Five miles of roadway in Pennsylvania’s Armstrong County are getting a much needed facelift as a part of Pennsylvania’s aggressive new pilot program.
The pilot, using Recycled Asphalt Paving or RAP, is made possible due to PennDOT’s Road Maintenance and Preservation (Road MaP) initiative, which Governor Tom Wolf recently announced will invest $2.1 billion in roadway maintenance and highway and bridge capital projects over the next 10 years.
“Our Road MaP initiative provides more investment in our lower-traffic roadways as well as our traffic routes and Interstates,” PennDOT Deputy Secretary for Highway Administration George McAuley says. “Recycled Asphalt Pavement is one of the more beneficial and economical tools to improve secondary roads, and allows us to complete or contract even more work due the cost savings.”
The program is possible due to legislative action in 2016 that caps the expenditures from the Motor License Fund going toward the State Police budget beginning with the 2018-19 budget and concluding with the 2027-28 budget. This built on the additional investments coming to the department because of Act 89, the state’s transportation funding plan.
Of the investments, $1 billion will go to roadway maintenance and $1.1 billion will go to highway and bridge capital projects.
RAP in Use
Recently, PennDOT put the program in action, using RAP on 1.9 miles of State Route 2018 (Campbell Run Road) and 3 miles of Route 2012 (Silvis Hollow Road).
“The State Route has not been resurfaced since 1949,” says Deborah L. Schreckengost Casadei, Public Information Officer for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. “The route was maintained by patching and seal coating and while it was structurally sound, it had a poor rideability. The International Roughness Index (IRI) was poor prior to paving.”
PennDOT says the roads they are targeting are chosen based on their “poor” pavement-quality rating and proximity to the stockpile where the materials are stored. They also carry an average of fewer than 3,000 vehicles each day and trucks are less than 10 percent of the traffic.
PennDOT is focusing on using RAP for these projects for several reasons. RAP is an environmentally conscious method that repurposes materials from projects onto other roadways by mixing ground millings with oil. RAP allows the department to pave less-traveled roads that otherwise wouldn’t be paved.
With roughly 3-in. of RAP compared to an equivalent of 2-in. of new asphalt, PennDOT estimates a $225,000 cost with RAP compared to roughly $371,000. PennDOT can redirect the approximate $146,000 in savings to other maintenance improvements or contracts.
“RAP paving has proven durability and can help stretch dollars to improve more miles of secondary roadways,” Casadei says. “RAP is one of the low-cost options available to us to improve lower traffic roadways. RAP is an environmentally conscious method that saves the need to purchase new material, stretching dollars to impact more miles of secondary roadways. RAP repurposes materials from projects onto other roadways by mixing ground millings with oil, allows the department to pave less-traveled roads that otherwise wouldn’t be paved. RAP will be an increased focus with PennDOT forces in Armstrong County and Monroe County in 2017, with expanded usage occurring in 2018."
Low Volume Focus
The Road MaP initiative is focusing primarily on low-volume roadways. Of the PennDOT-maintained roads that aren’t Interstates or on the National Highway System, 27% are rated as “Poor” on the International Roughness Index which rates pavement smoothness.
There are 18,000 miles of PennDOT-owned, low-volume bituminous roadways have mainly been maintained with seal coating (oil and chip) and resurfacing. The desired cycle to seal coat is every 4-7 years and complete structural resurfacing every 15-20 years.
However, PennDot says that more than 3,200 miles (18%) have not been seal coated in 7+ years, and more than 4,300 miles (24%) have not had structural resurfacing in 20+ years. Some miles are out of cycle in both categories, which means more than 6,900 (39%) miles of these roads are out of cycle.
The cost to seal coat is $24,700 per mile; resurface is $101,400 per mile; and rehabilitation is $910,000 per mile.
“Though maintenance on all of our assets is vital, resources have often been directed to higher-volume roadways,” Casadei says. “Maintenance funding for our county budgets has been flat at $1.3 billion since 2006, making it even more difficult for our workforce to perform basic maintenance on cycles that allow for longest asset life. Act 89 is making it possible to increase our focus on the roads where many Pennsylvanians live and that connect our communities.”
Currently, there are 9,183 total projects that are planned under the Road MaP initiative. 2,027 have been completed with another 835 underway.
“Our maintenance team has been managing their resources aggressively but the additional maintenance resources provided through Road MaP were sorely needed,” Joe Dubovi, PennDOT’s district executive for the region including Armstrong, Butler, Clarion, Indiana and Jefferson counties says.
Dubovi noted that last year, PennDOT estimated it would cost more than $140 million just to repave the 375 miles of low volume roads with rough pavements in Armstrong County. An additional $15 million will be invested in Armstrong County through the 2028-29 fiscal year due to Road MaP.
The RAP pilot complements the $119.4 million in contract work – for an estimated 125 miles of roadway improvements and 28 bridge projects – anticipated to begin or be bid in the district in 2017.
