Asphalt Rollers
Situated only 15 miles outside the famous Las Vegas strip, the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area is comprised of 198,000 acres of protected, nationally significant geological and ecological resources.
Stretching through the conservation area is a 13-mile-long one-way picturesque roadway...
A bird’s-eye view of the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge, which will connect Maine to New Hampshire.
MAINE:
Up in salmon countryby Brian W. Budzynski, Managing Editor
“Engineering used to be about mobility, but now it’s more about reliability and safety. Speed is not a primary concern for us.”
“Us” being the Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT), as exemplified by Chief Engineer Joyce...
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...
Having a ticket for some dry cleanings can lead to a lot of watching and waiting. Nobody would blame anyone if they walked out.
Many paying spectators were exiting early during races at the Texas Motor Speedway due to wet conditions. No matter how hard crews worked to dry the track, it usually...
In April 2015, the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) announced plans to replace part of its aging infrastructure on the outer loop of I-40 in downtown Nashville.
The project, better known as “Fast Fix 8,” included demolishing and reconstructing eight bridge decks over a 13-week period...
P.J. Keating finished paving the project in Worcester in October 2016.
In today’s culture, to be green is to be great. Under the umbrella of its GreenDOT program, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) has given its six districts leeway to employ innovative techniques to use more sustainable practices for greener asphalt pavement maintenance and...
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...
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...
Paving crews worked the inside lanes at night utilizing the notched wedge joint on the shoulder lane.
State DOTs have a primary responsibility to maximize the return on investment from the considerable public funds spent to build and maintain their highways and interstates.
To manage the long-term costs of its aging inventory of concrete pavements, the Washington State Department of...
Pavement quality control is an important endeavor for transportation agencies.
It involves ongoing research for new methodologies in pavement surfacing. One of the main issues affecting the performance of asphalt pavement is segregation. Segregation is defined as “a lack of homogeneity in the hot...
In 1942, as the nation plunged headlong into the second world war, the U.S. military opened the Dugway Proving Ground, an installation located 85 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, for the purpose of testing biological and chemical weapons in a low-drift, relatively contained area.
This...
Mount Whitney, best known as the highest peak in the contiguous U.S., graces the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California with its towering presence at Sequoia National Park and Inyo National Forest at an elevation of 14,505 ft.
Serving as the gateway to this colossal summit is Whitney Portal,...
To settle the nerves he just kept making a fist.
After water was added to a mixture that included portland cement, the old asphalt that once formed Main Street (and its sub-base) in the village of Verdigre, Neb.,
Dale Bohac started following the padfoot roller on the job. Every few yards he would...
The state of Minnesota has a rather diverse ecological and geographical environment, with a majority of agriculture and farmland to be found in the southwest region of the state, while wild, forested lands still heavily occupy the northwest.
As such, the Minnesota Department of Transportation (...
Personal illumination keeps workers visible to motorists at night.
As the largest hot-mix asphalt producer and asphalt paving contractor in the U.S., Oldcastle Materials Inc. has about one-third of its workforce out in the field dedicated to roadway projects.
As a result, many Oldcastle employees are exposed to higher risks related to work-zone safety. Oldcastle...
Article
March 10, 2011
Asphalt-paving contractors often have to deal with a long list of frustrations: long waits at the asphalt plant, high costs for the hot mix and then long drives back to the jobsite. An obvious solution is to buy an asphalt plant, but the cost can often be prohibitive, ranging anywhere from $500,000...
