In making any decision concerning the type of pavement to use on a roadway, a road agency is obligated to get the best value for the taxpayers. Some promoters would argue that the agency should determine pavement type on the basis of whether a particular industry “needs the work.” The APA’s response is that the pavement type selection process should be used to select the best possible pavement type for a given road – in other words, it should be a road user-oriented process, not an industry-oriented process.
In order to deliver the best value for taxpayers and road users, the system used to select pavement type should be:
- Objective
- Defensible
- Understandable
- Based on historical records
- Primarily driven by economics
- Periodically reviewed
Asphalt pavements possess many advantages in. Among these are:
- Low initial cost
- Low maintenance costs
- Flexibility and speed of construction
- The ability to handle heavy loads
- Long life
- Complete recyclability
- Environmental, social, and economic sustainability
Furthermore, asphalt pavements allow an opportunity to reduce traffic noise at the source and improve ride quality. These are a few of the reasons that asphalt pavements should be considered in every pavement type decision.
For the APA’s 2010 position paper on pavement type selection, click here.
An executive summary is available here.