Transportation System: Asphalt Pavement

To provide the client with the needed information regarding the material used on site, several tests were ran to determine if the roadbed material meets all of the requirements as stated in the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) 2016 Standard Specifications, Part 3, Section 301 and 305. The material has been identified as a ¾” dense graded crushed stone base aggregate. The sampling, aggregate properties, specific gravity, and sieve analysis were completed according to American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) standards.

With a high quality of life, a thriving economy, opportunities for outdoor activities and an impressive rate of growth, residents of Cedar Park have much to enjoy. The town's population increased from fewer than 5,300 people in 1990 to more than 26,000 in people in 2000 and almost 49,000 in 2010. The estimated population in 2016 was over 70,000 people. With such rapid increases in population, the officials of Cedar Park opted for asphalt pavement on many of their local streets, realizing that asphalt pavement was fast and economical to install and repair. Many businesses followed suit, choosing asphalt pavement for their parking lots and private roads. For more than 30 years, Alpha Paving has been assisting customers in Cedar Park with the

Over the last 40 years, Pflugerville has experienced remarkable growth. In 1970, fewer than 550 people lived in the town; by 2015, the estimated population had risen to more than 57,000. The rapid growth left the city, county, businesses and residential property owners scrambling to build paved surfaces to support the burgeoning population. Today, the area contains a mixture of new pavements that need preventive maintenance and aging pavements that need rejuvenation or replacement. Regardless of whether the pavement is aging concrete or new asphalt, Alpha Paving offers a full range of services to help Pflugerville residents with their pavement-related needs. Service offerings include asphalt overlays and paving, concrete sidewalks, pavement repairs, parking lot

First-time visitors to Lakeway are sometimes surprised to find that many streets and residential driveways are paved with asphalt. Unlike many other towns in the area, Lakeway was not founded in the 19th century. By the time Lakeway was planned, road builders had already begun to embrace asphalt pavement as the preferred choice. Asphalt pavement is economical, durable and attractive, and installation and repairs are quick and easy. At Alpha Paving, we offer a full range of asphalt services to the Lakeway area, including asphalt paving and overlays, sealcoating, crack filling, pothole repairs, street maintenance, asphalt milling and reclamation, pavement markings, speed bumps and parking lot striping.

VISION- Roads, and means of transport, make a crucial contribution to economic development and growth and bring important social benefits. Roads are among the most important public assets in many countries. Road improvements bring immediate and sometimes dramatic benefits to road users through improved access to hospitals, schools, and markets; improved comfort, speed, and safety; and lower vehicle operating costs. For these benefits to be sustained road improvements must be followed by a well-planned program of maintenance, therefore it is a paramount to maintain and reconstruct roads to ensure wellbeing and to increase development of the country.

To make winter roads more acceptable and easy to travel on, the municipal government of a city must apply either a chemical de-icer to melt ice or spread sand to increase traction. In many parts of the world there are brutal snowstorms and blizzards that establish road travel issues into existence. These nasty storms and blizzards would have been abominable without the use of chemical de-icers or sand. Statistically, providing salt or sand on roads covering an entire city can reduce the amount of accidents by 85% during and after a winter blizzard. Many chemicals and sand are very cost-effective, yet they play a key role on the roads and also may have negative environment impacts which a city must take into account. Environment protection is

The signalized intersection between Highway 12 and Pine Street in Ontario, Canada has been facing some challenges in its current design. Therefore, future analysis and design of the intersection should incorporate a suitable sustainability indicator to ensure that the intersection remains functional as a long-term solution. Perhaps the most important sustainability indicators for the intersection’s future analysis or evaluation should be traffic demand together with the future population (Litman 12). These sustainability indicators will ensure that the intersection remains safe and performs at an optimum level for the future based on how it is designed today.

There are also things caused by asphalt that will affect us long term. The production of asphalt releases 1.6 million tons of carbon into the air every year. In order to take that amount of carbon out of the air, it would take 1,311,475 acres of forests, which is more than double the size of Rhode Island. If we’re going to attack climate change, and help recover the environmental damage we’ve treated Earth with over the years, we have to do take substantial steps, that may change the way our society

Concrete has been used to build roads in America; although this is an expensive alternative to asphalt, it holds more advantages than normal asphalt. Concrete is more durable than normal asphalt and is capable of giving drivers better gas mileage. Concrete roads have also been proven to be more skid-resistant with the addition to grooves to the concrete. It can also help drivers save more gas money since it’s been proven to be fuel efficient. With the advances of modern science, scientists and concrete manufacturers have created some ways of creating concrete in a cheaper way so it can be used more often in creating

The surprisingly reasonable installation cost of asphalt pavement as opposed to concrete puts property owners in a position to spread out maintenance cost over a twenty or thirty year time frame.

There is need to proffer solutions to these aforementioned challenges through proper planning and implementation of growth driven policies. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a reliable technique that can be used for sustainable planning. Researchers in Brazil have applied LCA techniques in a number of sectors to provide reliable information for planning and policy making purposes. This paper reviews the various assessments carried out in Brazil using LCA. The main aim being to determine the availability of LCA studies in Brazil and the status of quantitative environmental assessments in the

Life cycle assessment addresses to all the three sustainability dimensions, environmental, economic, and social. LCA can track and document shifts in environmental impacts. Full characterization of product or process alternative helps decision makers or managers to make environmental trade off. Identification of environmental impacts in specific categories help Industrial decision makers analyze more specifically among different choices. LCA also can assess effects to one or more specific environmental areas at once.

Asphalt pavement can be found on more than 94 percent of America's paved roads. Interstate highways, urban streets and rural lanes all depend on asphalt for durable, smooth, economical pavements. Asphalt pavement is also the most popular choice for parking lots. Despite the fact that asphalt pavement is already environmentally friendly, the asphalt industry has worked tirelessly to make it even more environmentally green. The latest development in green paving is porous asphalt.

With the goal to minimize the effects on the environment many companies have improved by using the LCA as a tool to consider the entire life cycle of a product (Curran 1996). LCA shows cumulative environmental impacts from all stages of the products life often including impacts not considered in more traditional analysis like raw material extraction or material transportation. This provides a comprehensive view of the true environmental tradeoffs of the product and process selection. Figure 1 illustrates the possible life cycle stages that can be considered in an LCA and the typical inputs/outputs

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used as a tool or technique to assess the environmental impacts of a product, process or activity throughout its life cycle from the cradle-to-grave analyses (extraction of raw materials through to processing, transport, use and disposal).