.

Indeed, Galehouse, one of the nation’s foremost experts on pavement preservation, sees the diminished road budgets of the Great Recession as a litmus test for pavement management strategies.

“The agencies that have pursued the traditional ‘worst first’ strategy, giving priority to rebuilding bad pavements, are feeling the budget shortfalls most acutely,” he notes. “Agencies that have given priority to prevention — to keep good pavements in good condition — are in much better shape.”

And that homily is Galehouse’s advice to pavement managers dealing with severely constrained budgets. “It costs a lot less to extend pavement life while the pavement is healthy than it does to rehabilitate or rebuild a pavement that has deteriorated too far,” he observes.

The key to executing a pavement preservation strategy is to bring the right prevention tool to the right pavement at the right time, he says. The challenge is to select the treatment with the greatest benefit for that particular pavement, and Galehouse notes that it takes a lot of up-front work to make that diagnosis.

“For example,” says Galehouse, “you need to identify subsurface failure spots, dig them out and repair them before applying a surface treatment.”

And Galehouse stresses that pavement preservation priorities apply to concrete and asphalt pavements alike.

Asphalt Interventions

One of the least-expensive asphalt pavement treatments that Galehouse often recommends today is the use of a rejuvenator shortly after the surface course is laid. A true rejuvenation of an asphalt surface requires the introduction of maltene fractions. Thus, rejuvenators containing maltenes – the oily, resinous component of asphalt – increase the asphalt binders’ resistance to oxidation by improving the chemistry and prolonging its flexibility.

Rejuvenator treatments can be repeated every few years to keep the surface pavement supple and weather-resistant, typically prolonging its life by two to three years. The maltene-based rejuvenator is clear and doesn’t affect paint lines.

“It’s important to get the true, maltene-based rejuvenator if a change in binder chemistry is desired,” says Galehouse, adding that there are many other products on the market. “I suggest getting references from other agencies about how the product worked on past projects,” he says.

Rejuvenators are often applied after a road pavement or airport landing strip has been retexturized, says Galehouse. “Today’s retexturizing technology is fast and inexpensive, and it improves pavement friction.”

The roughened surface accepts the rejuvenator treatment more efficiently and the process improves the tractive qualities of the aggregate. Galehouse warns that pavements with poor-quality aggregate will polish again relatively quickly, while good-quality aggregate will keep its texture for a long time.

Crack Treatments

As highway agencies have migrated to a prevention-first philosophy of road management, emphasis on crack treatment has grown. The process is inexpensive and has been shown to extend pavement life by two years and often more.

Galehouse considers crack treatment an important tool in the pavement manager’s toolbox.

“There are two approaches,” he says. “Crack sealing is a series of steps that first machines a reservoir in the crack, cleans the reservoir with compressed air, and then fills it with sealant. This approach can be very effective when used on the right pavement at the right time.” Galehouse estimates that crack sealing typically extends pavement life at least two to four years.

Crack filling, a process in which debris is blown out of the crack and the crack is filled with sealant, is used for nonworking cracks and wider cracks. Galehouse says crack filling typically adds about two years to the life of a pavement.

“Both of these processes are pothole preventers,” he says. “And the longer you can prevent potholes, the longer you can avoid more-expensive interventions like milling and overlays.”

Surface Treatments

Chip sealing has evolved as rapidly as any preservation technology over the past decade, says Galehouse, as contractors and suppliers have stepped up the quality of materials and application techniques. “It’s more of a science now,” says Galehouse, “though there are still people who don’t recognize it as such.”

Perhaps the most dramatic leap forward in chip sealing will be offered through the SHRP2 (Strategic Highway Research Project) Project R-26 in which chip seals with carefully selected aggregate and emulsion applied with precise construction technique and finished with a fog seal can be placed on high-volume roads. This will finally demonstrate that chip seals can perform excellently on high-volume roads when care is taken in design and construction, says Galehouse.

“A high-quality chip seal applied to a sound pavement prevents sunlight and water from destroying the pavement,” says Galehouse. “It also adds macro-texture to the road surface to enhance traction, and with a fog seal it provides more visibility to paint markings by improving contrast.”

Other surface treatment interventions include slurry sealing and microsurfacing. Slurry seals are a mixture of fine aggregate, emulsified asphalt, water and additives placed by special machines in a thin coat, one stone thick. The slurry seal fills hairline cracks and delays pavement oxidation, and is appropriate for urban/suburban neighborhood roads in good condition.

Microsurfacing is a slightly thicker intervention than the slurry seal, combining polymer-modified asphalt emulsion, crushed aggregate, water and other additives in a carefully specified mix design, and placed by specialized equipment. “Microsurfacing adds thickness to the pavement structure, so it can correct rutting and minor raveling, and improve friction,” says Galehouse. “It is also designed to stand up to high-traffic volumes and heavy loads.”

Overlays

The next stop on the prevention continuum for asphalt pavements is the ultra-thin overlay — typically, 3/4-inch thick or less. “This is an intervention for a sound pavement,” says Galehouse. “With the advances in mix design and placement practices, it has become a very effective tool. It protects the surface of the original asphalt, fills minor imperfections, and improves ride quality.”

Ultra-thin overlays can also be designed to deliver other benefits. Use of a rubberized asphalt binder, for example, can mitigate traffic noise with great effectiveness. An open-graded friction course design can reduce spray during rain and enhance the quality of runoff water.

Thin overlays — up to 1.5 inches in thickness — cost more, but by virtue of their thickness can smooth out deeper imperfections, and achieve greater smoothness that improves the ride quality of the pavement.

Milling is the tool when the surface pavement has deteriorated beyond the point where lesser interventions can restore its condition. Milling is also employed in metropolitan areas where a simple overlay will not align properly with gutters.

“This is the Cadillac fix in the prevention tool box,” says Galehouse. “You mill off a thickness of deteriorated pavement and overlay with new asphalt to restore the ride quality. It’s a lot cheaper than waiting until you have to do a total structural rehabilitation, but for stretching budget dollars, you want to work as far up the deterioration curve as possible.”

In-place recycling technologies can also be very effective in treating aging pavements, says Galehouse. “It’s important to make sure the project you have in mind is a good fit for the technology, whether it’s hot-in-place or cold-in-place,” says Galehouse. “The best procedure is to get a good, reputable contractor to evaluate the project in terms of its appropriateness for (either).”

When in-place recycling technologies are viable, they bring a cost advantage to the project as well as environmental advantages, such as less energy consumption, lower CO2 emissions, and a 100-percent recycling of the existing resource.

Concrete Pavement Interventions

Contractors and pavement managers have developed an elaborate toolbox for concrete pavement prevention, notes Galehouse.

Joint resealing lies at the low end of the cost spectrum, followed by diamond grinding and partial and full-depth repairs.

“Cost analysis is key, especially with the more-expensive interventions” says Galehouse. “You have to weigh the cost of repair against the cost of replacement. So, for example, if you had to replace every other panel on a stretch of road, it would probably make much more sense to just replace that stretch of road.”

In many cases, says Galehouse, concrete pavements just need diamond grinding to remove surface imperfections and improve smoothness. Over a period of time, concrete slabs can settle due to movement of the road’s subbase. Most of the imperfections occur where the panels abut.

“If you have vertical displacement – called faulting – of the slabs, you might consider retrofitting dowel bars to stabilize the joint and improve the transfer of loading between slabs,” says Galehouse. “If they are tied together, just diamond grind it and seal the joint.”

While some pavement managers aren’t convinced that joint sealing improves concrete pavement performance, Galehouse does advocate the practice.

“The important thing is to keep the incompressibles out of the joint,” he says. Incompressibles include foreign objects that can clog joints and prevent the slabs from flexing as temperatures change and cause the panels to expand and contract. “By keeping joints sealed, you keep out the material that can cause blow-ups,” says Galehouse. “Seals also help protect the pavement from water seeping into the base and creating a ‘pumping’ action that forms voids in the subbase and cause cracks and even breaks in the panel.”

Joint seals typically last 10 to 12 years before leaks appear, says Galehouse.

Does prevention pay off with concrete roads? “If we take good care of our concrete roads with the tools we have today,” says Galehouse, “they will last far beyond what we have come to expect — over 50 years for good concrete.”

Coping with Our Times

There are still pavement managers in America who give their worst pavements first priority in budgeting, Galehouse notes, and their systems are suffering the most from the diminished budgets of the Great Recession.

“In good times or bad, the strategy that makes the most sense is to first keep your good pavements good — your dollars go further and your system stays stronger,” says Galehouse. “Then you keep your marginal pavements from deteriorating any further — to minimize safety concerns and the cost of the ultimate repair. And then you rehabilitate bad pavements as dollars allow, starting with safety concerns.”

Galehouse concedes that today’s tight budgets constrict everyone, but those pursuing sound management strategies that stress prevention will outperform the others, he says.

“Agencies that follow an asset management approach will come out of this cycle in good shape,” he concludes.

Larry Galehouse

Larry Galehouse is a licensed professional engineer and a licensed professional surveyor. His experience includes tenure with an engineering consulting firm and with a large state DOT. In 2003, he helped found the National Center for Pavement Preservation located at Michigan State University in Lansing, Mich. Galehouse has been a leader in pavement preservation initiatives within AASHTO, NACE, FHWA and TRB. Contact and learn more about the National Center for Pavement Preservation at pavementpreservation.org.

New products can benefit appearances . . . and budgets

By Mike Anderson

Call it a rule of thumb: It is always easier to find funds – no matter how bare the funding cupboard – for a taxpayer-jolting pothole than for neglected roadside vegetation or rock riprap. Ask any maintenance manager.

Too often, it appears, roadside vegetation is not, well, given its fair share of weight in planning and thinking about overall road management strategies and fund dispersal in these tough economic times. And that mindset can turn out to be costly. If budget can be found for products and applications that control, maybe even prevent, deterioration beside the road, there are true long-term benefits, including financially, say industry suppliers.

“I think we don’t fully account the cost of a solution that is our ‘go-to’ solution,” says Paul O’Malley, national market development director, Landmark Earth Solutions. “We take for granted and we turn a blind eye to what I often call the hidden costs. What is it truly costing for a piece of equipment to get out there and do the repair, for example, or to have your workers going back out to that site on a more frequent basis, versus the other needs that you need to be managing? It seems to me that these hidden costs are just sort of an accepted practice.

“My advice for agencies and contractors is to truly do an objective analysis of what the costs are of what you are currently doing versus some of the alternatives that are out there.”

Let’s take, by way of example, what industry leaders are offering in three specific areas of roadside maintenance:

1. Vegetation Management

Asked for his perspective of the market today, DuPont’s Darin Sloan couldn’t resist. “From my perspective, it’s funny that you use that term. We’re right in the middle of a launch of a new herbicide for roadside management – we got our first state registration in February of this year – and the name of the product is Perspective.”

Maintenance is an area that all too often we have become conditioned to not really scrutinize as effectively or as aggressively as we should.

– Paul O’Malley, Landmark Earth Solutions

Based on a new DuPont chemical called aminocyclopyrachlor used in various non-crop applications, Perspective is being promoted across the country as a tool for managing a range of roadside vegetation conditions, from line-of-sight safety issues in the faster-growing East to erosion-causing invasive weeds in the West. “As you move west, the roadsides don’t get the same amount of rainfall and, therefore, the uncontrolled vegetation part, the safety part, is not as big of a concern as the degradation of the natural environment due to invasive weeds,” says Sloan, a land management business portfolio manager. “In the Western part of the U.S., there are actually state and federal laws that require these road crews to manage invasive or noxious weeds on their roadsides.” Perspective has a “spectrum of control” on these hard-to-control invasive weeds, including leafy spurge, knapweed and thistle complex, he says.

Across the country, species that built a resistance to traditional herbicides, including Russian thistle, resistant marestail and resistant kochia, can be managed by crews with the same aminocyclopyrachlor chemical product applied to more normal vegetation management such as perennial broadleaf weeds. “As resistance developed, what would happen is they’d have weed escapes. They’d have to come back and plan another herbicide application to basically go over the same acres they sprayed before,” explains Sloan. “This new product will do it right the first time. They won’t have to come back and get these resistant species, not to mention some of those invasive species that really just didn’t have a good solution. Leafy spurge is sort of the poster child for that – it really has not had a good commercial solution in the past for control.”

Perspective “can also deliver some fiscal benefits, when you start comparing herbicide programs to mowing programs and the ability to eliminate some of the mowing cycles they have in-season,” says Sloan. Particularly in the East, “we can go out in the fall, which is relatively new in this marketplace, and provide residual weed control through the fall and the spring. That’s where they start seeing the benefits of reducing the amount of mowings that they have to do, or at least delaying the mowings until further into the summer.”

Primarily for broadleaf weed control, one application of Perspective per season should suffice, he says, adding that a follow-up product such as Pastora is required for areas with grass issues, such as the Southern and particularly Southeastern states.

“For those areas, we’re going to be actively promoting a two-pass system, if you will,” says Sloan. “You start the season off with Perspective and keep the roadsides clean until the beginning of summer, and then when you’ve got Johnsongrass and Dallisgrass and some of the undesirable grasses coming up, hit it with a Pastora treatment. From an herbicide application standpoint, that will pretty much be all you’ll need.

“You’ll probably have to come in and mow a couple of times in that summertime period,” Sloan continues, “but from a weed-control standpoint, you’ll be sitting pretty good.”

For product info, visit: dupont.com/Land_Management/en_US/products_services/herbicides/Perspective_herbicide.html

2. Erosion Control

O’Malley isn’t so much against rock riprap as a roadside armor against water erosion or scour; he just believes his company’s transition mat solution is more reliable, especially considering the lack of resources agencies have to tend to required riprap maintenance.

Maintenance, he says, “is an area that all too often we have become conditioned to not really scrutinize as effectively or as aggressively as we should. It seems like all too often we are focused on the initial construction cost of a project, and there’s not a due-diligence process applied to the lifecycle costs of that project. Sometimes decisions are made in favor of perhaps what appears to be a lower construction cost, and the cost we pay for that is a higher lifecycle cost and that is where the maintenance departments are faced with the burden.”

Case in point: rock riprap, he says.

“Anytime we have erosion-control needs, where vegetation is deemed to be not an ideal choice – either because there are hydraulic conditions that the vegetation cannot withstand or perhaps the soils cannot support effective vegetation because of slopes or just poor soil conditions in general – we see people using rock riprap,” says O’Malley. Hard-armor riprap is “the ultimate Band-Aid.” It is, he says, dependent upon a product that is local in nature, and, hence, inconsistent in both property and availability, as well as increasingly unpopular aesthetically.

“More importantly, we see a solution that requires continual maintenance that is very costly, because of the equipment that’s needed, and also very dangerous. When we put rock riprap on the side of the road, along the slopes or the drainage areas adjacent the roads, inevitably we get some type of vegetation growing up through it. That vegetation requires maintenance, and it is very difficult because of the precarious footing to get in there and maintain it without risking worker safety.”

ScourStop is Landmark’s product name for its transition mat – a mechanically anchored, semi-rigid, polymer mat with voids throughout for vegetative growth.

“From a vegetation maintenance perspective, it’s a flat, safe surface, so people can maintain the ScourStop system’s vegetation with traditional maintenance equipment. It doesn’t create an unsafe condition to go and maintain it,” says O’Malley. “From a hydraulic perspective, there’s no maintenance needed. If we have a 10- or a 25- or a 50-year design event come through, the system is designed and installed to support that event. So, there is no reshaping that needs to happen; you don’t have to go back in and add new panels; you simply maintain whatever vegetation is there in a very safe manner.”

Federal laws dictate that rock riprap must be reshaped, re-graded and have product added to it after every major climatic event, says O’Malley, “and that’s one of those things that maintenance departments just do not have the budget for. The only maintenance the rock is really typically seeing is someone with a string trimmer trying to go in and balance himself on different boulders and cut the weeds that are growing up through without killing himself in the process. No one is talking about going and adding new rock, and re-grading the rock, and making sure that it’s meeting the hydraulic requirements of the drainage conveyance, for example.”

In areas such as the Upper Midwest or Southeast, ScourStop can be installed in combination with sod; in drier areas, it is recommended to simply adjust the soil cover component and incorporate a turf reinforcement mat; where there is continual flow, don’t rely on any vegetation and just use the geotextile layer.

For product info, visit: scourstop.com

3. Culvert Rehab

The advantage to slip-lining a culvert to restore its design strength and life is also the Snap-Tite product’s biggest market challenge, says David Hundley.

A product line of ISCO Industries, Snap-Tite is marketed to state and local agencies on the basis that in-house crews can do the installations themselves. “They don’t have to put out for a bid process, so there’s a big savings in that,” says Hundley, Snap-Tite’s director of sales. And there’s undoubtedly a need, he relays. “You ask, ‘Do you have any bad culverts in your district or your county?’ and the answer is, ‘Do I ever! Of course, I do,’” he says. “These things were originally put in in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and they have design life of 30 to 40 years, so that design life has long come and gone. The solution to that has been historically to just dig them up, and that is such a big inconvenience that what ends up happening is the agencies just don’t do anything. They fix them when they fail, when the road collapses and everything gives way off the side.”

But an agency’s maintenance budget, already squeezed in this recession era, tends to go first to needs that are publicly both visible and prioritized, such as mowing, salting and guardrail replacement, says Hundley. “You take a small town. It might cost them $25,000, even if they use their own crews to fix this. That might be a $100,000 saving, but they didn’t have $25,000 extra to start with.” And, in the meantime, guardrails are missing, grass is growing and, he says, the public is howling.

Then again, the emergency alternatives to a no-dig solution like Snap-Tite are even more inconvenient to the public. “The only other way to fix this is to pull these culverts up, pull them out and put new ones in,” says Hundley, “and that stops traffic, shuts down roads, and all those things the public doesn’t want. Cost-wise, you’re looking at five to ten times more to do that type of work, versus just fixing it without having to dig it up.”

Meeting the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) requirement for culvert repair, the Snap-Tite lining system uses a heavy-duty plastic – high-density polyethylene (HDPE) – pipe on which a male and female joint is milled. The pieces “literally snap together” with a simple “chain-and-come-along” apparatus already found in stock at most city, county and state work sheds. “Once it’s snapped together on the side of the road or in the ditch, you literally take that stick of pipe and insert it into the old culvert that’s rusted out or that concrete structure that’s shifted, given way or worn out,” says Hundley. The space between the old and new pipe, and any other voids created over the years, are then filled in with a milkshake-type grout mix, injected via PVC tubes inserted as access points as the gaps at each end of the culvert are first sealed up. “That mix will find its way through all those holes and fill in all the areas that have been washed out.”

In addition to the official 100-year lifespan of HDPE, the culvert insert provides a slicker alternative to the traditional corrugated piping and, “because we go down in size when we fit a new one into an old one, the flow of runoff is increased.”

For product info, visit: culvert-rehab.com

Technologies taking form under the watchful eyes of the National Asphalt Pavement Association and the Federal Highway Administration

By Mike Anderson

There is little doubt that even the most staid and traditional of road agencies and contractors are at least warming to the idea of a cooled-down approach to asphalt production and application only unveiled to the United States nine years ago. The ability to cut fuel consumption, greenhouse emissions and employee risk has that effect.

Some industry stakeholders are even convinced warm-mix asphalt (WMA), regardless of how the ever-evolving category here is ultimately defined, will turn out to be the equivalent to what hot-mix asphalt (HMA) has long been. In other words, there won’t be any more HMA applications per se; they’ll all be what we are now loosely terming as WMA.

With warm-mix asphalt, “it’s important that we add the technology as part of the mix design,” says FHWA’s Mike Corrigan, “That way, we can identify where there potentially could be issues, especially where you have a high-traffic application such as an Interstate.”

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) may not be ready for such a proclamation quite yet; the two organizations, however, continue to team up to try to get the asphalt industry’s collective head around WMA. Their Second Annual International Warm-Mix Conference is scheduled for Oct. 11-13 in St. Louis, Mo. A dedicated website maintained for FHWA by NAPA, www.warmmixasphalt.com acts as an ongoing source of education, news, research and products on the market.

More than 30 warm-mix asphalt products or technologies are being marketed and sold in the U.S., “which has been a challenge for us,” says Mike Corrigan, FHWA program manager, “although a good challenge, because it’s made us focus really on warm mix as a category. Instead of focusing on individual technologies, we’ve had to take a step back and say, ‘Let’s focus on warm mix as a material and what the performance of that warm mix is.’”

Will warm-mix asphalt be the new norm? Time will soon tell.

Speaking at NAPA’s Asphalt in Depth Conference held in June in Nashville, Corrigan did issue a disclaimer about the products listed on the website, ranging from emulsions to mixing systems, sourced from long-established suppliers and market newcomers alike. “The one thing I do like to point out is that just because it’s on warmmixasphalt.com does not mean it’s been through any kind of large scrutiny or evaluation whether it’s appropriate technology. A lot of them have had a lot of successes, but the only criterion for us to really list them on the site is the fact that they have their own website that we can link to, to provide people information. We’re not trying to say that we’re endorsing that technology or that it’s a proven technology, just that there is information available.”

Ongoing research, including at the National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) test track at Auburn University in Alabama, is addressing a wide range of questions, reports NAPA and FHWA:

Can warm-mix pavements be opened to traffic quickly after construction?

What are the performance characteristics of these pavements?

In the case of technologies developed in other countries, can they be adapted to the U.S. where climate conditions are often more extreme?

If the production temperature is lower, does that mean that the binder does not age as much?

Will the potential for thermal cracking be reduced?

Will the potential for rutting be different?

Will the contractor have to use a different grade of asphalt binder?

What changes for the mix design procedure will be required?

And will the performance-graded binder in a warm mix perform differently from pavements produced at a higher temperature?

“A lot of questions get asked about higher-volume traffic – ‘Are we building warm mix on Interstates?’ – and the answer is, ‘Yes,’” says Corrigan, pointing to established usage in such traffic-heavy states as Texas, Florida and now New York.

Speaking at the Nashville conference, contractor Mike Law outlined conclusions from a Kentucky evaluation of WMA application, including:

Average densities were equal to if not superior to HMA counterparts.

Temperatures were on average 60 degrees F cooler than HMA control sections.

Workability still seems to be a concern for some contractors.

Actual savings will depend on plant efficiency, fuel prices, additive costs and aggregate moisture.

Average permeability readings were similar in HMA and WMA sections.

And, on average, WMA holds its temperature between the paver and roller better than HMA.

“Quality of warm mix must be as good as or better than HMA, or it is not acceptable,” says Law, of Scotty’s Contracting & Stone, Bowling Green, Ky.

Asphalt production expert Bob Frank of New Jersey-based Compliance Monitoring Service puts ongoing evaluations another way: What are the concerns with HMA? “Quite generally,” he says, “it’s things being where you don’t want them, whether it’s residual moisture in the aggregate where the dryer didn’t adequately dry the mix at the lower production temperatures, or moisture showing up in your baghouse fines due to the lower exhaust temperatures.”

Of the 358 million tons of asphalt produced nationwide last year, about 10 percent was warm mix, says Corrigan. “That was a tremendous increase in percentage from the year before,” he says, “and I think we’re going to continue to see that steady climb.” When he introduced Corrigan to the Nashville gathering, NAPA President Mike Acott called WMA “the future of flexible pavement in the United States.”

A heads-up, says Kentucky contractor Law: “If you’re not doing warm mix today, your competitor is.”

Playing The Cards You’re Dealt

(when they’re not very good)

How some city road managers cope with diminishing budgets

By Kirk Landers

With Stimulus money slowing to a trickle and local tax revenues still sagging, Better Roads interviewed a cross-section of city road managers to find out what they are doing with the funds they have available.

With the federal transportation program foundering, and state and local tax revenues locked in the throes of the Great Recession, road managers all over the country are struggling to maintain the integrity of pavements and bridges. While major interstates and high-volume freeways get funding priority in times like these, thousands of lane-miles of surface streets in metropolitan areas carry high volumes of traffic and are an essential part of area commerce and lifestyle. And beyond those high-volume roads are residential streets that, though low on the triage scale, have safety, environmental and political implications.

Given the sobering reality in rural communities where some paved roads are being returned to gravel due to inadequate funds (See “Weighing the Options,” Better Roads, April 2011), we wondered how their counterparts in urban/suburban America were being managed. To gather some idea of today’s urban road realities, we engaged a random assortment of city road managers in a series of informal conversations.

Our informal, unscientific conversational poll turned up both good news and bad news.

The bad news is what we expected: funds for roads are becoming desperately inadequate in many places, and there is an air of uncertainty almost everywhere due to the absence of a long-term federal program and chronic weakness in tax revenues at all levels of government.

The good news is that it’s not all bad news. Some city governments are finding reason — and resources — to pursue aggressive road programs. And even in cities where road funds have atrophied badly, road managers are employing new strategies and tactics to protect the public’s investment in road infrastructure until the Great Recession gives way to the Great Recovery.

Bridge Watch

Bridge repair and replacement can overwhelm any municipal road budget, even in the best of times, and in times like these, managers are scrambling to prevent the need for expensive interventions.

Liong So, a senior project manager in the City of Dallas (Texas) Public Works Department, says her agency keeps the city’s bridges in good condition by responding quickly to repair and maintenance needs. “One area we especially monitor is scouring on bridge columns,” she says. The agency’s strategy for bridge deck repairs now emphasizes longer-lasting interventions, she adds. “We still want to intervene quickly, but now, instead of a quick fix, we’ll do a full-depth repair, if the conditions warrant it.”

Rock Miller, a principal of Stantec, one of North America’s major highway and bridge consulting engineering firms, notes that bridge replacement has become an especially dicey proposition. “We are in an era of dwindling resources,” he observes. “We have to do more with less, but in many areas, the available funds aren’t even enough to cover maintenance expenses because funding has declined and maintenance costs have gone up.

“There have been a lot of innovations in pavement and bridge technology, but we don’t have the ability to fund them,” he notes.

Of course, when bridges become dangerously near the end of their service lives, communities often have to do something. That something, says Miller, may be tolling. He cites as an example a floating bridge in Seattle, which will sink in a few years. “The price tag for replacing that bridge is the entire budget capability of the region,” says Miller. “The best option they have is to rebuild it as a toll bridge, and we may see a lot of that sort of thing as time goes on.”

Miller notes that tolling projects are bondable. “That may be the only way to raise $300 million for a bridge for some agencies,” he says.

Miller adds that Illinois and Indiana are two states that have gotten money from the bond market with toll roads and bridges, while states like Texas and Florida are considering such projects and California leaders are discussing tolls for solo drivers in carpool lanes as a way of raising funds for roads and bridges.

Best Outcome Solutions

Every manager we interview emphasizes longer-lasting solutions as part of their agency’s urban road strategy today, though the tactics employed by each agency varied according to local needs and priorities.

For Ron Ditmars in Overland Park, Kan., the single most cost-effective pavement intervention is crack sealing. Ditmars is supervisor of public works maintenance for the city, which is part of the greater Kansas City metropolitan area and has a population of about 173,000.

“With revenue trends like they are, we’re focusing on maintenance technologies that cost the least and give the most return,” says Ditmars. The city’s maintenance priorities, he says, are crack sealing, milling and paving patches, and repairing base failures. In-house crews tend to the crack sealing and patching, and some of the base failures, while larger base repairs and milling and paving work are contracted out.

“We’re still evaluating which surface treatments give us the best return,” says Ditmars. The city has employed a variety of preventive maintenance interventions over the past decade, including microsurfacing, some chip seal and some slurry seals, in addition to conventional overlays. “We’ve been using a combination of overlays on a 28-year cycle with surface treatments every seven years,” says Ditmars. “If funds get really tight, we might have to push some of the surface treatments to eight years.”

Overland Park classifies its roads in three categories: residential, collectors and thoroughfares. The thoroughfares, says Ditmars, get milling and overlay interventions on a shorter cycle – 10 years or more – with microsurfacing treatments following five or six years later. Chip seals are not used on thoroughfares.

The city has been experimenting with several surface treatment options. A rejuvenating oil to treat aging surface asphalt has gotten negative public reception due to material being tracked into homes. The city is using different stone and oil combinations for its microsurfacing mixes, and officials there are looking at options like crumb rubber, river rock and hadite to either lower costs or extend service, or both.

Ditmars says the city also gives high priority to drainage for its streets, because water in the pavement can create expensive damage and safety problems. “One of our most important missions is to keep the underdrains open on some of our thoroughfares so the medians can drain properly,” says Ditmars. Similarly, when city crews repair failed bases, water is often the source of the problem, so they install underdrains as part of the repair.

Ground Failure Before Pavement Failure

For Mike Coffey, Alaska DOT maintenance and operations engineer, and his Fairbanks counterpart, Steve Potter, their state presents a set of road management problems that range from the unique to the nearly bizarre, but they have one thing in common with road managers everywhere: “We face higher expectations from the public every year,” says Coffey.

“The public wants a higher level of service and we try to provide that from a budget that generally doesn’t grow as fast as expectations.”

Because Alaska is a massive state with a small population, its transportation structure is different than other states. It derives a higher percentage of its road budget from federal funds, and the state DOT works more directly with city and local roads than in other states.

“We’re doing more with less, like everyone else,” says Coffey, of Alaska DOT. “In the old days we might have had three trucks and a grader on a job, now it’s one truck and a grader. All the trucks have attachments like front plows, belly blades, and sanders so they can do multiple tasks.”

Coffey says the agency has reduced its inventory of specialized equipment, in some cases by renting, and in other by replacing specialized machines with multi-use units.

As in other places, safety problems trump all other priorities, even in this tight budget era. In the Fairbanks area, the state has recently invested in a salt-brining system to deal with a changing climate that makes the fall to winter transition longer, with more freeze-thaw cycles. Coffey says the transition begins in October and often includes heavy and freezing rains, in addition to traditional winter weather.

“We were exhausting our supply of brine that was based on a more traditional, shorter transition to winter,” says Coffey, “and that is dangerous.” The new system has five stations that produce an enhanced brine that includes sodium chloride and an organic ingredient.

In trying to stretch pavement life, Alaska’s road professionals face some unique problems. In the southeastern part of the state, cities like Anchorage and Juneau face the twin curse of soft local aggregate and a long season of studded tires that includes periods of clear streets. The result is premature rutting. To achieve a longer-lasting, more cost-effective solution, the DOT is importing harder aggregate from British Columbia for its surface asphalt mixes.

In Fairbanks and the northern part of the state, the most severe and unique road problems stem from the fact that roads are built on permafrost, which becomes a weak, unstable base when it thaws in the spring. “We can build a 20- to 25-year pavement,” says Coffey, “but the ground fails before the pavement does.”

Northern Alaska’s extreme weather and soil combination can produce awe-inspiring effects in the spring, including roller-coaster-like undulations and long horizontal cracks in the pavement. “The horizontal cracks stem from the fact that the roadway fill is thicker at the centerline and gets thinner as you move out,” explains Coffey. “If the road has a 2:1 slope, there may be 6 feet of fill under the center line tapering to 4 feet of fill just beyond the edge of the pavement. This means the center is more insulated than the shoulders from the cold and heat, and that causes the differential warming of the permafrost under the road and the damage that follows.”

As a result, Alaska reclaims a lot of surface pavement each summer in the north and invests less in traditional pavement maintenance interventions used in the lower 48 states.

The DOT has also worked to reduce the destructive effects of the pavement/permafrost temperature differentiation by developing its own snow plowing tactics. “We’re in the refrigeration business,” laughs Coffey. “To reduce the effects of differential heating, we’ve been experimenting with plowing the road shoulders when we clear the streets. If the snow is piled on the shoulder, it insulates that ground and increases the temperature differential between the pavement and the ground next to it, which causes cracking.” The shoulder-plowing technique has been an effective tactic in reducing that problem.

For Fairbanks’ maintenance supervisor Potter, the plowing solution is an important one. “We can’t use chemicals in much of the winter because our temperatures are too low,” he says. And winters are much longer in Fairbanks than elsewhere in the U.S. — “our temperatures go below zero F by the end of October and ground temperatures remain below zero F well into April.”

Potter’s road management interventions include prolific use of foamed asphalt and cold recycling, as well as warm-mix asphalt and some testing of open-graded asphalt.

Cities Taking Action

Paul Klope and the city of Eugene, Ore., serve to remind us that local governments find the means to do what must be done. Eugene, a city of 138,000 in west-central Oregon, passed a five-year, $36-million bond measure in 2008 to repair the city’s long-neglected roads. This, combined with a city gas tax, federal STP-U (Surface Transportation Program–Urban) funds, some recent state and county funding and a chunk of Stimulus money ramped up the funds to provide what Klope calls “an amazingly robust” pavement program. These funding levels will continue for at least another couple of years.

“The investment was long overdue and the timing was a blessing for everyone,” says Klope. “We’re getting great bid prices because of the competition for work, but it’s good for the contractors, too, because we’re able to pave even more streets.”

The size of the city’s program has given Eugene’s pavement managers an opportunity to invest in several pavement technologies that are projected to yield higher cost-benefit performance than the pavements they replace.

One area of special emphasis is employing recycled asphalt shingles (RAS) as part of the city’s asphalt mixes. “The Oregon spec allows us to use 30-percent reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP), or 20-percent RAP and 5-percent RAS,” says Klope.

“We won’t know if there’s any financial savings until we’ve done it, but using RAS helps us achieve city council goals for environmental stewardship,” says Klope. “The process is new to local contractors, so we’ll see what happens when we build more projects where RAS is allowed.”

Eugene changed its design policies in 2008, shifting from thin pavements over thick rock bases to full-depth asphalt to reduce the long-term costs of its road program. Research shows that the city’s 30- and 40-year-old full-depth pavements are in much better structural condition than traditional thin asphalt streets and much less expensive to rehabilitate.

The city began using full-depth reclamation (FDR) in the reconstruction of selected streets in 2009. “We have poor soils here, so we use FDR with a portland cement additive to create a strong platform,” explains Klope. “We started with three local streets and it went so well that we added more local streets and an arterial last year. Because of local soil conditions, Klope says the city’s FDR process digs deeper into the soil than typical reclamation practices and can use a much higher mix of portland cement — up to 8 percent.

Eugene is also testing whitetopping as a solution for an intersection that has a high volume of heavy trucks. The city milled 6 inches of the old asphalt pavement and placed 6 inches of concrete on top of it. It is the city’s first use of whitetopping on a street, though the technology has commonly been used for bike paths in Eugene.

Eugene is also making a major commitment to warm-mix asphalt, using it for almost all of its paving projects since 2009 – a total of more than 120,000 tons so far. The city adopted warm mix for environmental reasons and in hopes of some slight gain in lifecycle cost efficiency. “We like the higher-effect asphalt content,” says Klope, “and we hope that translates into longer life. Meanwhile, it meets our community’s environmental goals and it’s good for workers.”

Klope says Eugene contractors have found warm mix a little easier and faster to compact than hot mix, but they don’t like raking it; therefore, small, irregular areas are often done with hot mix.

Life Goes On

While the specter of inadequate budgets hangs over many state and local road agencies today, most road agencies are trying to maintain current levels of pavement and bridge condition until the economy recovers and budgets return to normal levels.

“Metro government has put a lot of its efforts into maintenance activities, with potholing, overlays and crack sealing to extend our pavement life with more cost-effective measures,” says Jeremy Raney, executive administrator in the Louisville, Ky., Department of Public Works and Assets. “Most of our efforts are currently focused on maintenance of existing structures and replacing those that have more severe deterioration.”

Like many other road departments, Louisville was able to use Stimulus funds for critical upgrades, but now faces a much tighter budget and more limited capabilities.

Still, says Raney, Louisville is using its asset management system to establish priorities for bridge and pavement rehabilitation, and the city’s maintenance department is focused on critical preservation activities, including replacement of deteriorated cross drains and shoulder repairs.

Ironically, our conversation with Raney was delayed and truncated by severe weather and flooding in the Louisville area last spring, a reminder to us all in this period of taut budgets and growing needs that all strategies and tactics are subject to the whims of natural events.

Working a Watershed in Winter

Recession or not, the environment needs help

Even in the dark shadows of the Great Recession, the need to develop road designs with sounder environmental attributes is a driving force in many areas.

In the Twin Cities suburb of Robbinsdale, a partnership of road and watershed management agencies is working with the Minnesota Asphalt Pavement Association and the consulting firm of Wenck Associates on a three-year study to see if the use of porous asphalt can reduce the need for road salt in an environmentally sensitive watershed area.

The Shingle Creek Paired Intersection Project was launched in 2009 with a $282,000 research grant and the construction of 150-foot test sections of porous asphalt and conventional asphalt on a Robbinsdale residential street with a sandy subgrade. A second test site was built in 2010 on a clay/loam subgrade.

“We will monitor these sections for three years,” says Ed Matthiesen, a consultant with Wenck Associates. “We want to estimate the effectiveness of porous asphalt in reducing the need for salt as a de-icer and determine whether porous asphalt can stand up to the rigors of residential street use.” In addition, the study will determine short-term maintenance requirements and project long-term requirements, and the team will measure the water quality and quantity performance of porous asphalt.

Though the study won’t be completed until 2013, the intermediate results have been promising. “The control sections with salt tend to melt faster than the unsalted porous asphalt sections, but there is less refreezing of melted snow and ice on the porous pavement,” says Matthiesen. “And it appears to work just as well as salted pavement at clearing ice buildup.”

After two winters for one section, and one winter for the other, Matthiesen says the porous pavements are holding up well with no visible signs of distress from traffic, plows or weather.

The porous test sections include 1.5 to 2.5 inches of asphalt with 40-percent void, a choker layer of 0.5 to 1.0 inches, and a 0.25- to 0.75-inch layer of porous aggregate. Cellulose fiber and mineral filler were added to the binder to achieve a draindown of less than 0.3 percent.

Temperature sensors have shown the porous asphalt has insulating properties; the test sections are warmer than the control sections an inch below the surface. In addition, the porous sections have been more responsive to solar radiation, producing a faster melt and more bare pavement on sunny days compared to the control sections.

Snow Business

Now is the time to prepare for winter. Check out these stories for ideas that will get you ready for freezing temperatures.

By Tina Grady Barbaccia

A Certificate for Pro Snowfighters

Snowfighters have a big job. Now there is a certificate program to help them do their jobs better.

The idea of a certificate program has been an ongoing discussion in the winter maintenance community, says Mark DeVries, chairman of the American Public Works Association (APWA) Winter Maintenance Subcommittee and maintenance superintendent for the McHenry County, Ill. Department of Transportation.

The APWA subcommittee has in fact been discussing the need for additional training for the past five years. “Discussion fluctuated between pursuing a certificate program for training new supervisors versus working on a certification process to verify the supervisor’s core level of knowledge,” explains Phyllis Muder, APWA continuing education project manager and project coordinator for the certificate program.

The APWA Winter Maintenance Supervisor Certificate program was launched at the APWA Snow and Pacific Northwest Snowfighters Conference in Spokane, Wash., in April.

The certificate will next be offered in conjunction with the 31st Annual APWA Western Snow and Ice Conference and National Snow Roadeo in Estes Park, Colo., in September and again in conjunction with the 2012 APWA North American Snow Conference in Milwaukee, Wis., in April of 2012.

“We wanted the participants to be able to expand their knowledge of planning and preparation, increase their understanding of winter weather, learn how to better use traditional and alternative chemicals, improve the training of their teams and enhance communications with the public,” Muder explains. “The goal of the program was to provide a base level of knowledge for individuals charged with supervising their winter maintenance operations. All of sections focused on the environmental impacts of the policies and stressed responsible application.”

The certificate workshop was presented in six segments by a team of 12 experts from the United States and Canada. Here is an overview:

PART 1: Dave Bergner, former superintendent of public works for Overland Park, Kan., and Paul Johnson, operations manager, County of Wellington, Ontario, presented an overview of policy and procedures with a specific focus on the critical information needed to develop a written winter maintenance plan, including:

• Policies: Statutes, ordinances, responsibility and authority.

• Protocols: Levels of service (LOS); generally desired outcome within a period of time under typical conditions.

• Procedures: Details for specific tasks or activities.

• Processes: Methods, materials and machinery to be used depending on circumstances.

• Positions and People: This section defined the organizational structure and identified the number, classification, responsibilities and requirements for personnel.

PART 2: Presented by Jon Tarleton, roads marketing manager for intelligent weather solutions supplier Vaisala, and Warren Nicholishen, roads coordinator for the Regional Municipality of Durham, Ontario.

A new Snowfighter Certificate program developed by the American Public Works Association provides a base level of knowledge for individuals charged with supervising winter maintenance operations.

 “The goal of this section was to give the participants a better understanding of weather terminology so they could get the most out of the weather forecasts and observations. Attendees could learn to predict, analyze and identify the changes in a storm’s progress, which would require different strategies to reduce driving hazards, use equipment, material and labor efficiently, and to apply technologies in an effective and timely manner,” Muder points out. The presenters also addressed the role of pavement temperature and the benefits of Clarus and Road Weather Information Systems (RWIS).

PART 3: Presented by: Duane (Dewey) Amsler, president of AFM Engineering Services, Slingerlands, N.Y.; Wilfrid A. Nixon, P.E., Ph.D., professor at the University of Iowa; and John Klosterman, street/sewer maintenance superintendent for the City of Dubuque, Iowa. “We explained why chemicals are used in winter highway maintenance and described the factors to be considered in selecting materials in winter maintenance,” Muder says. “There was a focus on the environmental impacts of the use and non-use of materials in winter maintenance, as well as how to determine the appropriate storage and handling methods for these snow and ice control materials.”

PART 4: The fourth segment focused on equipment and fleet. This was co-presented by John Scharffbillig, director of public works fleet services for the City of Minneapolis, and William (Pat) Kennedy, senior engineer – Street Maintenance Division, Public Works for the City and County of Denver.

“This segment addressed how to use the equipment available to meet the level of service requirements for their organization,” says Muder. “This included discussion of the various types of snowplows such as one way, V-plow, underbody, ice blade and wing, as well as the other equipment used in the fleet such as trucks, light trucks, graders, loaders and snow blowers. Emphasis was placed on why and how plows and blades are selected to accommodate different applications and conditions, meet expected levels of service (LOS), operate in the required area and achieve the desired performance. The session also stressed the importance of equipment inspection, maintenance and cleaning.”

PART 5: Presented by Bret Hodne, public works director for West Des Moines, Iowa, and Mike Kennedy, director of transportation maintenance and repair for the City of Minneapolis.

“The purpose of this section was to have the participant understand, define and describe the levels of service (LOS) their agency delivers, while reviewing some basic snowfighting standards and procedures. There was also a quick review of modern snowfighting technologies such as anti-icing, use of chemical blends and smart spreading,” Muder explains. “They stressed the importance of appropriately calibrating equipment for optimal performance and touched on how changing federal regulations affect agencies.”

PART 6: DeVries and Johnson presented the final topic – ice control. The segment addressed proactive measures used in snow and ice control operations, describing methods such as pretreatment, anti-icing, deicing and treatment recommendation. This segment also discussed the benefits of proper procedures and applications in snow and ice control, and defined the appropriate technique needed prior, during and following a snow or ice event.

Overland Park public works maintenance supervisor Ron Ditmars, although he’s no novice to winter maintenance, says he came back with new ideas for cleaning up equipment after a storm and neutralizing salt. “I learned things that I hadn’t thought of before,” says Ditmars. “This is an excellent program for people highly involved in a winter maintenance program, such as sector supervisors and the more veteran operators that have critical thoroughfares, but who haven’t had the opportunity for training. This type of training would give them an opportunity to see what decisions are based on so they understandwhy they are made.”

The certificate program drew 218 people. “We were hoping to just get at least 50, but the response was overwhelming,” DeVries says. “The winter maintenance community has been struggling with how to do something universal for winter maintenance. Because this program was such a success, our job now is to figure out how to roll it out to the rest of the country.”

Minneapolis’ Scharffbillig, who, like the rest of the presenters not only presented part of the program but helped to develop the certificate program, says, “Look at different outcomes from a removal and equipment perspective. We ultimately end up at the same place removing the white stuff from the road, making it safe for everyone to travel on. This training helps everyone from around the country have a better understanding of the ‘whys’ and ‘hows.’”

DeVries says that while the program is still under development, it has been embraced by agencies.

Monitor Weather as You Drive In It

In Alaska, winter maintenance crews have to deal with changing conditions to say the least. And those changes add a measure of difficulty to fighting snow and ice on roads.

The development of mobile monitoring weather systems may help solve some of these problems.

An Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities snowplow clears the roads northbound on the state’s Glenn Highway.

Road Weather Information Systems, or RWIS as they are more commonly known, aren’t new. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has supported use of RWIS, systems composed of Environmental Sensor Stations (ESS) in the field, a communication system for data transfer, and central systems to collect field data from numerous ESS. The stations measure atmospheric, pavement and/or water level conditions, and central RWIS process observations to develop “nowcasts” or forecasts. They display or disseminate road weather information in a format that can be easily interpreted by a manager. RWIS data are used by road operators and maintainers to support decision making. But RWIS are fixed; they can only measure the conditions where they are installed.

Mobile monitoring weather systems are mounted on a truck and record pavement temperature, ambient temperature, precipitation and other factors as the vehicle passes through the weather. It’s in real time. Agencies can monitor current weather conditions directly from the maintenance vehicles.

“If it’s raining and it all of a sudden becomes snow, you can push a button and give a line on a map where it changes from rain to snow,” explains Mike Coffey, statewide maintenance and operations chief for Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities’ Office of the Commissioner. “This information gets fed back into the RWIS and then would be available to the agency and the public.”

A bar graph would show the temperatures, and a GPS would show where the vehicle is, Coffey says. “The temperature differentials based on where the vehicle is and where it has been would be shown, and this information could then be fed back to a Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS),” he says. “Predictions could then be based on the data coming in real time.”

Coffey says Alaska has about 52 stationary RWIS stations scattered across the state. This summer, he says, Alaska plans to install mobile weather monitoring systems. It will test out the system in the Fairbanks area, where the equipment superintendent’s vehicle and all four of the foremen’s vehicles will be equipped with the mobile systems.

Maintenance Decision Support Systems are used in the Cost-Benefit Analysis Toolkit.

Having the more widespread data will be “extremely helpful,” Coffey says, because the data will be continuous. “When performing a road inspection, we could easily be covering almost the whole valley,” Coffey says. “If you’re on the road for two hours, you then get two hours of real-time data … for the line in the sand, so to speak, where it goes from rain to freezing. It provides a much better opportunity to direct your trucks and sanders or plows to the right area.”

Incorporating the mobile weather monitoring systems is starting out as a pilot program, but Coffey says it has great possibilities. “If it works, we’ll certainly want to expand,” he says.

There’s a Toolkit for That

In this economy, spending money, even on something as vital as winter road maintenance programs, is a tough call for agencies because money is as hard to come by as it has ever been.

For the last 15 years, agencies have reduced budgets or have had budgets that remained flat, according to Clear Roads. Begun in early 2004, Clear Roads is a government-pooled fund project started in response to the need for real-world testing in the field of winter highway operations. Wisconsin DOT led this work from 2004 to 2009 under TPF-5(092). The Minnesota DOT now leads the project under TPF-5(218). The ongoing research program has 20 member states. Each of those states gives some of their research money to the Clear Roads project to help with ongoing research. In return, they reap the benefits of tools developed through research.

As a result of Phase One of the project that started last year [the “Cost-Benefit Analysis Toolkit” (Project Number: Clear Roads 08-02/WisDOT 0092-09-08)] state agencies are finding it easier to select and then to justify purchases and requests for services and purchases by having hard numbers to back them up.

This is critical in such tough economic times, says Paul Brown, director of snow and ice operations for Massachusetts and a project leader for the “Cost-Benefit Analysis Toolkit” research program. When the project began, the goal was to develop a practical tool, such as a spreadsheet or computer program, that could be used by Clear Roads states and other agencies to calculate the cost and benefits, and justify expenditures for specific new practices, equipment and operations.

The project team developed a user-friendly, web-based tool that provides support for a cost-benefit analysis (based on available research) for 10 practices, equipment and operations. The tool is expandable, so it can include additional areas for analysis as needed. A training guide is also included.

When a new purchase has to have a cost-benefit analysis to justify its dollar value, it’s essential to determine an effective method for determining the cost-benefit of incorporating new products and methods into an agency’s operations.

But sometimes it’s difficult to come up with accurate, hard numbers.

“The challenge is having all the information you need to describe what you need to do,” says Brown. “You always have bits and pieces, but it’s hard to get everything you need compiled.” The cost-benefit tool does just that. It gathers all the pieces, puts it all in one place and does a sophisticated analysis so an agency is able to determine whether a decision would be a good investment or a bad investment, and how much an agency would gain or lose by making the decision.

“It takes the emotion out of purchasing decisions in snow and ice operations,” Brown notes. “We often say that we need to have a certain piece of equipment and why we need it. But the toolkit allows us to say, ‘If we put this on our truck, the rate of return is ‘X’ or that, if we spend a dollar, we’ll get $3 back.’”

In essence, the cost-benefit tool allows an agency to “plug and play.” A number is plugged in, crunched and an answer is provided. “The tool is outstanding,” Brown says. (For a list of what factors are analyzed in Phase One of the Cost-Benefit Analysis Toolkit, see the sidebar, “Phase 1 of the Cost-Benefit Analysis Toolkit.”)

Phase 2 has been approved for funding. What’s more, the nation’s top transportation leaders are on board, says Brown. In May, Brown talked to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and other transportation officials, and presented an argument why the toolkit is vital to state agencies, counties and municipalities.

“They agreed 100 percent with our proposal and understood that sometimes you have to spend money to save money,” Brown explains. “You’re not making up numbers and they are arranged in a way that makes sense. You have all the information, so you can justify budget, expenditures and the adjustments that go on your truck.”

The “spend money to make money” premise is exactly what Annette Dunn, winter operations administrator for Iowa Department of Transportation’s Office of Maintenance, used to get some needed equipment for her agency. By using the Clear Roads Cost-Benefit Analysis tool, Dunn was able to justify an allocation for investment in an Automatic Vehicle Locator/Global Positioning System (AVL/GPS system).

“You need a baseline,” says Dunn. “We need to be able to prove that we are cost-effective while improving safety and overall effectiveness of winter operations.”

For downloadable PDFs of the Clear Roads research on cost-benefit analysis, go to http://www.clearroads.org/research-projects/08-02costbenefitanalysis.html or our shortened URL, http://www.tinyurl.com/ClearRoadsCostBenefitAnalysis

Cost-Benefit Toolkit

Phase 1:

1. Practices

Anti-icing

Deicing

2. Equipment

Carbide blades

Front plows

Underbody plows

Zero velocity spreaders

3. Operations

Maintenance Decision Support Systems (MDSS)

Automatic Vehicle Location and Geographic Positioning Systems (AVL/GPS)

Road Weather Information Systems (RWIS)

Mobile pavement temperature sensors

Mobile air/pavement temperature sensors

Phase 2

(The final list won’t be determined until the project is underway)

1. Comparing flexible blades to traditional blades

2. Pre-treating prior to the storm

3. Pre-wetting at the spreader

4. Slurries

5. Plow guards

6. Spreader calibration

7. Tow plows

8. Open vs. closed loop spreader controls

9. Laser guides

10. Abrasives (sand/aggregates in different types or weights/sizes)

11. Remote cameras for monitoring remote sites locations

12. Contracted truck (private or municipal) versus a state-owned truck

13. Tailgate vs. hopper spreaders

THERE’S MORE COVERAGE IN OUR DIGITAL EDITION!

www.betterroads.com/digital

It’s complicated

By Mike Anderson

It’s debatable whether it’s a good time to buy or sell used equipment, or both, but it’s clear the game has changed

It’s a Thursday morning in mid-April when a 2008 Caterpillar D8T dozer crawls off the Ritchie Bros. auction ramp in Connecticut, having fetched a top bid of $322,500 from a buyer on site. Over the following three minutes, three 2008 D6 tractors follow at closing bids ranging from $125,000 to $182,500.

Big deal, right? A scene repeated many days throughout the country, the continent and, heck, the world, right? Perhaps. But that’s actually what makes it significant . . . and, given where the industry has been the previous two years, maybe even a big deal.

This isn’t Florida in February, where and when the construction equipment industry’s mega-auctions ritualistically kick off the new season and, according to Rouse Asset Services, attract a popularity reflected in an annual spike in sales prices. This is two months later, more than 1,200 miles north, and yet the used iron is still moving and fetching noteworthy selling prices.

Depending on who you ask, the used equipment market is back, even robust. The sentiment isn’t universal, and even somewhat optimistic observers say results are mixed, depending on the particular sector being served, but the overall feeling is we’re not where we were 18 months ago . . . and that’s OK.

“From strictly an equipment-value standpoint, there’s absolutely no question that the prices people are exchanging equipment at today are higher in a relative sense than where they were even a year ago,” says Gary McArdle, Rouse vice president. For relative comparables, such as a 2007 piece up for sale this year versus a 2006 model up for sale 12 months earlier, the values have increased by 8 to 12 percent in the lifting and mainstream construction product types chronicled by Rouse, says McArdle. “That’s just pure data,” he says. “It’s absolutely a better time to sell than it was a year-and-a-half ago.”

That may be, says Kurt Tisdale, general manager of Caterpillar Used Equipment Services, but it’s a “much more complicated” used equipment landscape today. “There is a lot of variability in the equipment quality out there.” The slowdown in work may have aged some equipment more gently and gracefully, says Tisdale, but at the same time, “a lot of customers weren’t able to do the maintenance that they historically have been doing, so you may be looking at a machine of comparable age and hours, but internally and externally may be significantly different in quality and capability. It’s a lot more complicated now to find that good deal, both on the buying and selling side, especially when we see the prices every month just going up and the supply of good equipment getting shorter and shorter.”

The challenge for contractors and agencies on the hunt for a good used iron buy is do their “homework” first, says Caterpillar’s Tisdale. “There’s a tremendous amount of data and information out there in the marketplace. Most of it’s on the Internet in the form of pricing. You can find all sorts of sites where you can see what a machine with certain model year and age brought at auction or is being marketed at by a broker, but you really can’t tell what that machine is like without thorough inspection, history of service, history of repairs, etc.” He lists some key questions for which answers are needed:

• “Was the piece repaired with original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts and service capabilities?” In other words, “Is that undercarriage going to be living like the original one did?”

• “Are the hours correct?”

• “Is the machine designed to meet the requirements for the area in which the customer plans to use it?”

“There are many machines that have been sold across regions of the world that may look like they’re the same model, but were really designed for specific regions that have unique customer specification needs and regulatory requirements,” explains Tisdale. “When you throw in the things like the emissions changes and unique configurations around the world, you really have to do your homework. You can’t just look at the age, the hours and the price, and say, ‘It’s worth this.’ You’ve got to have more knowledge and information.” Again, questions that require answers:

• “What region of the world was the machine originally delivered to?”

• “What was the original configuration?”

• “Does any component replacement, repair or maintenance history exist?”

• “What was the original emissions level?”

“Really study the machine closer,” advises Tisdale, “because I see more variability in quality than I ever had, since a lot of the late-model equipment is just not available. The past three years, especially in North America, the dealers really have not put many new machines into the rental fleet. The rental fleets are a third smaller than they were three years ago and they’re nearly twice as old. When you add in what machines were on the market the past couple of years, a lot of those migrated to other parts of the world via auctions or brokers,” he says. “And now that the North American market is picking up, the customers’ choices are more limited and there’s just a lot more older equipment than before. With older equipment, you have to start asking even more questions including, ‘Do we know how many times this machine has changed ownership?’”

Good Times, Bad Times

So, we ask, is it a good time to be a buyer or seller of used equipment?

It’s a good time to be a seller, says Alastair Robertson, president and founder of Universal Equipment, which buys predominately lifting equipment in the United States and sells it overseas. “If you’ve got equipment to sell, I would say, ‘Go to the auctions, NOW!’ There are fewer and fewer machines at the auctions and the prices are definitely going up. It’s a good time to sell stuff, if you’ve got it and don’t need it.”

Chuck Yengst, president of machinery market research analyst for Yengst Associates, admits he’s often on the opposite side of prevailing consensus on issues related to the equipment industry. “Oh yeah, it’s a buyer’s market,” he says. “It’s like the housing market. Ask yourself if it’s a good time to be a seller of a house or a buyer of a house. It’s the same damned thing.

“A lot of people would like to say things are just turning around like crazy,” Yengst continues. “In this country and in North America period, there are some little bright spots here and there, but if you also study it, you see there’s no real market for construction machinery. You know they’re not putting in super new buildings and highways. We’re at a hiatus, you might say, in construction, because housing is going nowhere.”

In the wake of CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2011, “I’m that one contrarian, I think, who is not living under that euphoria. I guess I’m a little on the negative side,” says Yengst, “because I don’t see how we can keep going like this with everybody yelling, ‘Hoopla,’ when there is nothing happening in the real world. I want to start seeing housing starts moving and I want to see money being spent on things other than repaving a road here and there. I want to start to see buildings going up, and factories and schools and everything else. I don’t see any of that stuff, and I’m saying, ‘What are you people doing? This is a shell game you’re pulling on me here.’”

As for potential sellers, “they all don’t want to get rid of the best used equipment they’ve got,” especially at auction, says Yengst. “The one thing that they’ve got going for them is to hang onto the stuff and move it if a customer comes to the front door. However, you won’t find dealers holding onto this stuff forever, if cash flow starts to be a problem.”

Caterpillar’s Tisdale says the market is ripe for those wishing to add, turn over or reduce fleet. “This may sound like a political answer, but we’re in a unique period when it’s actually a very good time to both buy and sell,” he says. “It’s a good time to sell because the prices have recovered nicely from what was a historical low about a year-and-a-half ago, when we had what I’ve seen as the lowest used equipment prices in probably 20 years. Many of our product families and models have recovered 20, 30 and 40 percent on pricing in that time frame since, so from that aspect, if you have idle equipment that you don’t need, it is a very good time to move it. But it’s also a good time to buy, because high demand for new machines makes immediate availability a challenge. Many of our models and our competitor models are extended on the delivery of the new machines, so if you’ve got work to do, you really have to consider what is available in the used market and consider refurbishing, repairing and upgrading a used machine just to take advantage of your projects. The other thing to consider is what technology and regulatory issues do you need to meet today’s business requirements and challenges.

“As Tier 4 is being launched,” says Tisdale, “the flow and disposal of used equipment is going to change. Machines won’t be able to operate or move as freely around the world as they historically have.” At the same time, older Tier 2 or 3 machines that in times past an owner might not have considered having may, in fact, be the best choice for some customers for years to come, either making it worth holding onto or even searching for to add.

“We are constantly looking for machines,” says broker Robertson. “It’s a struggle to find machines, at the right price, because of course all these guys wanting to buy remember the prices two years ago when everything was dirt cheap.”

Rationale, reasoning and conclusions may be debatable, but there are indisputable facts about today’s used equipment market, says Rouse’s McArdle. Equipment values are up and the nine largest equipment rental companies are showing increased utilization and rates, he says. At the same time, “every report we see shows construction spending was down in 2010 over 2009,” he adds, “and, of course, 2009 was down over the peak in 2007.” The first meaningful increase in construction spending in the U.S. is projected in 2012.

Boosted values, usage and rates in the face of decreased spending? “I would argue that no one could tell you for certain why that is,” says McArdle, but he has a theory. “As equipment falls out of service, whether you are an end-user contractor or the rental companies themselves, you need to be able to replace it . . . or find another piece of equipment that you can put into service to be able to do the jobs that you have. There’s fewer jobs, but you still need to have equipment to service the work that you have.

“If newer equipment is going to represent a larger investment, then maybe you want to look to used equipment first,” adds the Rouse Asset Services vice president. “If you have less visibility into where your future work is going to come from, but you do have a job today that you need to put equipment to work at, then maybe you want to rent instead of purchasing that new piece because you don’t know if you’re going to have work for it three months from now or a year from now.”

Yengst says he does try to be optimistic, but “this is really the saddest damned thing I’ve ever seen. It’s the hardest time I’ve ever had in my life, trying to talk about markets. Some people really are trying to make something out of nothing right now, and I take my hat off to a few of them because they are succeeding at it,” he says. “When you really get down to the nitty gritty, the rubber on the road kind of thing, we’re in a very serious problem and we’re not coming out of it very well or very fast. It is just such a tough, tough market to be in – and a hard one to talk about – other than I think we’re going to get some relief as we go along, but it’s going to be slow.”

His advice on disposable fleet? “Hang on to it, if it works, if it’s functional. If it’s not totally rusted out and a real problem from a maintenance standpoint, hang on to it,” he says. “Eventually, if you feel that you need to get rid of it, it certainly is not going to get beat up anymore than it already is, if it’s just sitting there. As long as you don’t have a really serious cash flow problem – and you’re not going to get that much out of it anyway.”

Others would argue that.

Exactly two weeks before that Ritchie Bros. auction in Connecticut, an Ontario-based buyer bought a 2004 Caterpillar D7R XR II crawler tractor at a web-exclusive IronPlanet auction for $172,000. From an opening bid of $100,000, the dozer was on the clock for 12 minutes and drew 32 bids. Good deal compared to the crawlers that moved at the later Ritchie Bros. auction? Impossible to say, absent detailed machine information, but it’s undoubtedly something to ponder for sellers and buyers alike.

Who can you trust?

He’s biased, he admits, but “the OEM’s dealer is your most trusted source” on used equipment, says Kurt Tisdale.

“Whether it is us or our competitors,” says the general manager of Caterpillar Used Equipment Services, “the authorized dealers have access to the technical information, and they have access to more of the warranty and history of repairs and maintenance than anybody else.”

His advice to fleet managers looking at the used market to add pieces is “to just be very careful when you see a nice paint job on any machine – to dig deeper.

“We’ve often found that a nice paint job is hiding something of concern,” he says, “but in the hurry to take advantage of a deal, it may influence a buyer’s decision more than it should. There are a lot of things to consider in that used purchase or sale. It’s not just the price. You really have to dive into what it’s going to cost on the make-ready and the repairs, the transportation time and expense, and the commission.”

Thorough inspection is key, says Tisdale. “It really comes down to trust with whomever you are in business with. I’m biased and believe the OEM dealership has that long-term trust with the contractor and the customer, and can provide information that’s really needed to make a wise decision. The machines are also a lot more sophisticated than they were a few years ago. With that sophistication comes the need to have a trained technician to be able to really diagnose and understand what we’ve got there.”

‘Back to gravel’ doesn’t have to be the only choice for a failing road … even if funds are scarce.

By Mike Anderson

Ken Skorseth isn’t down on asphalt; he’s up on options for cash-strapped agencies facing expiring or deteriorating secondary roadways.

And, for a guy who’s been at the “Alternatives to Paving” table for at least a decade, he’s suddenly seen the spaces around that table fill up and overflow with hungry transportation engineers and planners.

“Number one, what’s driving this is economics. The rapidly escalating prices of highway construction and maintenance and the essentially flat budgets in local transportation is the first reason this is happening,” says Skorseth, program manager of the South Dakota Local Transportation Assistance Program. “But the second reason, and it’s huge for us in the Central Great Plains region, is the dramatic increase in the size of trucks and ag equipment, and that goes right along with the graphically increased yield of our crops, our grains. And then a third factor is that so many of the local roads are at the end of their design life.

“It’s all hitting us at once.”

Notice Skorseth uses “Alternatives to Paving” – which is also a title in his presentations – as compared to the industry movement’s more common refrain of “Returning to Gravel.” The latter connotation, he has come to understand, has painted him in some circles as an anti-asphalt guru of sorts. Returning the lowest-volume roads to stabilized gravel is an option – and a sound economic one for agencies, he says, as long as the road retains a low volume – but it is not the only option Skorseth offers. Some choices do, in fact, include the use of asphalt:

An asphalt surface treatment – not pavement but rather prime/chip – placed over a deep aggregate base. This is referred to as “blotter” in South Dakota.

Put to work widely in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, a tactic that has caught Skorseth’s eye involves “building almost all of our structural strength to carry loads in a prepared subgrade and in base layers, and then simply constructing a very thin asphalt treatment at the surface – really nothing more than weatherproofing. It’s thin and it’s fragile, but will work if indeed you build all the structural strength to carry the loads underneath it.” This technique has promise here, he says, but admittedly “is a hard sell in North America, because our concept of a deep base layer falls short of what is needed to do these for a long life cycle.”

Using a 20-year lifecycle cost, a study conducted for the South Dakota DOT summarized that, for roads with up to a 170 ADT (average daily traffic) rating, a stabilized gravel surface is suitable. That threshold, says Skorseth, falls to 150 ADT if user costs are factored into the math. “If it goes higher than that, it’s not a good economic decision to go to gravel only, because the loss of gravel from high volumes of traffic and the frequency of maintenance needed will exceed the cost of pavement, if you calculate a lifecycle,” he says. “Of course, trying to find the upfront money to rehabilitate or reconstruct the asphalt surface is the big hurdle. That’s a lot of money at once.” With a gravel road, the initial cost may not be as high, but the maintenance is.

“It’s a catch-22 [telling an agency] to go back to gravel, but be prepared to do stage construction – ‘and hopefully you can find the money to eventually get this back to a pavement’ – with base improvement to handle today’s traffic,” says Skorseth.

Blotter, the South Dakota study concluded, is suitable up to approximately 650 ADT. Other options cited by Skorseth include:

incorporating chloride (magnesium or calcium) in to a minimum 2 to 3 inches of the layer, not solely on the surface as traditionally used for dust control;

using geosynthetics as part of the base construction; and

“in somewhat of a lost art,” incorporating a natural binder, usually highly plastic clay, into the top 2 to 3 inches. Bentonite has been used as a natural binder in Montana, western North Dakota and bits of Wyoming, he says.

A Warning Flare

Whether or not they are on the same side of the table as Skorseth in solutions, asphalt paving industry officials share many of the same concerns and observations.

“Many states have had ‘Farm to Market’ programs for quite some time. Their intent in general was to provide higher-quality routes for farmers or ranchers to market places or primary state routes,” says Mike Kvach, the National Asphalt Pavement Association’s vice president, product deployment. “Over the years, changes in the economy, the size of farm equipment and haul loads, etc., have impacted these pavements in various ways. The use and need for the route might have diminished and/or agriculture equipment increased the impact and deteriorated the pavements, and now there just isn’t any dollars to maintain these routes.”

“. . . right now, the DOT and the counties and the cities for that matter are just doing their very best to just hold on by their teeth.”

- Bill Rosener, executive vice president, Asphalt Paving Association of Iowa

That some road agencies are contemplating or perhaps even enacting a back-to-gravel solution “is to me a warning flare from these agencies saying, ‘Let’s put our heads together and see how we can save our roadways,’” says Kvach. “I don’t think any agency wants to take out a perfectly good roadway, but rather, ‘What can we do short of just turning the darned thing into gravel or turning and walking away from it?’ There are other strategies out there, and a lot of the agencies may not be fully aware of all of the strategies available.”

The Asphalt Paving Association of Iowa (APAI) sits down with consulting engineers and with officials at the counties and cities “to provide them with best and most cost-effective ways to rehabilitate roads,” says Bill Rosener, APAI executive vice president, explaining that rehab often requires 4 to 5 inches of overlay, but that budget-tightened agencies are actually doing 2 to 3 inches “just to get them by. Even when they have some money to do rehab, they’re not doing it to the level that they really need to or should do, because they can’t.”

The secondary roads most vulnerable to cost cutting often have a sealcoat surface, “a liquid asphalt with chips applied across top, which is OK for very low maintenance,” says Rosener. “Eventually, they need to do some hardsurfacing with an asphalt overlay. These roads are well-suited for that, but the people just haven’t had the money to do it. If you don’t keep up with the chip seal or overlay with asphalt, eventually it begins to break down and turn back into a gravel road.”

A Supporting Cry

If county or state agencies do decide to turn paved roads back to gravel, or perhaps more accurately simply allow this to occur somewhat naturally, they’re not going to receive any heat about it from the industry most negatively affected by such a decision. Conversely, they’ll receive nothing but sympathy from the asphalt paving sector.

“You bet I feel for them,” says Tom Gaetz, executive director, Washington Asphalt Pavement Association. “Here in America, how would we ever imagine that we could have roads being converted back to gravel because we don’t have the money to maintain them as paved surfaces?”

As with Gaetz in the Pacific Northwest, Rosener reports that such a movement is certainly not yet prevalent in Iowa, which has the 13th-longest road system in the nation, but that rumors and even anecdotal evidence suggest the practice is starting to occur in isolated situations.

“The bigger issue is that we just have a severe lack of funding,” says APAI’s Rosener, “and the counties are feeling it probably worse than anybody. There’s a severe need within our state.” A study done for the DOT in the early part of last decade indicated that Iowa needed to increase its funding for roads by $220 million annually, “just to maintain,” he says. A few minor revenue recommendations were adopted then, but the key one, an increase in the gas tax for the first time since 1988, was not. “That need’s just amplified since,” says Rosener, “and honestly, right now, the DOT and the counties and the cities for that matter are just doing their very best to just hold on by their teeth.”

There is, says Rosener, a faint glimmer of hope: As compared to his predecessor who was strongly against a gas tax increase, current Gov. Terry Branstad has appointed a committee to study the road funding shortfall and report back with recommendations by year’s end. “We’re certainly pressing for that,” says Rosener, citing a Reason Foundation report last September that ranked Iowa’s roads system 31st in the country overall. “Without any additional funding, we’re definitely going to be dropping in the ranks.”

In Washington state, Gaetz will continue to build coalitions to lobby for funding increases, based in part on past success. “When we ask for these increases, I have found that if we don’t have dedicated funds, we have lost the confidence of the voting public,” he explains. “So, one of our big deals here is that when we look at revenue packages, we identify defined needs.” A transportation gas tax increase was successfully passed in the state in 2005-06 after work by proponents included the development a list of 273 specific capital improvement projects. “We got $17 billion to address that project list,” says Gaetz, “and every one of those projects on that list is under construction and will be completed by the year 2016.

“We will have to do the same when it comes to road preservation and creating dedicated funds,” Gaetz continues, “so that they can’t be swiped away and put into general fund, which is the common practice of every legislature in the country.” The effort’s packaging, says Gaetz, will include educating the public on the difference between capital improvement projects and preservation projects, the latter having “clearly come to the top of the need list.”

Agencies in his state, operating on a solid pavement management program across the board, says Gaetz, “know where to spend the money. It’s just that they don’t have the money to spend.”

“The point would be, coming from the asphalt industry, that there are strategies that will help them retain a good roadway – a fair roadway anyway – and keep them in an asphalt program,” says Kvach, the former APAI executive now working at the national level with NAPA, “so that as the economy does return, there’s a good foundation that they can work from.

“Asphalt – and this is what I like about this industry – is a product that allows us to have all these strategies. When we say asphalt is flexible, sometimes we talk not just about the physical nature of asphalt, but its economic flexibility. We can take these various strategies, these various levels of implementation, and work with an agency to help them get to a certain goal . . . and find a long-term strategy that might work within a strained budget.”

Albeit from a different perspective, Skorseth has a similar objective. “Think big. We’ll survive, just not in the way we did from 1950 to about 2007,” he says.

“I’m not down on the asphalt industry. I’m just trying to help all of my local customers who just don’t have the money to build the strength on the surface anymore,” says Skorseth. “We have to recognize the fact that if we are going to help our customers, we’ve got to meet them where they are . . . and they don’t have an extra $3, $5 or $10 million to go out and rehab a lot of pavement.

“We’ve got to meet them where they are and see what kind of solutions we can come up with,” he says, “and that’s what we’re working on here.”

Across the country, paving material suppliers andcontractors alike mining new opportunities with thin hot mix asphalt overlay technologies.

By Mike Anderson

For belt-tightened agencies, thin hot mix asphalt overlay may be among a plethora of strategies to preserve pavement . . .and money. (Please see Tom Kuennen’s “RoadScience Tutorial” on Page 20.)

For hungry mainline paving contractors, the laying of what is today a reliable thin top layer has become a way to preserve – perhaps even increase – their levels of crew activity and equipment utilization.

“I think [contractors] see it as a huge opportunity for them to enter in and to compete in the pavement preservation arena,” says Dave Newcomb, vice president of research and technology with the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA). “Given the fact that there aren’t a lot of major rehabilitation projects going on right now, a lot of the work is in pavement preservation,” he tells Better Roads. “I think contractors understand that this is a way for them to keep their head above water in very tough times.”

Proven to hold up, thin hot mix asphalt overlay as experimented with and developed over the past two generations is now an accepted -- and growing -- technique for pavement preservation. As road and highway agencies struggle to do more work with less money, thin overlays are increasingly answering the need.

It’s difficult to determine if thin overlays themselves have actually saved jobs among the contracting sector, says Cliff Ursich, president and executive director of the industry umbrella association Flexible Pavements of Ohio. “But we’ve seen the move by agencies to try to conserve, so thin hot-mix asphalt overlays certainly become more attractive to them,” he says. “What’s the most attractive part of it is that they know they are going to get a product that’s going to last a lot longer than a conventional material, because of its composition.” A blend of high-quality aggregates with polymer-modified asphalt, Smoothseal is the industry name for the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT)-approved fine-graded spec item. “If we had never developed this mix,” says Ursich, “certainly there would be a lot more micro surfaced roads in Ohio.”

Perhaps not as far back as thin-lift technologies in some other parts of the country, a launching point for Smoothseal in Ohio occurred some 20 years ago, says Ursich. “We started off actually with a thin-lift asphalt mix developed in the early 1990s, when our department of transportation was just getting started in the use of preventive maintenance strategies. They had traditionally looked at conventional asphalt as a preventive maintenance strategy, but then they started to look at thinner materials,” he says, “and we saw the necessity to go and develop a product in the 1990s.” ODOT then backed away from the preventive maintenance strategy due, believes Ursich, to concern over use of poor-performing copycat-type materials that weren’t up to standard. But thin lift was suddenly back in political vogue in Ohio in the early 2000s, upon the Federal Highway Administration coming out with an emphasis on preventive maintenance. In the interim, Flexible Pavements of Ohio had kept up its commitment to polymer-modified asphalt, making a recommendation to ODOT to use the technology in its heavy-duty surface courses “for the specific reason of getting greater longevity out of pavements,” says Ursich.

A thin overlay approach to pavement preservation does have its inherit challenges. A higher asphalt content is needed to properly coat and bind the aggregate, because of the higher aggregate surface area due to the finer aggregate particles, advises the National Asphalt Pavement Association.

With the market move back to thin lift, the fine-graded (passing through a half-inch sieve) Smoothseal mix “has really varied as to the type of facilities it has been used on, from the lowest-volume road you can imagine all the way up to the highest Interstate traffic that we have in the state,” says Ursich.

Explains Newcomb in the NAPA document Thin Asphalt Overlays for Pavement Preservation (http://www.hotmix.org/images/stories/is-135.pdf): The aggregate must be capable of withstanding the design traffic loads without displacement resulting in rutting. Because of the higher aggregate surface area due to the finer aggregate particles, a higher asphalt content is needed to properly coat and bind the aggregate. However, the asphalt content and asphalt grade must be selected, so that flushing, rutting or shoving does not result.”

Rich in asphalt content at 6.5 to 7 percent liquid asphalt with a heavily polymer-modified binder, Smoothseal can be laid at three-quarters of an inch thick, and increased to an inch for Interstates, Ursich tells Better Roads.

‘Bout Time

Next door, in Indiana, paving material producer and contractor Rieth-Riley Construction has for the past five years been producing and laying a 4.75 mm mix that, in the view of Regional Vice President Gene Yarkie, has been a long time coming.

“What’s the most attractive part of it [thin hot mix asphalt] is that they know they are going to get a product that’s going to last a lot longer than a conventional material, because of its composition.”

— Cliff Ursich, president and executive director, Flexible Pavements of Ohio

“I’ve been in the business for 24 years now,” he says, “and when I started, we used to talk about a finer hot mix – minus-three-eighths – but the conventional wisdom was that smaller aggregate just didn’t create a mix that was tough enough, that it just didn’t have the stability of the larger aggregate. The conventional surface mixes are a minus-half-inch limestone chip.” However, he explains, quality assurance wasn’t at the level then that it is today, and earlier nonconventional mixes were rudimentary. “This new 4.75 mm is designed volumetrically and it’s got the same properties that the courser mix has, that the larger-aggregate-type mixes have, and it works every bit as well in our experiences.”

By having a three-quarter-inch overlay compared to an inch, county agencies are sold on the fact they can cut yield by 25 percent and still have their needed rehabilitation and preservation projects completed, says Yarkie, who is based at the South Bend office of Rieth-Riley, which has operations throughout Indiana and Michigan. “The cost per ton is a little higher due to the higher asphalt content required, but it is more than offset by the lower amount of tons that are required on the job.”

Alan Selner, area manager at the company’s LaPorte, Indiana, plant, recalls how Rieth-Riley introduced the thin mix to the local county agency there. Rieth-Riley was to put the intermediate course down on a county road that was to be topped by chip-and-seal, but instead convinced the agency that the reduced tonnage required for thin lay would make a smooth top affordable. “They pay us by the ton,” says Selner, whose plant is now into its third season of 4.75 mm. “By using the less tonnage, they could get the price down, and plus not anger the people in the county as much. Some people wait a long time to get their road paved,” he says, “and the intermediate pave is laid down and then all of a sudden they get chip-and-seal on top of that, and there’s a little bit of a letdown.” With thin lift, the resulting surface is considerably more aesthetically pleasing, says Selner. “Everyone wins.”

While still early, results so far are good, he says. “It’s held up very well. The key is you’ve got to do it in warmer weather, and you’ve got to make sure the material you are placing is warm. It is very temperature sensitive. If you get it too cold through the paver, it just doesn’t seal up as nicely and it doesn’t look as good. You definitely want to keep it warm. Since you’re only laying somewhere around 80 pounds a square yard, it cools quick, so you’ve got to make sure you work it fast and take care of it quickly.” Material temperature from about 280 degrees F up to approaching 300 turns out the best result, recommends Selner. Down into the 270s, “it cools fast and doesn’t look as good aesthetically,” he says, “and that’s what you’re trying to sell.”

A Little History

Rieth-Riley’s foray into thin asphalt overlays on LaPorte County roads in Indiana as detailed by Selner is similar to earlier experiences of contractors in Maryland, relays Brian Dolan, president of the Maryland Asphalt Association. The roads being worked on had worn and broken off on the outer edges.

An objective he can recall dating back a couple of generations was “to treat as much roadway as you possibly could for the least amount of dollars with something that would hold up,” says Dolan. “Many of those roads were what we refer to as high-crown roadways. The center of the road would have a fairly normal cross-slope, and the outside of the lanes would fall off at 5 percent. So what we would do is hold the crown and drag, and wedge up the outside edge of the road to maybe a 2-percent cross slope, and then we would cover everything with an inch of overlay.” By having the contractor place much of the material only where it was needed, and finishing with an overlay across the road, the result for the owner was an efficient use of resources (which, in today’s reality, may be a key factor in agencies determining if a job, or how much of a job, is actually put to tender). “Some of those roads lasted 30 to 40 years that way.”

Moving forward, thin was in. Dolan recalls a job about 15 years ago on a significant Maryland rural highway – averaging 15,000-18,000 vehicles per day, including more than five-percent trucks – where about 20,000 tons of 4.75-mm mix was laid down at three-quarters of an inch thick.

During a time when public agencies need to stretch their dollars, a thin hot mix asphalt overlay solution to pavement preservation offers a number of advantages, including correcting roughness, notes Dr. Dave Newcomb, National Asphalt Pavement Association vice president of research and technology.

Prior to his 15 years at the state’s asphalt pavement association, Dolan spent 30 years with the Federal Highway Administration, retiring as district engineer in charge of metropolitan Baltimore. He recounts a much earlier assignment, working for a district engineer in the southern part of the state “who was just a huge advocate of thin overlays.” The idea is not new; the improved technologies are.

“In an era when the agencies are looking to stretch their dollars as far as they can and do the best job that they can, they are evaluating means of extending pavement life through pavement preservation techniques. A thin overlay offers a number of advantages,” says NAPA’s Newcomb, noting that the technology is not constrained to Superpave mixes only, but also applicable to Marshall mix designs. “It allows you to correct some things that other types of treatments don’t, for instance roughness. With a thin overlay, you can smooth out the bumps that are in the existing pavements. It can be used to treat a wide variety of pavement surface defects, anything from minor cracking to raveling. If you go in and mill ahead of the overlay, you can even correct things like minor rutting.

“A thin overlay gives you greater versatility in terms of addressing problems in the roadway, and it does it without having to jeopardize things like roadway geometrics.”

Recommends Selner at Rieth-Riley: “It’ll definitely hold up fine, but in order to lay that thin lift, you have to have a road that’s in good shape to start with. You can’t try to lay three-quarters of an inch of material on a road that’s rough, and up and down. You’ll be breaking stone, even as little as the stone is.”

If rutting or shoving is present in the roadway, NAPA recommends the origin of the distortion be ascertained. “If it is present only in the surface, then it may be possible to remove the surface and replace it with a thin overlay. If the distortion is deeper in the pavement, then a more extensive rehabilitation is required.” It is imperative, the association stresses, that a thin overlay not be used to correct widespread structural distresses, such as alligator or longitudinal cracking in the wheel path that originate deep in the pavement.

“When we developed Smoothseal,” says Ursich, “we wanted it to look the same everywhere and perform the same everywhere in the state.” With the diversity of aggregate within the Buckeye State, the standards set were tough. “The leadership in the industry understood that for the industry to maintain its market share, it needed to understand what was it that the customer was wanting,” says Ursich, “and we set out to meet that desire.”

He recalls the words of an old boss: “If you just build it right, it pretty much sells itself.”

The time has indeed come for thin asphalt overlays, says Rieth-Riley’s Yarkie. “Just try it, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”v