LTPP Keeps Rolling

摘要

Poor pavement performance increases traffic congestion, threatens public safety, and raises maintenance costs. Accurately predicting performance and durability is critical to improving pavement design. Yet current design procedures remain largely based on empirical data from the 1950s. In many cases, engineers design roads for much greater traffic capacity than is supported by that 50-year-old science.rnEven so, the United States reaps a substantial return from investing approximately $40 billion per year in its pavements. A recent article in Roads & Bridges magazine put the annual savings from the interstate system at $737 billion when considering "safety benefits, saved time, reduced fuel, and lower consumer costs."