Our nation has one of the best roadway transportation system in the world but overtime as with any investment, preservation is required to maximize the benefits and provide out citizens with long term pavement performance with little traffic disruptions. Currently the American Society of Civil Engineers report that one in every five miles of roads are in poor condition and the system is chronically underfunded. Minnesota Department of Transportation has also documented it cannot keep up with the costs of expansion, rehabilitation, and maintenance of its network because the remaining service life of our roads have gone from 13.7 years in 2000 to 9.4 years in 2013. This is one example why additional information is needed by agencies/pavement owners to develop a better understanding how different asphalt pavement preservation techniques can be used on a national scale. The Minnesota DOT Road Research Project (MnROAD) and National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) formed a partnership in 2015 to evaluate Pavement Preservation treatments on a national scale. Following the success of the Lee Road 159 preservation treatments, in 2015, NCAT constructed a high volume test sections on US 280. MnDOT in conjunction with the northern DOT’s (in the pooled fund) have constructed similar test sections in 2016 on US-169 (high volume) and CSAH-8 (low volume) in Mille Lacs County Minnesota. This provided the study with four test decks consisting of low and higher volume roadways in both Minnesota (cold / hard-freeze) and Alabama (hot / non-freeze). These test decks were built and supported by pooled fund studies lead by the Alabama DOT for NCAT. MnROAD was a partner in the last pooled fund study TPF-5(269) and was supported by 14 states around the country including the Foundation for Pavement Preservation, National Center for Pavement Preservation, and a number of other vendors. This initial study documented the construction of 25 test sections on Lee Road 159, 35 test section on US-280 in Alabama and 30 test sections on county state aid highway (CSAH-8) and 29 test sections on US-169 in Minnesota. Each test deck was constructed by one contractor using local materials and monitoring is completed in consistent manners by both NCAT and MnROAD staffing. Preservation treatments were also consistent for all four locations which included crack seals, fog seals, chip seals, cape seals, microsurfacing, thinlays and different combinations of each of them. Initial monitoring has started but additional time is required to determine the benefits of each treatment over time. That is the main purpose of the second phase of this research. The initial pooled fund was for 3 years from 2015-2018 and was led by NCAT and phase-2 will be over the next five years lead by MnROAD with MnDOT being the lead state.

MnROAD and NCAT are seeking organizations to join the partnership for the second phase of research efforts. Main objectives include: 1. Determining the life cycle cost of various pavement preservation alternatives in a highly controlled experiment that will provide state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) with the financial foundation to begin to build a decision tree for their own maintenance program 2. Develop quality assurance QA field testing protocols to correlate construction practices with long term performance of pavement preservation techniques. 3. Technology transfer - Answering practical questions posed by research sponsors through formal (i.e., reports & technical papers) & informal (e.g., one-on-one responses to sponsor inquiries) technology transfer on how these life extending benefits can be best utilized in each state.

This second phase (2019-2024) will be used to continue to monitor and analyze data from the low and high volume pavement preservation sections built both in Alabama and Minnesota since many of the test sections were built in 2016 and not had enough time to show what rate of deterioration they will have. MnDOT will lead this portion of the pooled fund study and will again partner with NCAT but now they will be the subcontractor doing the data collection in Alabama and the majority of the data analysis. Activities that are expected include: Continue Data Collection of each of the test sections both in Alabama and Minnesota utilizing common methods and equipment between all four locations.

Commitments required are $50,000 per year.