Next Step

CONCEPT OF TIME VALUE OF MONEY

• • Present value
• • Future value
• • Equivalence
• • Annual cost/return

Maintenance is not the end of a transportation project development process. Data gathered during maintenance provide needed information to planning for better future condition forecasting and needs assessments. Both the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) and the long-range plan may be modified based on the latest maintenance data and information.

Summary

Highway maintenance serves a critical function, ensuring roads are operable under acceptable conditions. While activities such as mowing grass, fixing signs, patching potholes, and plowing snow appear routine, the importance of such actions cannot be overstated. How to maintain and update data and information on what is broken, what needs to be fixed, when to fix, how to prioritize, and how to respond to citizen concerns and complaints are constant challenges faced by highway maintenance departments.

Discussions

• 1. Briefly outline the roles of roadside vegetation management.
• 2. Discuss how you will lead a road maintenance team consisting of mostly high school graduates.
• 3- Discuss pavement failure types on routes you travel the most.
• 4. Discuss why state DOT senior leaders are heavily involved in winter snowstorm preparation.

Exercises

• 1. Highway maintenance is a minor task for state highway agencies. Yes or No.
• 2. The goal of highway maintenance is to slow down the deterioration rate of the highway infrastructure. Yes or No.
• 3- The goal of highway vegetation management is to harvest all the grass for husbandry. Yes or No.
• 4. Highway right of way vegetation management is an integrated system including vegetation selection, mechanical mowing, animal grazing, and herbicide application. True or False.
• 5. Highway right of way vegetation prevents soil erosion from both stormwater and wind. True or False.
• 6. List all roles played by roadside vegetation management.
• 7- Highway grass and weed mowing is to ensure that vegetation does not grow too high to block a driver’s line of sight for safely operating a vehicle. True or False.
• 8. The most effective way to manage highway vegetation is through herbicide application. True or False.
• 9- Typically, highway grass mowing does not mow anything lower than 6 inches. True or False.
• 10. Highway mowing is a dangerous activity. Safety should be emphasized to all involved. True or False.
• 11. Road salt used for deicing and roadway treatment is generally mined rock salt with sodium chloride (NaCl) as its main component. True or False.
• 12. Pavement loading distribution mechanisms are the same for flexible and rigid pavements. True or False.
• 13- Requirements for rigid pavement subgrade preparation are much more “demanding” than that for flexible pavement. True or False.
• 14. Water seepage under Portland cement pavement is not a big issue, given the load is distributed to a large area. True or False.
• 15- Freeze and thaw cycles cause a lot of stress to a pavement layer. True or False.
• 16. IRI is one of many measures used to characterize pavement surface roughness. True or False.
• 17- Faulting is only related to rigid pavement. True or False.
• 18. Spalling is only related to rigid pavement. True or False.
• 19- The freeze-thaw cycle is a significant cause of highway pothole formation. True or False.
• 20. IRI can be used to characterize pavement surface smoothness of both rigid and flexible pavements. True or False.
• 21. A salt solution typically has a much lower freezing temperature than pure water. That is why salt is used to deice and prevent a roadway surface from icing up. True or False.

• 22. 3R projects refer to Resurfacing, Restoration, and Rehabilitation projects. True or False.
• 23- What is the difference between simple interest and compound interest?
• 24. A bimonthly (every two months) compound interest rate is 1.2%. What is the equivalent annual percentage interest rate?
• 25- A pavement management system facilitates the optimum distribution of funds to different roadways to achieve optimum pavement conditions for the entire roadway system. True or False.
• 26. A $26,000 loan is taken to pave a driveway. The loan has an APR of 3-8% and needs to be paid off in three years with equal monthly payments. What is the monthly payment?
• 27- What does annualized cost in alternative analysis mean? What kind of decision can you make based on annualized cost information in an alternative study?
• 28. A newly graduated engineer estimates that he needs to make a monthly payment of “m” $ for years to pay off his $10,000 loan. His friend also has a $10,000 loan with an interest rate doubling of his. The new engineer said that his friend needs to pay twice as much as what he needs to pay every month for years to pay off the loan. Is his statement correct? Explain your answer through a step-by-step analysis.
• 29- A city engineer needs to make a decision on which alternative she should choose to maintain a major boulevard for its pavement. She can invest $64,000 annually for the next six years to keep the road operable or spend a one-time $280,000 for a major rehabilitation work, which will keep the road operable for eight years. The current market APR is 1.8%. Use the annual cost method to help the engineer to make a rational economic decision.
• 30. There are all sorts of roadway hazards — fog, flood, objects on the road, disabled vehicles, and animals. List the types of road hazards you have encountered while traveling either as a driver or as a passenger and provide approaches on how to mitigate such hazards if you are responsible for highway maintenance.