 The pavement network is the most valuable visible asset that the city maintains. Even smaller networks are usually valued at close to $100 million. If you are tasked with maintaining such a valuable asset on a dwindling budget, you better make the most out of your investments.
When a municipality is creating a budget plan to allocate millions of dollars to the pavement network, it is considered proper due diligence to base this plan on the most accurate, objective assessment of the network’s condition and need. Reporting of this assessment also falls under statement 34 of The Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB). Acknowledging that completing a pavement survey is necessary, and recognizing the ways in which it will save your city money are different things, however. Below are three ways in which a pavement survey will help your city instantly save money.
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 A variety of factors go into determining the deterioration rate of a street. When managing a network of roads, an important step is identifying which of these factors influence the deterioration rates on your roads.
The deterioration rate of a road is an average rate at which a pavement condition is projected to decay. This is instrumental to developing a pavement management plan that optimizes rehabilitation activities in conjunction with the network’s budget requirements. Among the factors that should be considered are impacts from surface distresses, drainage, ADT & ESAL (Average Daily Traffic and Equivalent Single Axis Load), and the conditions of the pavement base. Let’s examine each of these factors individually:  You may not realize it if you have not been involved in public works for very long, but the pavement network that runs throughout your city is the most valuable visible asset that your city owns and maintains. Because the utility of this asset is so great and it is constantly deteriorating from use, it is very important to understand proper pavement management processes.
The pavement assets managed by your city require constant upkeep. In order to assess the need in your network, a dedicated pavement management process is necessary. This requires pavement management software, GIS integration, high tech survey equipment, and dedicated personnel. Most municipalities will hire a pavement management consultant with expertise unique to the city’s needs. Here are some of the most common mistakes cities and counties make that end up misusing millions in tax payer dollars:  This year, and every year for the foreseeable future, your city, town, or county is likely to spend millions of dollars maintaining their pavement infrastructure. Large municipalities frequently spend upwards of 5 million dollars or more every year to maintain their roads. This is because the pavement network that you utilize every day is the single most valuable visible asset that a city owns and maintains.
Constant and ever-increasing traffic on these streets means that the pavement network is consistently deteriorating. The City must take an active, preventative maintenance approach if they want to prevent such a vital asset from deteriorating to the point where costly reconstruction is needed. In the pavement management industry this is called, “Pavement Rehabilitation”. |