Pavement Preservation Journal, Winter 2012, Volume 5, Number 6
What do you do with a road that is badly deteriorated, but funds for repairs are scarce?
The City of Lebanon—located 20 miles northeast of Cincinnati—was recently faced with this dilemma and decided to do something new, and take a look at full-depth reclamation (FDR) as a possible solution.
Darren Owens, Lebanon city engineer, says that like a lot of other Ohio governments, the City of Lebanon is “low on funds but high on street repairs.” Because of this problem, his department has had to concentrate strictly on high volume roads, to the detriment of his lower volume roads.
For that reason, he wanted to explore other rehabilitation treatment options besides the usual “mill and fill.”
One such relatively low volume road in Lebanon is Markey Road, located in a growing suburban area with a moderate level of traffic. As a result of being constructed many years ago, it was showing alarming signs of fatigue and was in danger of rapid deterioration.
Major block and fatigue cracking was evident, and portions needed to have the cross slope restored. The city had already bid and let a contract for a number of roads in the town to be milled, and then overlaid with hot mix asphalt (HMA).
City engineer Owens was considering doing the same to Markey Road. But Ryan Terry of Terry Asphalt Materials, Inc.—a leading supplier of asphalt and asphalt emulsion products in the Cincinnati area, and part of the Pavement Preservation unit of Colas—suggested that Markey Road was a good candidate for FDR.