constructioneer , April 2013
Manhattan’s 1St Avenue Undergoes Pavement Test

New York City’s Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) recently applied two trial thin-lift asphalt overlays to two sections of Manhattan’s 1st Avenue as the agency seeks cost-effective ways to resurface the entire roadway. The City is currently upgrading bus lanes on busy 1st Avenue but the street’s 25-yearold Portland cement concrete (PCC) pavement is in poor condition and there isn’t enough money to completely replace the 18-inch-thick structure. Consequently, NYCDOT is looking for less costly alternatives to improve the street’s riding surface and decided to look at thin asphalt overlays as a possible solution.

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ACP, National Section/13 U.S. Regional Magazines, january 2013


This philosophy calls for making the right application to the right road and bridge at the right time. In line with this, funding at federal and state levels has been increasing for pavement preser vation treatments as agencies recognize they can no longer afford the costs of reconstructing roads and bridges.

Previous research cycles were conducted entirely on NCAT’s 1.7-mile oval test track in Opelika, Ala., a facility well known for its comprehensive research on design, construction and performance of
experimental pavements. Buzz Powell, P.E., Ph.D., NCAT assistant director, manages the test track.

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midwest contractor, january 2013
Missouri City Seeks Tougher Cul-de-Sac Pavements

Missouri’s sixth largest city is testing a new type of micro surfacing in hopes it will better resist wheel loads of heavy trash trucks that damage pavement surfaces in the community’s many cul-de-sacs.

Lee’s Summit, a city of 91,000 people located in Jackson and Cass Counties in the western part of the state, approved the use of micro surfacing made with highly polymer modified asphalt emulsion for 20 cul-de-sacs in an upscale residential area abutting scenic Raintree Lake. The city’s pavement management program, financed by a ½-cent transportation tax, utilizes a number of scheduled programs to maintain or restore paved road surfaces including its annual micro surfacing contract. Vance Brothers, based in Kansas City, Mo., which has this year’s micro surfacing contract, was asked if they could produce a tougher pavement treatment for the cul-de-sacs.

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texas contractor, December 2012
Dallas Tests New Street Maintenance Technology

The city of Dallas recently applied micro surfacing containing an advanced asphalt emulsion as part of its annual preventive maintenance program. Highly modified asphalt (HiMA) emulsion was substituted for latex modified asphalt emulsion by the Department of Street Services in the micro surfacing of 4-1/2 lane miles of local streets.

Responsible for maintaining 11,800 lane-miles of streets serving the city’s 1.2 million residents, Street Services has an annual operating budget of more than $70 million that includes a substantial allotment for preventive maintenance. This funding allows the department to treat about 245 lane-miles of pavement each year with slurry seal and micro surfacing.

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western Builder, september 2012
MnDOT Furthers Pavement Micro Surf acing Research

Minnesota’s Department of Transportation continues its practical research of pavement preservation techniques with the recent demonstration of micro surfacing containing emulsified highly polymer modified asphalt (HiMA) on a section of Trunk Highway 23. ASTECH Corporation of St. Joseph, Minn., applied the micro surfacing on a one-mile section of the two-lane highway near the city of St. Cloud, the county seat of Stearns County and the largest population center in the state's central region. Bisected by the Mississippi River, St. Cloud is a regional transportation hub in Minnesota, with major roadways including Interstate Highway 94, U.S. Highway 10, and Minnesota State Highways (Trunk Highways) 15 and 23 passing through the municipality.

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Pacific Builder and Engineer, AUGUST 2012
Oregon Tries Advanced Pavement Overlay

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) recently had a section of Interstate 5 paved with advanced hot mix asphalt as part of a nationwide demonstration program involving thin pavement overlay incorporating highly polymer-modified asphalt binder (HiMA).
Knife River Materials manufactured and installed the new HiMA mix for ODOT’s demonstration on a two-mile segment of northbound lanes of I-5 near Medford, the seat of Jackson County located in southern Oregon near the California border.

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AASHTO TSP2 thin lift asphalt demonstration
Program Explanatory Documents and Test Results

The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth is conducting a study of Kraton high-polymer content thin lift mixtures containing up to 40 percent RAP. The study plans initially to test materials from Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and subsequently, several other states.

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Better Roads, April 2012
The Chemistry of Road Building Materials

Liquid asphalt binder might be thought of as the
sludge left over from petroleum after higher-revenue
products such as gasoline, plastic feed stocks, kerosene
and petroleum distillates have been removed. About 3
percent of a barrel of petroleum (42 gallons) winds up
as liquid asphalt.

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Better Roads , February 2012
Fast Forward - AASHTO’s TSP • 2 Program Speeds Acceptance of Technologies, Materials

Atechnology transfer program administered by the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials (AASHTO) is helping state departments of transportation expedite review of potentially promising new pavement and bridge technologies prior to acceptance or rejection as specifications. On the good side, a rigorous acceptance process means that the chance of spending scarce tax dollars on a questionable technique or material is greatly reduced. On the bad side, each DOT employs a rigorous acceptance process for each technology or product, and this can stifle use of innovative materials.

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asphalt, january 2012
NHDOT Widens Search for Longer-lasting Pavements

The performance of thin-lift hot asphalt overlay recently placed on U.S. Route 202 in Rochester, NH as one of a series of field demonstrations is being closely monitored by the New Hampshire
Department of Transportation (NHDOT) as it looks for promising products designed to extend pavement service life. Continental Paving Inc. of Londonderry, NH, supplied the hot mix asphalt and
installed the one-inch asphalt overlay on a 2.4-mile section of highway under a demonstration provision included in the contractor’s $1.72-million contract for paving various roads in NHDOT’s Maintenance District 6. The thin-lift asphalt overlay incorporated highly polymer-modified liquid asphalt binder (HiMA) and was integral to a project initiated by the Northeast Pavement Preservation Partnership (NEPPP), a regional DOT group dedicated to advancing pavement preservation practices through education, research and outreach.

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New England Construction, december 2011
After Floods, Vermont Fixes, Maintains Roads

Approximately one month after Hurricane Irene had dumped up to 12
inches of rain in parts of Vermont on August 28, 2011, causing the
state’s worst flooding in 80 years, state and municipal construction crews assisted by the Vermont National Guard had rebuilt and reopened many of the sections of some 300 roads that had been closed due to storm damage.

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Western Builder, november 2011
MnDOT Trial Seeks To Reduce Pavement Cracks

The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) has taken aim at cracked pavements with a new highly modified asphalt mix. MnDOT sanctioned the installation of hot mix asphalt modified with a high concentration of a new type of polymer on a section of Trunk Highway 100 west of Minneapolis, to see if the advanced product could reduce a certain type of pavement cracking. “The 12.5 millimeter Superpave mix we’ve been using for our mill-and-fill operations has done a good job of reducing thermal cracking , but we need a way to reduce reflection cracks,” said Jerry Geib, MnDOT research operations engineer. As a member of the Federal Highway Administration’s Pavement Preservation Expert Task Group and Midwestern Pavement Preservation Partnership (MPPP), Geib learned about a series of planned field demonstrations of thin-lift asphalt overlay incorporating highly polymer-modified liquid asphalt
binder (HiMA).

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New England Construction, november 2011
NHDOT Widens Search For Lon ger-Lasting Pavements

The performance of thin-lift hot asphalt overlay recently placed on U.S. Route 202 in Rochester, as one of a series of field demonstrations, is being closely monitored by the New Hampshire Department of Transportation (NHDOT) as it looks for promising
products designed to extend pavement service life.Continental Paving Inc. of Londonderry, N.H., supplied the hot mix asphalt and installed the oneinch asphalt overlay on a 2.4-mile section of highway under a demonstration provision included in the contractor’s $1.72-million contract for paving various roads in NHDOT’s Maintenance District 6. The thin-lift asphalt overlay incorporated highly polymer-modified liquid asphalt binder (HiMA)
and was integral to a project initiated by the Northeast Pavement Preservation Partnership (NEPPP), a regional DOT group dedicated to advancing pavement preservation practices through education, research and outreach.

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Roads & Bridges, June 2011
A Stop Gaffe - Agencies need to communicate preservation strategies

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 time the difference between these two processes is not explained or communicated fully.

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Better Roads, March 2011
Road Science Tutorial

As road agencies strapped for cash look for ways to optimize their
limited dollars, many are taking a much closer look at the practice of
pavement preservation. And standing there to help is a host of regional partnerships across the United States and Canada that bring
together representatives of state and local agencies, contractors,
suppliers, academic institutions, consultants and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to promote pavement preservation while advancing research. Pavement preservation techniques are being promoted by the FHWA and the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials (AASHTO) as cost-effective and environmentally-sustainable strategies designed to extend the life of existing pavements before they deteriorate substantially. These techniques include nonstructural preventive maintenance surface treatments such as crack sealing, chip sealing, micro surfacing and thin-lift hot-mix asphalt paving.

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Midwest Contractor, december 2010
Nebraska County Roads “Armor Coated”

Nebraska’s Madison County recently completed chip sealing a network of local roads near Norfolk, the county’s largest city, using technologically advanced polymer-modified asphalt emulsion. Under contract with the Madison County Highway Department, Sta-bilt
Construction Co. of Harlan, Iowa applied the chip seal – also referred to as armor coating – near the north end of Norfolk in District Two of the department’s three ser vice districts. Sta-bilt’s contract covered 45 miles of roads that carry local traffic as well as a major arterial that links the area with heavily travelled U.S. 81. This busy expressway passes through Norfolk, becoming an undivided two-lane highway north of the city. (Built well before the Interstate system – its construction began in the 1920s – the highway is more than 1,200 miles long and extends from Forth Worth, Texas to the North Dakota/Canadian border.)

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