Reclamite,
Analysis Reveals Benefits of Road Preservation Timing: Town of Avon, Indiana Case Study
In 1999, the Town of Avon, Indiana found itself in a difficult position. Having only been created four years earlier in 1995, the town had incorporated several neighborhoods on the outskirts of Indianapolis with streets that had not been maintained by any entity. The town was rapidly expanding, but had little budget to pave any of its existing roadways. Fortunately, many of the roads were not yet in bad shape, but were rapidly deteriorating. If unchecked, the town would find itself in a roadway budget shortfall in a few years. Avon began to look at alternatives. One was a process of planning maintenance activities according to the condition of the roads. It was called Maintenance Improvement Planning, and it involved rating the roads with a method that could translate to certain maintenance activities. The method chosen was called PASER, an easy to use, easy to replicate, consistent pavement rating system created by the University of Wisconsin.
In 2013, the town and its engineering consultant—which had performed this work for 14 years—began to analyze years of data to determine what benefits were being derived from the system, and determine what was working and what wasn’t. What they found exceeded their expectations. The town was using crack sealing and Reclamite rejuvenator in a simple two-part plan on roads that needed it, but had not dropped past the PASER rating of 6. Roads that had not been treated or added through incorporation had fallen in PASER rating at a fairly consistent rate. Roads that had been treated resulted in little to no loss in the PASER rating. By field-rating all roads, the town and consultant were able to determine the correct roads to preserve at the correct time to maximize the maintenance operations effectiveness.
The town even did partial treatments of the same road by treating only one lane out of the two and comparing them two years later. It found that when used on new roadways, Reclamite treatments actually stopped transverse cracking at the centerline, and it greatly reduced water infiltration to the lower levels of pavement and subgrade.
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