Asphalt Paving
The Blue Ridge Parkway revels in its new autumn shades of yellow, orange and red that follow the road’s meandering, peaceful curves. Quickly, the brisk fall weather turns to biting winter cold, and the skies shift from clear blues to darker greys. The landscape becomes stark, quiet and still as the...
Image: NCAT
Cargill is partnering with the National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) in Opelika, Ala., and the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s (MnDOT) MnROAD program in Albertville, Minn., to determine how to best implement performance-engineered mix design procedures, especially in mixes...
The intersection at Margaret and Williams Street, which sees an ADT volume of 9,900 vehicles.
The village of Thornton, Ill., is about 25 miles south of downtown Chicago and 4 miles west of the Illinois/Indiana border, situated with access to the Illinois Tri-State Tollway, Illinois Rte. 1 (Halsted Street) and I-80.
The western portion of Thornton sits above 400-ft-deep sedimentary...
Scotty’s Contracting, out of Bowling Green, Ky., has a long familiarity with I-65.
They have been the prime contractors on a comprehensive expansion of 92 contiguous miles of the interstate in the state of Kentucky—work that dates back to the 1990s and is presently still ongoing near...
Image: NCDOT
As much of a headache as it may be for one contractor to finish a job started by another, it could be even trickier when the road widening project in question is out of phase and has an uneven intermediate surface course.
That is precisely what Lane Construction Corp. had to work with when they...
NCDOT wanted to expand U.S. Rte. 17-74-76 from four lanes to six lanes.
The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) needs to feel like a kid at a vegetable stand.
Up until this year, the NCDOT gazed upon candy that was stacked high . . . 12-high to be exact. That is how many mixes the state agency could choose from for an asphalt paving project. Now it is...
Originally constructed in 1905 by the Territorial Legislative Assembly, and containing segments of the old Rte. 26 from Deming to Nutt and a stretch from Nutt to Hatch (which were originally Rte. 27), Rte. 26 in New Mexico was shown, in a map dated 1927, as a “first class” road between Deming and...
Traffic never stopped flowing during the Tower Road widening project.
Prolonged residential growth in the northeast portion of the Denver Metro area, along with expansion and continued development at Denver International Airport, has led to massive increased traffic and congestion along Tower Road, bringing movement through the corridor to a grinding halt during peak...
On Aug. 18, 2017, the editorial staff of Roads & Bridges magazine visited the $2.3 billion I-4 Ultimate project in Orlando, Fla. The 21-mile project site is presently at the midpoint of its construction, and the scale was enormous. We brought our 360 camera along for the trip. Here's another...
Unforeseen subgrade conditions, work-hour and construction-zone restrictions, heavy truck traffic and working in part of a floodplain—all these issues were encountered during the reconstruction of 30 miles of U.S. Rte. 85 (Ault to Wyoming) in northern Colorado.
Each of the issues had the...
They attended to the church regularly.
Old State Highway (SH) 74 in Oklahoma City had been servicing cars for about a century, and the two-lane road, which was without shoulders, had been out of its element for years. With an average daily traffic of 30,000 (about 30% coming from trucks) people...
Construction projects in dense urban or suburban areas are among the most crucial to our national infrastructure, yet they also tend to be the least applauded.
There are no gorgeous vistas to consider in photographs, no access offered on completion to theretofore unreachable beauties. Mostly,...
Where could transportation officials turn to in the event of a serious incident on an interstate highway that required them to divert traffic elsewhere?
When it comes to I-26, the answer for the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) was S.R. 36, a corridor that parallels the interstate...
After federal regulations resulting from the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) lifted a long-standing ban on using pavement warranties, many states across the U.S. experimented with various types of warranties.
Prior to ISTEA, the Federal Highway Administration (...
Christopher Columbus was a man with a vision. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were men with a vision. Brian Devick, mayor of Woodward, Iowa, too is a man of vision.
The citizens of this small, central Iowa town will benefit from his vision for decades to come. In the summer of 2015, the vision...
The ability to safely slow and stop a vehicle is not only dependent upon its tires, but also the surface characteristics of the pavement.
Pavement surfaces can be constructed with a more open surface texture to provide greater macrotexture for better high-speed performance during wet-pavement...
Image source: thawornnurak 123RF
When designing typical highway pavements, engineers at the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) strive to construct pavement structures that carry projected traffic loading for 20 to 25 years with little to no major maintenance.
However, Ohio currently has several asphalt concrete (AC)...
The drought in Mississippi this year is not only affecting recreational activities such as bonfires and camping, but is also affecting the state’s highways, according to the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT).
“Our roads have suffered the effects of extreme loss of rainfall...
They did not travel long distances to see the weeping track. In fact, I doubt many racing fans in the New York region saw the strange phenomenon.
Asphalt pavement weeping happens when moisture collects in the sub-base and is pushed to the surface through a crack. Water on a racetrack is bad...
Indiana’s East-West Toll Road is set to receive a $200 million makeover and work begins today. According to the Indiana Department of Transportation, it is to be the largest project undertaken by the toll road since its original construction in 1954.
The project’s scale includes the...
