Roads & Bridges Magazine, June 2011
– By Paul Fournier
With the budgets available today, government agencies need every tool in the toolbox to extend the life of their roads and keep stakeholders happy.
This is obviously no easy task. The reality is, when applied at the optimal time, pavement preservation can extend the life of pavement by up to seven or more years. But that is not currently realistic for a lot of government agencies due to budget constraints and current road conditions. Many have no choice but to use pavement preservation as a stop-gap measure, a process otherwise known as reactive maintenance. Reactive maintenance can still be beneficial, but many times the difference between these two processes is not explained or communicated fully.
Without communication of realistic expectations to stakeholders, the use of pavement-preservation surface treatments as stop-gap measures for structurally unsound pavements can give the agencies that specify the treatments and the contractors that apply them a bad name. And, it could certainly tarnish the value and future use of the treatments themselves. This is the consensus of select representatives of federal and state agencies, contractors, industry associations, academia and materials suppliers who were recently asked about a practice that appears to be on the rise due to budget constraints. These industry experts explain the critical messages that must be sent to stakeholders when pavement preservation is used as reactive maintenance.