As far as the future is concerned, the Federal Highway Administration is paying a lot of attention to extending the lifetime of pavements. Is extending lifetimes a general trend and focus?
Absolutely. Certainly in the industry we’ve made a huge investment into improving the product, improving the pavement, and getting more life out of the pavement. People don’t want to build a pavement and then have to go back and completely replace it in 30 years. Today we have a lot of interstates and other heavily traveled pavements that are in need of rehabilitation. Carrying traffic the way they do, they are very necessary, part of our daily lives, and the challenge is how to keep traffic on the interstates when the pavement needs extensive rehabilitation. Often times, on thick asphalt pavements, only the top few inches need to be replaced after 10 or 15 years of service. Milling this material off and replacing it with a new wearing surface can be done with a minimum of traffic disruption. An alternative to the reconstruction of failed concrete pavement is to crack and seat it or rubblize it. California has had a very successful crack, seat & overlay program for many years. The crac
