In recent years, FHWA has made a concerted effort to develop guidelines for the use of life-cycle cost analysis by transportation agencies and to promote the use of multiyear prioritization in pavement management. These efforts resulted in the development of a Technical Bulletin and Demonstration Project course materials that have been presented to state highway agencies throughout the country. A key part of multiyear prioritization is emphasis on the use of life-cycle cost information in cost-effectiveness calculations. An agency implementing multiyear prioritization as part of its pavement management system would naturally attempt to utilize the FHWA’s guidelines in developing the cost component of its economic analysis. However, because of the types of analyses required in pavement management and the ways in which cost information is reported and used, the recommendations provided in FHWA’s Technical Bulletin cannot be applied directly. The types of economic analyses that are used in an incremental benefit-cost analysis and the types of economic considerations that must be taken into account are discussed. Several of these economic considerations differ from the recommendations made in FHWA’s Technical Bulletin, so the reasons for these variations are also described.

This paper summarizes the efforts and the outcomes of a pilot student internship program developed jointly in 2012 by the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Institute for Transportation at Iowa State University. In 2012, Iowa was the only state DOT to use federal funds for the internship program, which was initiated as a summer program with 56 interns assigned to DOT offices and projects across the state. The paid internship program was extended into the fall semester with 22 students assigned to offices in Ames, Iowa. The program had engineering and nonengineering positions and was developed to provide experiential learning opportunities, to address Iowa DOT's workforce needs, and to attract undergraduate students to transportation careers. More than 80% of the interns and more than 90% of the supervisors, choosing from multiple choice responses, rated the program outcomes as great or okay. The interns valued opportunities to work in professional settings where they had responsibilities entrusted to them, interactions with other professionals and practitioners, an opportunity to understand real-world application of their course work, and the chance to gain first-hand experience working on transportation projects, as well as to learn about expectations in a professional setting. Supervisors noted the importance of establishing a continuation of the internship and cooperative education programs for future students. Nearly 100% of the interns and fully 100% of the supervisors said that they would recommend the program to students. Because of the student contributions during the internship, Iowa DOT was able to complete many activities that would not have been completed.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)’s Pavement Policy as codified in 23 CFR 626 states, “Pavement shall be designed to accommodate current and predicted traffic needs in a safe, durable, and cost effective manner” to be eligible for federal highway funding. To meet this requirement, state highway agencies have developed pavement type determination (PTD) policies, also known as pavement type selection, and implemented pavement management. Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT)’s PTD has been in place for many years; but in 2018, Iowa DOT looked at enhancing their PTD process to address gaps between past practice and best practice. Among the enhancements, user benefit as defined by pavement smoothness was utilized when net present value (NPV) alone could not definitively distinguish a preferred alternative. The smoothness benefit would become the divisor in a cost–benefit (C/B) ratio that would be used to determine the preferred alternate for the PTD. The cost portion of the ratio would remain the NPV of agency costs for the construction and projected rehabilitations during the analysis period. After a literature review and interviews of comparable state DOTs, several modifications to Iowa DOT’s PTD and the C/B ratio were analyzed and adopted. The modifications range from accepted practice changes, such as the use of a longer analysis period (50 years), to unconventional techniques, such as the consideration of smoothness. Iowa DOT believes these changes provide a more robust PTD. They are also considering additional improvements based upon additional research and policy making.

The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) has used concrete overlays as a pavement rehabilitation method since at least the 1930s, with over 40 projects constructed in the last two decades alone. However, there has not been an integral effort to comprehensively evaluate the performance of those projects in relation to design parameters, as-built construction quality, traffic levels, or distress progression. The objective of this study was to undertake a critical analysis of concrete overlays in Missouri as a first step to recommend improvements to MoDOT’s overlay selection, design, and construction practices. MoDOT uses three types of concrete overlays: unbonded overlays (UBOL), big block overlays (BBOL), and bonded overlays (BOL). It was found that UBOL projects exhibited the lowest international roughness index values among all types of overlays. The most predominant distress for UBOL was longitudinal cracking, which appeared more often at the center of the slab or in the right wheelpath. Cracking in the right wheelpath was particularly evident on projects that used a slab width greater than 12 ft and asphalt shoulders. Although BBOL and BOL projects did not deviate from the standard slab size, the rightmost panels tended to exhibit more distress, which might also point to weak support around the mainline-shoulder area. Recommendations for future projects include revising the design thickness procedures to be site-specific, revising the thickness quality control practices, and the continued use of geotextiles as interlayers for projects that require a bond breaker.