Back in 2019, a Missouri man threw a surprise birthday party for a familiar, yet infamous resident of Waldo county. A pothole. This particular pothole had been causing residents problems for years, only to grow worse and worse over time. Finally, after 3 years of neglect and inaction, it took a neighborhood celebration to draw attention to the issue, and the pothole was fixed.
Chances are there are potholes, cracks, and bumps in the roads that have become part of your daily commute, and you either curse every time you feel one on the road, or still hold on to hope something will be done to fix them soon.
The issue: many local governments follow a worst-first road maintenance plan, meaning that sometimes those pesky potholes are overlooked by larger, more urgent projects, allowing small problems to become irreversible crises. This approach ultimately leads to an overwhelming cycle of maintenance issues that seem insurmountable.
On average, the quality of untreated roads drops 40% in the first 15 years. In the following two years, the quality continues to decrease by another 40%, leaving the pavement condition (PCI) at only 20% of the original quality. At this stage, the roads are likely to be so poor that reconstruction is the only option, and that costs a lot. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars per lane mile.
If agencies wait until the damage to their roads is irreparable before they address it, the cost of having to perform this kind of worst-first maintenance adds up. That’s a lot of money, time, and headaches, only to repeat itself in the years to come. In order to avoid this common issue, many agencies are switching from a traditional worst-first maintenance approach to a preventative maintenance approach. This is beneficial for a few key reasons:
- Pavement preservation is cost effective. Redoing roads entirely is expensive, so by using a variety of pavement treatment plans, you can increase the lifespan of your roads by up to 200%, getting the most life out of roads and making taxpayer dollars go further.
- Preventative road maintenance is better for the environment. In addition to cost efficiency, a pavement preservation approach is known to produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, consume less energy, and provide faster application times than the alternative conventional approach.
A well-implemented pavement preservation approach achieves maximum efficiency by increasing the average condition of your pavement, while decreasing your average spend per square yard.
Here at RMT, we are devoted to making the transition to a preservation-based maintenance program easy and affordable by providing the first and only real-time solution for passive daily road quality surveys: one that is simple, affordable, and automated. You can read more about how we do this here. Most importantly, a preservation-based maintenance program doesn’t just help you, it ensures that your local community is taken care of. After all, they should be throwing birthday parties for friends, neighbors, and families, not potholes.