AASHTO Journal, 13 December 2013
How can you rehabilitate your existing pavements to achieve the longest life for your assets? Is your project development team considering geotechnical considerations early enough to take advantage of innovative solutions? Is freight movement in your state hampered by existing traffic bottlenecks?
If you have any of these challenges, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and the Federal Highway Administration will be offering agency funding and technical assistance to help address them. As part of the Implementation Assistance Program (IAP) for the second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2), AASHTO and FHWA will be launching five new products in January 2014. (Applications open Jan. 17, 2014.) In order to ensure that transportation agencies have a clear understanding of the products and how they can fit into their program, FHWA and AASHTO are hosting a series of free webinars next week explaining three of the products in detail. State transportation departments, metropolitan planning organizations, local public agencies, and tribal agencies are all invited to participate in these webinars.
- Monday, Dec. 16 (noon – 1:30 p.m., EST), GeoTech Tools (R02): Hear how the powerful website GeoTechTools.org can be used at various levels of your agency to provide alternative analyses of more than 40 site-specific geotechnical solutions. Whether you staff geotech engineers or contract out, this tool provides eight different characteristics per technology to aid your decision making, planning, cost estimating, and scoping. It is a great tool for project managers and anyone needing solid geotech data at their fingertips.
- Monday, Dec. 16 (2:30 – 4 p.m., EST), Freight Demand Modeling and Data Improvement (C20): Consider how this strategic plan can save time and effort by helping your agency expand and improve its freight modeling practices, tools, and data. Learn how this tool can inform and improve your future planning and systems operations.
- Tuesday, Dec. 17 (2 – 3:30 p.m., EST), Pavement Renewal Solutions (R23): Learn how this tool might help your agency reduce construction, maintenance, and rehabilitation costs, while limiting disruption to traffic. These design and construction guidelines allow the user to identify the optimal conditions for renewing existing pavements and the best approaches for ensuring they last longer. These pavements have the potential to serve up to 50 years and can reduce the need for more costly and time-consuming reconstruction projects using all new materials. A web-based interactive program – “rePave” – intuitively steps users through the decision matrices for all aspects of a renewal project—including project assessment, renewal selection, design, specifications, and construction – and provides easy and organized access to all of the resource documentation.
In addition, the following links are for recordings of webinars held this week for two other SHRP2 Solutions that are included in Round 3 of the IAP:
- Precast Concrete Pavement (R05): By using precast concrete pavement, transportation agencies can significantly minimize the impact of highway construction and repair on drivers, as lane closures and traffic congestion are kept to a minimum. The product includes guidelines for PCP project selection; system acceptance; design, fabrication, and installation; findings of field testing; overview of the viability of the technology; an implementation and long-term monitoring plan; and model specifications.
- Identifying and Managing Utility Conflicts (R15B): A Utility Conflict Matrix (UCM) offers tools and methodologies for identifying and resolving utility conflicts that public agency and utility professionals can use to improve the project development process. Use of the UCM in the design and construction process can reduce the effort and cost to develop projects, reduce the need to relocate utilities, or minimize the cost or delays in the construction of highway projects or adjustments required to utility facilities.
