(low-pitched note)
- [Narrator] When pavements go bad
in certain sections of a roadway,
it's been common to completely reconstruct
the entire corridor.
It's costly and time consuming.
But thanks to a series of nondestructive,
forensic evaluation tools
that are able to peer below the surface,
alternative and targeted construction and repairs
have the ability to save time and money.
- [James] We were looking at ways to speed up construction
and provide the same quality.
We hear a lot of complaints for road construction,
so it was really important for us to
minimize the impact to the traveling public.
- What we wanted to do with these tools was go in
and evaluate the condition of the existing pavement.
Show which sections, structurally, were sound
and could be reused and reincorporated into the
new pavement structure to give the designer options.
There's some different tools that we have
that look at different aspects of the design.
So we have our ground penetrating radar
and we also collect high definition videos.
So we have a video of the entire project
and we can look for distresses
or problem areas on a quick scan.
We have structural evaluation tools
like the falling weight deflectometer.
We can go in and do an actual structural evaluation
of the pavement layers with that device.
- [James] The idea is to identify
what the existing structure, where it's at,
and then determine the best strategy to move forward
with a reconstruction or in this case,
for State Highway 6,
we were looking at widening State Highway 6,
and you know, optimizing the approach.
- On State Highway 6,
we did an extensive LiDAR survey of all of the overpasses
because we wanted to look at clearances.
If we widen or we're going to have horizontal
or vertical clearances with the bridges that were there
or would we need to reconstruct those bridges.
And another thing that we're looking at is
how to set up traffic control closures.
So you have to look at balancing how I close it,
how much it delays the traveling public.
And that's one of the things that we're doing
in this project along with the pavement evaluation.
- So on State Highway 6, we're gonna have to move traffic
to the frontage roads at some point.
And some of their research helped us determine
that most of the frontage roads are in really good shape,
but there were certain portions that are going to
need to have a complete rehabilitation
before we turn traffic over to them.
If not, what would have happened is
we would've turned traffic under the frontage roads.
Basically, those roads would've fallen apart
before the project could have been completed.
- We're saving resources
if we can save the pavement that's there.
We don't have to go out and bring in new materials.
And so that has a lot of economic and environmental savings.
And also, time.
So if we're really talking about accelerating,
if you can reuse anything that's there
and reincorporate it into the new,
you save those times just off the bat.
- [Narrator] For more information,
and to find the publications for this project,
please visit the TxDOT research library
at the link shown below.