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https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27432/critical-issues-in-transportation-for-2024-and-beyond

Building on a State's Experience in Pavement Management Over Time

In 1977, the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) was an early leader in understanding the importance of pavement management, as demonstrated by the publication of a report titled Good Roads Cost Less (Pavement Rehabilitation Needs, Benefits, and Costs in Utah) (1). Since that time, the agency implemented a comprehensive pavement management system that was used by the central office to generate network-level strategies to help achieve UDOT’s objective of maintaining, or improving, the overall condition of the highway network. The pavement management analysis at that time was based largely on pavement roughness. Over the years, there was some concern within the Department that other types of deterioration were occurring but were not being taken into account in the pavement management analysis. At the same time, organizational issues were arising that hindered the use of the pavement management system. As a result, UDOT took steps to address the technical and organizational issues affecting the use of the pavement management analysis throughout the agency. The technical revisions to the pavement management system involved several steps; each of which is documented in this paper. First, an assessment was made of the existing system capabilities and specific recommendations were made for improving the models used in the system. Second, a pavement management engineering team was established, drawing its membership from the central office personnel, regional pavement management engineers, and individuals from other areas of the agency. Third, several workshops were conducted to discuss the approach that would be used to revise the models and introduce the software to the regional pavement engineers. Fourth, revisions were made to the condition indices, performance models, and treatment models based on expert opinion and changes were made in UDOT’s data collection practices to more accurately match the models. The paper documents the factors that initiated the revisions, the resulting revisions that were made, and the involvement of the Pavement Management Engineering Team in the revisions. The changes that were made to the models are especially important to the pavement management community because they illustrate the conversion of an historical priority system based primarily on roughness to an updated system that takes into account both functional and structural performance characteristics. The paper concludes with two important conclusions. First, the paper stresses the importance of reviewing the models incorporated into a pavement management system to verify that the resulting analysis recommendations match the agency’s system preservation goals. The second observation concerns the importance of the link between preservation strategies and policies set by the central office and the actual allocation of funds by the regions in a decentralized agency.

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Media Type: CD-ROM
  • Features: Figures; References; Tables;
  • Pagination: 13p
  • Monograph Title: Fifth International Conference on Managing Pavements, August 11-14, 2001, Seattle, Washington. Conference Proceedings

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01037903
  • Record Type: Publication
  • ISBN: 0971174016
  • Files: TRIS
  • Created Date: Dec 4 2006 9:11AM