Pavement maintenance and rehabilitation practices in California: A study of 35-year as-built data in PaveM

Abstract

In this paper, the pavement maintenance and rehabilitation practices are presented based on the analysis of as-built data housed in PaveM—the pavement management system for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). A 35-year period of as-built data from 1983 to 2017 was analyzed, involving 37 treatment strategies with 17 for asphalt and 20 for Portland Cement Concrete (PCC) pavements. The top ten treatment strategies, geographical and temporal variation of treated mileage, together with treatment costs and corresponding network condition were presented. It was found that: (1) The top 10 strategies are, in descending order: “Chip Seal”, “Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) Thin Overlay”, “HMA Medium Overlay”, “HMA Thick Overlay”, “Mill and Fill”, “Grind/Replace Slabs”, “Slab Replacement”, “Crack Seat and Overlay”, “HMA Lane Replacement”, and “PCC Lane Replacement”. The top 10 strategies accounted for about 84% of the total treated lane kilometers. (2) On average, about 12.4% of the total network inventory (both asphalt and concrete pavements) was treated each year. This is equivalent to treat the entire network once every eight years. (3) About 18.3% of AC and 35.1% of PCC rehabilitation mileage was found applied on a lane-by-lane basis, instead of across all lanes. This finding solidified the necessity of a lane-based pavement management system in California. (4) The average annual weighted maintenance and rehabilitation cost per lane kilometer is about $192,248 for asphalt and $366,804 for PCC pavements. Due to the lack of preventive types of treatments for PCC pavement, the per lane kilometer cost is almost twice as high as that for its asphalt counterpart. It is suggested that more preventive type of treatments be implemented for PCC pavements.

Keywords

• Pavement management
• As-built data
• Pavement performance
• Treatment strategy
• Maintenance and rehabilitation Cost