Road Construction/Rehabilitation
Road Construction/Rehabilitation
(OP)
Hello,
I have a very basic question re: constructing a public roadway in Massachusetts. A road that's in pretty poor shape will be reconstructed and I need to know the standard process and specs to go about doing this. I am an environmental engineer, so this is a bit out of my field! Thanks for any help at all.
Sam Hasan
I have a very basic question re: constructing a public roadway in Massachusetts. A road that's in pretty poor shape will be reconstructed and I need to know the standard process and specs to go about doing this. I am an environmental engineer, so this is a bit out of my field! Thanks for any help at all.
Sam Hasan





RE: Road Construction/Rehabilitation
If you are looking at a simple reconstruct in place to same grades/lines/etc., then consider mix-in-place recycling. This process uses the existing pavement, pulverized, then injected with asphalt emulsion to create a new base material. New structural/wearing courses put over that.
Works well, is inexpensive and is much faster than full depth reconstruction.
RE: Road Construction/Rehabilitation
RE: Road Construction/Rehabilitation
RE: Road Construction/Rehabilitation
Now the choice of rehab or reconstruct depends on a number of factors - one of which is the geometrics of the new road. If the horizontal alignment is straightened, you will have a lot of "new" sections or side-embankment sections of partial width. If you use CIPR in these cases, you may end up with longitudinal cracking from the "stable" existing and the less stable new (say with respect to foundation support and the little "adjustments" embankments make). If the vertical alignment is changed, then you may end up with a lot of profile correction asphalt - or varying thicknesses of granular on top of CIPR before the pavement. If the road width changes, then you have the problems associated with "new" partial embankments where the match line is down, perhaps, one of the wheel paths.
Given the above, my personal opinion is that CIPR is fine when the profiles don't change (horizontal or vertical) and when the underlying support to the CIPR layer is well established and known. I further believe that these should be for secondary and tertiary roads. For primary roads (interstates/national highways (thinking more of overseas ones)), I'd probably lean to reconstruction.
The above discussion is with caveats, of course. As Laser28 points out (
RE: Road Construction/Rehabilitation
Unfortunately, you missed last month's workshop on recycling pavement. In the meantime, this might help: http://www.ecs.umass.edu/baystate_roads/technotes/28_as...
Everyone else, if you work for a public sector agency, check out www.ltap2.org to find the Local Technical Assistance Program in your state.
RE: Road Construction/Rehabilitation
Reconstruction does not extend the life of a roadway, it provides a rebirth up to the current safety standards and current practice of design for a given traffic volume and load distribution.
We would hope that this reconstruction is based on recommendations resulting from a design study of the road.
RE: Road Construction/Rehabilitation
PS: Remember the three basic rules of road design: Drainage, drainage and drainage.
(Get water off the road, get water out of the roadbed, and then get the water away from the road)