Cape Seals Power Pulaski County’s PCI Boost
BY Adé Craig
Central Arkansas county wins FP2’s 2023 Sorenson award with data-driven, pavement preservation approach
Pulaski County, Arkansas, is the recipient of the 2023 FP2 Inc. James B. Sorenson Award for Excellence in Pavement Preservation, thanks to its innovative 2022 Road Improvement Project. The Sorenson Award is presented by FP2 Inc. to recognize superior pavement preservation and recycling practice, usually to a city, township, county or state agency.
Pulaski County places a high-polymer micro surfacing treatment atop a cured scrub seal.
The award criteria include:
- Acceptance of pavement preservation and recycling concept by elected officials, general public, employees and industry (40%);
- Demonstration of the preservation principles by using the philosophy of the Right Treatment, on the Right Road, at the Right Time (20%);
- Use of communication techniques to keep the public notified about upcoming preservation road work in the area (10%); and
- Uniqueness of the program, including documenting tangible benefits such as increased useable life of the pavement, new concepts or applications employed, reduced user delays during treatment applications, and decreased frequency of reconstruction and major rehabilitation or reconstruction (30%).
Located in central Arkansas, and with the cities of Little Rock, Sherwood, Maumelle, Jacksonville and North Little Rock, Pulaski is the state’s most populous county. It boasts the highest road ratings due to its superior pavement management program, which utilizes cape seals to improve the county’s pavement condition index (PCI).
The county’s road network is managed by its Road and Bridge Department (RBD) and includes 145 bridges and 1,300 lane miles of road. Approximately 800 lane miles of its network are rural roads with chip seal surfaces, and 500 lane miles are topped with hot-mix asphalt.
To ensure its system of roads remained at or above an acceptable level, Pulaski County RBD would often chip-seal roads that did not display any visible cracking.
That’s the mindset of Pulaski County, said Shane Ramsey, Pulaski County Road and Bridge director. “From truckers to senior drivers, our roads are used by everyone,” Ramsey said. “We focus our efforts on understanding that by the time a road shows a distress, you are beyond the preventive point.”
Still, nearly half of Pulaski County’s roads prior to 2023 were rated “fair.”
“Our county roads and bridges are vital to our livelihoods and economic stability,” said Judge Barry Hyde, the county executive.
Once the roads were improved, and shortly after taking a second term of office, Hyde laid out goals and initiatives for the county, including its 2022 Road Improvement Project. At his 2022 State of the County address, Hyde emphasized his administration’s duty to the county, including its commitment to investing in infrastructure.
Here’s an example of a Pulaski County final cape-sealed road.
“Understanding this, the county has incorporated a data-driven approach to maintaining and improving our roads,” he shared during his address. “Pulaski County will embark on an aggressive $15 million road improvement project. When completed, Pulaski County will have the best county roads in all of Arkansas without question.”
During his presentation, Hyde mentioned that additional investment funds come from different areas, including federal resources and grants and from being fiscally responsible. The budget for the county’s 2022 Road Improvement Project came from unused RBD funds saved over several years.
Pulaski County Pavement Condition Index Improvement: These pie charts show the level of improvement Pulaski County’s Road and Bridge Department (RBD) achieved with the 2022 Road Improvement Project.
Utilizing a newly adopted PMS, the county conducted a data-driven assessment of every road. Following a year of required evaluation time, a state-of-the-art customized network-level assessment of the county’s road network was completed in 2016, with PCI ratings assigned to each road. Utilizing this data, the RBD team began addressing the problems, in particular with cape seals—a new surfacing treatment for both the county and the state at the time.
In advance of the cape seal application, the county employed multiple public awareness techniques to inform all citizens of upcoming work, and proactively communicate any traffic restrictions with impacted residents and businesses.
The improvement project, which focused on the preservation of the county’s HMA roads, began with equipment calibration on Aug. 1, 2022. The project was completed with the last micro surfacing applied Nov 3, 2022.
As of May 2023, over 50% of Pulaski County’s roads have moved from “fair” condition to “good” condition. In 2022, only 1% of the county’s roads were rated “excellent,” compared to over 15% today.
Since the project, the county’s overall network PCI rating has increased nearly 10 points, from 75.3 to 83.7, ranking its roads among the highest in the state, which the RBD credits to the implementation of cape seals in its road improvement project.
A representative for Pulaski County accepts the 2023 James B. Sorenson Award for Excellence in Pavement Preservation.
Also, taxpayer dollars were stretched further as a result of applying the cape seals. At the time of the project, the average cost of a hot mix overlay was between $185,000 and $200,000 per mile, more than twice the cost of the county’s cape seal bid.
The James B. Sorenson award is named after Jim Sorenson (1949-2009), who was senior construction and system preservation engineer, FHWA Office of Asset Management, and a great champion of pavement preservation at the national level. FP2 considers Sorenson a great friend to the pavement preservation industry and honors his memory with the Sorenson Award. The deadline for entries for the current year is July 1, 2024.
The deadline for entries for the current James B. Sorenson Award for Excellence in Pavement Preservation is July 1, 2024. For more information, visit here or to submit nominations, contact FP2’s executive director, Rick Church, 800 Roosevelt Road C-312, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137 or rickc@cmservices.com.
This article was written by Adé Craig, content coordinator for Ergon Asphalt & Emulsions.