Our Engineering Circuit Rider has just returned from the International Slurry Surfacing Association (ISSA) workshop. While he did not bring back any of the warm weather, he did return with some news you can use.
The Slurry Systems Workshop is an annual study course offering an informative program on slurry seal, micro surfacing, chip seals, and crack treatments, with live operation demonstrations and hands-on activities. Matt discovered first-hand that activities like crack sealing are as much art as science and all photographic evidence of his work have been appropriately destroyed.
He also learned that membership in ISSA is now free for government personnel. In addition to reduced prices for the annual Slurry Systems Workshop, membership provides access to their full range of web-based training and resources, as well as guidelines and test methods relative to the pavement preservation tools they represent.
You know we are already enthusiastic about pavement preservation, and we naturally think you should be also. On the one hand, you can pave your streets, watch as they succumb to the environment and traffic loadings, and take the endless public tongue-lashing from area residents who, understandably, are less than enamored with the state of good repair; then, mill and pave to start the whole self-destructive pattern over again.
On the other hand, you could spot those environmental cracks in your two- to three-year-old pavement and crack seal them, maybe then fog seal or slurry seal them a few years later, or perhaps even consider micro surfacing, all to extend the pavement life at a fraction of the square foot cost while maintaining the surface in truly a state of good repair. Granted, if you take this second path, your pavements will have more high-performing years than you have come to expect, you will have to endure endless, unrestrained, and effusive praise from the public and elected officials, minstrels will write children’s songs about you, and you will undoubtedly have to ride on one of the floats in the parade in your honor; such is the burden of the hero.
In addition to ISSA resources, there is a world of information about the pavement preservation toolbox available for free from the Pavement Preservation & Recycling Alliance (PPRA). Yes, you have heard us happily rant about their Treatment Resource Center in the past and we regret nothing; it’s just a fantastic, one-stop shop for a better understanding of crack seals to micro surfacing to cold-in-place recycling to full depth reclamation. Careful, you may just get addicted.
The Delaware T2/LTAP Center’s Engineering Circuit Rider is intended to provide technical assistance and training to local agencies and so if you have pavement management questions or have other transportation issues, contact Matt Carter at matheu@udel.edu or (302) 831-7236.
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