A Surface Treatment Management System

About the report:

A brief survey presented in this report illustrates the variability in management practices for the surface treatment of secondary roads across the country. In Virginia, an informal process that uses the experience of field engineers working within budgetary limitations has evolved. This has resulted in a cyclic resurfacing approach. As a general rule, Virginia's surface-treated secondary roads are resurfaced every 5 years. Although attempts during this project to establish a detailed project level management system for Virginia's surface-treated secondaries were unsuccessful, a viable economic analysis program has been established to analyze the costs of a particular resealing cycle for use in comparing various cycles. This program includes a function that models the effects of delaying resurfacing with an increase in required ordinary maintenance. Using the developed computer spreadsheet to analyze Virginia's alternatives led to the finding that a 4-year resealing cycle was optimal with a 5-year cycle only 1 percent higher. Unfortunately, since many assumptions were made and many cost estimates used, it is not surprising that a 4- or 5-year cycle was selected—Virginia currently uses a 5-year cycle. However, the analysis program is sound and may prove to be quite useful at the network level to other states that have much better cost and condition data

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