It is no secret that the recession has slashed the budget of many municipalities. From a roadwork perspective, current practices and budget constraints mean government entities are delaying the maintenance of roads throughout their community and electing to rehabilitate when pavements have literally passed the breaking point. Roads are a vital element of any community and their upkeep is not only important it is the key to creating savings within the system.
To the credit of today’s government entities, they are fiercely trying to do more with less and prioritize the use of funds based on absolute need. However sometimes this approach is not always effective. For example, the timing assigned to pavement preservation strategies is pushed too far back to actually produce the results municipalities anticipate. In fact, the longer they wait and the more deteriorated the roads are, the less effective the pavement preservation effort—no matter the approach. From a financial perspective, this means that municipalities delaying maintenance in an effort to save in many cases are throwing money away because, for the most part, the life of a road (that has passed a certain level) can’t be extended effectively.
City Engineers and Public Works officials, accountable for the conditions of community roads, should take a step back and adjust the schedule, timing, and criteria for pavement preservation strategies to infuse overall savings into the system. Furthermore, they should also examine new technologies that have entered the marketplace so they can potentially bring about savings as well as a modernization to their existing pavement management strategies.
Many of the municipalities that are struggling are the ones that are still applying pavement preservation and pavement maintenance efforts based on traditional and budget-based scheduling, timing and criteria. The new administration’s stimulus package certainly helped jumpstart public work efforts across the U.S. and accelerate road maintenance activity. However, according to recent evaluations of municipalities that have leveraged stimulus funds to implement pavement preservation practices within their communities, many did not consider scheduling, timing and criteria before implementing pavement preservation efforts and thus did not realize the full effectiveness of the practice. See U.S. Dept. of Transportation for more information.
I understand many city engineers are being faced with the reality of short term financial constraints and politics, but consider that even impoverished nations/organizations (who often operate under even more limited budgets) have realized the need to make this paradigm shift and are better utilizing pavement preservation strategies. More specifically:
- The World Bank: International lending organizations and donor agencies like the World Bank currently provide loans and technical assistance to developing countries that are, like many local municipalities, operating under very tight budgets. They fund public work projects including pavement preservation programs in order to extend the life of the investment made.
- Cash-Strapped Country Initiatives: Many impoverished nations are conducting an assessment of their current network of roads and undergoing an optimal pavement preservation strategy (OPPS) review. The goal is to delineate a pavement preservation programs that bring about longer-lasting roads throughout impoverished countries — roads are the key to economic progress.
- International Road Federation: IRF invited field experts from 15 countries to discuss and share their experience with pavement preservation solutions (and its importance to the market). The program was so popular they are repeating it again in August 2010 —this time featuring executive sessions analyzing different country experiences and lessons learned.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and being forced to work with limited budgets should be viewed as an opportunity to review existing processes and figure out a way to work smarter versus harder. Municipalities that want to cut costs while serving their community effectively should recalibrate current pavement preservation strategies in order to adapt to this new cash-strapped environment we are in. Organizations like the World Bank are leading the charge and helping to bring this paradigm shift to municipalities worldwide. Perhaps you can lead the charge within the municipality you represent and ensure safe, long-lasting, and attractive roads and keep your community moving.
I welcome your thoughts so please feel free to comment. In the meantime, I will put together a follow-up post with more specifics that illustrate how many organizations are doing this. If you would like to receive notification of when this article is posted, please send me an email to nreck2010@gmail.com.
