StreetSaver Blog

This Tuesday, the Dixon City Council is taking it to the streets. No, there won’t be any picketing and it won’t be held outdoors, but potential streets for inclusion in the Pavement Rehabilitation Streets List for the 2019-20 fiscal year is on the agenda for this week’s meeting.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission introduced software, dubbed MobileRater(TM), for hand-held computers to help city and county public works departments and others improve the maintenance of local streets and roads by accelerating the collection of pavement distress data. MobileRater(TM) is fully compatible with MTC's popular StreetSaver(R) Online program, which is used by nearly 400 municipalities nationwide to most efficiently invest their limited maintenance funds.

The City is responsible for the operation, repair and maintenance of approximately 70 centerline miles (140 travel lane miles) of streets with a pavement replacement value of over $227 million in present day (2018) dollars. In November 2016, Belmont voters approved the Belmont Streets and City Services Measure (Measure I), a half-cent general tax that will generate approximately $1.3 million annually for local infrastructure. The City Council has allocated $1M per year towards street pavement beginning with Fiscal Year 2018.

The Santa Clarita robust "Road Rehab" program completes over 100 overlay and slurry projects annually. Trying to be communicative with residents, businesses and schools regarding rehab schedules improved dramatically with an easy-to-use online website. In addition, new best practices resulted in an increase in productivity for a smoother ride.

Yes, you read it right. This November, California voters will consider Proposition 6, which would repeal Senate Bill 1 (SB 1), the most significant dedicated source of transportation funding in California history. The measure would cut over $200 million per year from road maintenance budgets for the Bay Area’s local streets and roads. Proposition 6 also would subject any future tax on motor vehicle fuel, or vehicles themselves, to voters’ approval. Consequently, this measure would make future efforts to fund improvements of transportation through taxes extremely challenging. Effectively, Proposition 6 would deal a severe blow to the condition of the California's highways and local streets and roads.

With the Tupelo City Council’s appropriation of an additional $1 million in road paving money, Public Works is already prepping a packed paving calendar next year.

The City has approximately 48 miles of paved streets to maintain. With the help of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's (MTC) StreetSaver Pavement Management Program, the City is making cost-effective decisions

On October 23rd – 26th StreetSaver will showcase at the 2018 Northwest Pavement Management Association Conference (NWPMA).

The Heritage Group opened their new Innovation Center and Research Laboratory in Indianapolis in August 2017. While the building and lab is a state-of-the-art facility, the associated roads and parking lots were also designed and built with state-of-the-practice innovation, features and engineering prowess to ensure optimal performance.

With new reports and information on the condition of Tupelo’s local street system, city leaders have an important task ahead of them in determining a long-term plan for maintaining and repairing a vital resource while also being diligent stewards of taxpayer dollars.

The City of Benicia is responsible for the management, repair, and maintenance of approximately 196 lane miles of pavement and is valued at $111.5 million. As of 2016, the City's average Pavement Condition Index (PCI) is 54. The PCI is a measurement of pavement grade or condition and ranges from 0 (failed) to 100 (new).

FHWA, in cooperation with the AASHTO Joint Technical Committee on Pavements, TRB Committee AFD10, Pavement Management Systems, and AFD20, Pavement Condition Evaluation, is hosting a series of quarterly webinars on pavement management. The purpose of the webinars is to provide a forum for education and communication for pavement management practitioners.

Iowa State University's Halil Ceylan picked up his smartphone, opened up an app and called up the remote controls for the first full-scale test slabs of electrically conductive concrete installed at an American airport. When a winter storm approaches, Ceylan can use that app to turn on the heated pavement system and, thanks to real-time video capability, watch as snow and ice melts away.

As part of the effort to support pavement preservation, Asphalt Institute is announcing that 12 of their recorded webinars on topics related to PP will be offered for free. The speakers on the webinars are experienced industry professionals or members of AI’s staff. We hope these recorded webinars will be a valuable training resource for agency and industry groups that want to learn more about emulsified asphalt as well as design and construction of emulsified asphalt applications and pavement preservation treatments.

The City of Elk Grove is responsible for the maintenance of nearly 1,150 lane miles of roadway with over 90 million square feet of pavement. The goal of the Pavement Management Program is to maintain the city’s pavement in the best condition possible given the funding available. Each year, preventive maintenance treatments are performed on various City streets. These treatment projects are intended to extend the life of the pavement and avoid more costly repair or replacement of streets.

TRB will conduct a webinar on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, from 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM ET that provides guidance to state and municipal roadway authorities on how they may improve the prediction capabilities of their pavement management systems by incorporating recent advances in performance prediction models. The state-of-the-art of developing performance models has advanced through a more comprehensive study of statistical and computational techniques. However, some of these advances have not made their way into industry practice. This webinar will provide an overview of the available tools for developing and validating pavement performance models and examples of successful model development and implementation by state and municipal agencies.

I love seeing transportation agencies become heroes. A legendary source of their superpowers: the data generated by pavement management program (PMP) software. Each month, I see more agencies discovering the advantages of a PMP, especially backed by state-of-the-art technology like StreetSaver®. Interest in StreetSaver® is growing—and for good reason.

Cities and counties should give themselves a pat on the back with the passage of Senate Bill 1 (SB1) in April. This bill will raise gas taxes and vehicle fees by $5.2 billion a year to pay for California’s crumbling roads, highways, and bridges for the next decade. Cities and counties will receive $1.5 billion annually to fix local streets and roads.

When clients say, “We’re not getting the best value from our pavement repairs,” I suggest crunching the numbers to see what they reveal. We often find counter intuitive results that can help them squeeze 30% more value from their budgets.

Neighbors said the owner is using the shells to build the access road to his farm. But they say he used unwashed clams.