Page 22 - Jan/Feb 2016 Vol.33 No.6

ATHENS
Has Athens Discovered the Holy Grail?
Necessity has always been the mother of
invention. In Athens the city was facing a
dilemma, not unlike most cities in our na-
tion. The problem of rising asphalt prices
combined with an economic downturn
means that roads will not be paved as
frequently. The problem is simple math: a
road pavement lasts on average 20 years
depending on several conditions. If a city
has 100 miles of roads, then they would
need to pave approximately five miles of
roads per year to remain on a replace-
ment cycle equal to the life cycle of that
pavement. Ten years ago that cycle might
have cost only about $50,000 per mile, but
today it has risen to roughly $100,000 per
mile.
The solution is also simple, but getting
there is tough. If the budget was $250,000
10 years ago and is still $250,000 today,
then you will only be paving roads on a 40-
year cycle. Each city now has three choices:
• Double the amount of money spent on
paving
• Decrease the amount of city maintained
roads
• Increase the life of roads
Above: Asphalt recycling and paving. Below: Infrared patching. Above & below: Liquid Road Application
22 TPW January/February 2016
The city of Athens looked at all options,
but decreasing the amount of city main-
tained roads was not viable, although I
have read articles of other places allowing
certain road to revert back to gravel. A
property tax increase helped increase the
amount of funds used toward paving, but
that option is only going to work in the
long term if the price of asphalt stabilizes.
All options should be considered, but the
third option is the real “Holy Grail.” If we
can increase the life of roads, then we can
decrease our dependency on the price of
paving and, of course, foreign oil.
The first step Athens used to increase
the life of roads was to improve upon the
pavement-preserving tools they already
had and to add additional tools. Here are
some of the initial improvements:
• Added an asphalt recycler to extend the
patching season throughout the winter
with less dependence on expensive cold
mixes while incorporating recycled
asphalt into the mix. We purchased a
Falcon Asphalt Recycler that allows up to
one-third recycled material to be added
to virgin material. This also reduced the
By Shawn Lindsey
cost of a patch.
• Added cold crack sealing to a hot crack
sealing program. Currently the city uses
hot crack sealing one or two months per
year, and wanted to double the amount
of crack sealing. Cold crack sealing can
be done on smaller areas with fewer
crew members during down-time, and
without getting out to fire up a hot crack
sealing machine. By employing both
methods more crack sealing can be ac-
complished.
• Mandated that utility cuts on roads less
than five years old be infrared patched
and cuts over 100 feet long have that sec-
tion resurfaced. Athens found that many
of the roads were prematurely aging
due to the frequency of utility cuts, not
the wearing surface. Infrared patching
results in an almost seamless cut.
The biggest tool recently acquired was
the in-house double slurry seal operation,
using a product supplied by SealMaster
called Liquid Road. Liquid Road is the cold
application of liquid asphalt and aggregate
with the use of a spray/squeegee machine.
The result is a new wearing surface about