ACPA Concrete Pavement Progress Q2 2020

www.acpa.org Quarter 2, 2020 17 South Dakota Ar terial Road Rebuilt with Concrete Shallow utilities and high traffic volume require thinner, durable pavement By Sheryl S. Jackson ABOUT 15,000 CARS AND TRUCKS TRAVEL ON 22nd Avenue in Brookings, S.D., each day. The major urban arterial road was re-striped in the 1980s, changing the road four 12-ft. wide lanes to five 9- to 10-ft. wide lanes. “We placed an asphalt overlay every 15 years, but we wanted to widen the road and completely replace the pavement, which was heavily rut- ted,” says Jackie Lanning, city engineer for the City of Brookings. The new design included full depth road surface replacement, five 11-ft. wide lanes along with new curb and gutter, valley gutters, sidewalks, and replacement of the storm sewer system. Both asphalt and PCCpavement were included in the plans for bidding, says Lanning. The project was bid with a base bid of all the work except for the pavement. There was a concrete pavement alternate and an asphalt pavement alternate. “The low base bid plus concrete was $2,835,903.50. The low base bid plus asphalt was $2,872,609.70,” says Lanning. “We had not decided between as- phalt and concrete when we put the plans out to bid, but wewent with concrete for several reasons,” she says. “The initial cost of concrete was lower than the initial cost of asphalt, and we believed a concrete pavement would hold up longer to the volume of traffic we expect in the future, which means less maintenance and a longer time before repairs or replacement.” “One of the primary challenges was an abundance of utilities in the project area,” says Jason Petersen, P.E., project engineer at Civil Design. The plan was to replace water mains and the storm sewer systemwithout disrupting service or interfering with existing gas mains, electrical duct banks, communications duct banks, and other utilities commonly found in high capacity corridors, he explains. “An advantage to using the PCC pave- ment was that the depth was less than the asphalt option, which allowed for subgrade preparation and base course placement to be more easily B R O O K I N G S continues on page 18 »