Reducing crossover accidents on a two-lane road is a big plus for any paving job. Leo Journagan Construction Co. of Springfi eld, Mo., widened Rte. 37 in southwest Missouri, made the pavement smoother and reduced crossover accidents by separating the opposing lanes.
The two travel lanes of this Hayes Award finalist project are now divided by a third lane with rumble strips and striping down the middle.
“That center-lane rumble strip has kept a lot of people from crossing out of their lane,” John View, vice president and treasurer of Journagan, told ROADS & BRIDGES. “It’s reduced crossover accidents tremendously. Not as well as a guard cable or median would do, but it does work.”
The company was able to add separation between the two lanes because it widened the overall roadway from 24 ft to 56 ft. Journagan first reinforced the existing pavement by patching some sections and injecting cement under some sections to fill voids under the pavement. Then the contractor built up the shoulders on each side of the roadway and laid an asphalt-treated fabric layer over the old pavement to seal and stabilize any remaining cracks.
Then Journagan laid Superpave over the top of the widened roadway: 8 in. of Superpave base, 2 in. of Superpave binder and 1.75 in. of Superpave surface coat. Journagan laid a total of 220,000 tons of hot-mix asphalt (HMA). Half the road was paved in one pass, then the work zone was shifted to the other side of the road to pave the other half in a single pass.
Smooth outcome
The project actually involved two sections of roadway in Barry County, Mo.: 8.2 miles south of Monett and 4.6 miles north of Cassville with a 5.2-mile gap between. About 11,000 vehicles travel the Monett section every day and about 8,000 per day on the Cassville section.
To get to the Hayes Award level, Journagan first had to achieve the Quality in Construction (QIC) level in the first year after constructing the pavement. The QIC recognition includes exceeding standards for volumetrics and for smoothness. A year after the QIC-level judging, the Hayes Award judges revisit the pavement to see if it has held up to the pounding of a year of traffic without losing its smoothness and other quality characteristics.
Journagan’s pavement on Rte. 37 was smooth enough to win a bonus for the initial work and was still smooth enough a year later to be on the short list for a Hayes Award.
“The smoothness on the roadway is actually a reflection of our guys out there on the road doing the work,” View said. “We have the same equipment that other contractors have, but our guys are very experienced. We credit a lot of our bonuses in volumetrics to the work of our QC/QA and our people in the field.”
Good quality control resulted in uniform mix coming from Journagan’s HMA source, a plant located 17 miles from one section of the project and 28 miles from the other.
Weights & measures After each of the last two asphalt lifts, Journagan ran a profilograph test to determine the smoothness of the surface. The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT), the owner of the road, ran its own profilograph over the new asphalt after the paving was completed.
Paving operations began in March 2005. Journagan kept traffic moving throughout the work, partly by performing some of the work at night. The night work minimized interruption to local manufacturing plants and their truck traffic. Work was prohibited from noon Friday until Monday to allow weekend travel to the area’s recreational lakes.
MoDOT also had requirements for volumetrics—such as air voids, asphalt content and percentage of theoretical maximum density—and Journagan also won a bonus for the volumetrics on its Rte. 37 work, thanks to its quality control.
The completed pavement was opened to traffic on Nov. 11, 2005.
Hayes Finalist Venture Corp. Highway 383
Coordinating paving crews and equipment is always a challenge companies face on a project, but Venture Corp.’s Highway 383 project was especially diffi cult, as its plant was 60 miles away from the site.
The project was a mill-and-fill, Chris Spray, vice president of field operations for Venture Corp., told ROADS & BRIDGES. In other words, it was an inlay, so whatever was milled out every day had to be put back.
“Traffic was very congested, because you had milling trucks going to the plant and asphalt trucks going to the paver,” Spray said. “A lot of people double-haul. We did not on this job. We did not want to restrict our production—both at the paver and at the mill—to trucking.
“Each contractor at the milling end and the asphalt side had their own trucks. There was one area throughout the job that we had to do a deep mill, which would not be very significant except we had to dive the mill 3 or 4 in. deeper to get rid of some of what the DOT felt was deteriorated asphalt in the sub-base, then mill deep and put the mix back.”
Fill of the mill
Venture Corp., Great Bend, Kan., milled the entire 7.31 miles of the project, adjusting depths because of the pavement’s distressed condition. One mile of the road that ran through a small town needed complete reconstruction. To keep traffic disruption to a minimum, the team completed this work in four phases, deconstructing and rebuilding each section before moving on to the next.
“Essentially what we did is block off a quarter of the roadway through town and mill, did our grading, did our subgrade modification work, put in curb and gutter and valley cutters, cut it to grade and then paved it,” Spray said.
Before this could be done, temporary traffi c-control signals and safety barriers had to be set up to protect the workers. After the first phase, when the asphalt was back in and the side roads were paved, the process started anew on the second phase.
Each time one section of the road was ready to pave, Venture Corp. brought the equipment and crews to this site from another job 60 miles away for several days. It also hauled the asphalt from the plant.
“Whenever this job dictated we pave, we mobilized crews and hot- ROADS & BRIDGES • MAY 2008 • 31 mix trucks to the paving and then demobilized back to the other job we were doing at the plant,” Spray said. “When we got the mile-long section through town done, the asphalt plant was fi nished with its project 60 miles away, so we moved the plant into this job and then paved the other 40,000 tons from the actual on-site location.”
An added bonus
A profi lograph was used for smoothness, as were Cedarapids Greyhound pavers. Venture Corp. also favored Ingersoll Rand rollers and Cat 980 G loaders.
The asphalt mix base was an SR19A with 64-22 PG binder, and the intermediate course was an SR19A with 64-28 PG binder. The surface was a SM9.5A with 64-28 PG binder. The SR aggregate size was minus-1 in. and the SM aggregate size was minus-½ in.
The mixing range mat temperature was 315º-325º, and compaction temperature was about 300º, said Spray. Testing was done for air voids, as well as volumetrics testing. Ninety-two percent theoretical maximum was the minimum allowed density on the base, and 91% theoretical maximum was the minimum allowed density on the surface. The productivity was 300 tons of asphalt per hour.
The asphalt plant was a Boeing 400, producing mix at 315º. At the plant, gradations were run on individual aggregates on a daily basis. Venture Corp. did produce reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP), milled on the job, brought the RAP into the plant and used it in the mix.
Venture Corp. earned 97% of all available air void, density and smoothness bonuses. The company achieved a 100% air void bonus, 94% maximum density bonus and 90% smoothness bonus.
