Improving infrastructure sustainability in suburban and urban areas: is porous asphalt the right answer? and how?

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to investigate transportation infrastructure sustainability from a wider standpoint.A sustainable transportation infrastructure can be defined as a safe, efficient, economic, environmentally friendly infrastructure meeting the needs of presentday users without compromising those of future generations. This concept involves environmental, economic and societal aspects.In more detail, as for a road, a sustainable infrastructure or pavement must comply with environmental, economic and social requirements.Unfortunately, even if a definition of a sustainable pavement for urban or suburban areas can be easily proposed, the proposal of practical strategies to really pursue sustainability goals is sometimes disregarded in favour of emphatic announces of not well defined sustainable solutions.In the light of the above facts, the sustainability of a transportation infrastructure based on the actual environmental, social and economic characteristics is discussed in this paper. Once the main factors which can influence infrastructure sustainability are assessed, an analysis is performed in order to set out practical strategies for pursuing the main objective.Finally an experimental investigation is designed and carried out in order to assess porous asphalt value in terms of pavement sustainability. The tests carried out are promising about the possibility of achieving suitable levels of overall performance. Practical applications and perspectives in rehabilitation, maintenance, and research are outlined.

Pavement life cycle cost analysis for city logistics

“…system (see [26][27][28][29][30]). The detailed analysis of the costs over the entire life cycle of the transportation infrastructure (LCCA, with respect to the zero optiontraditional transportation facilities) can assess the decrease of agency (AC, e.g., maintenance and rehabilitation), user (UC, e.g., time, accidents, vehicle operating costs, see [31,32]), and externality (EC, e.g., related to CO 2 e emissions, etc., [33,34]) costs. Data gathering and analysis are still in progress.…”

A study on the dependence of PEMs acoustic properties on incidence angle

“…Porous European mixes (PEMs; air voids content, AV, usually in excess of 20%) act as a wearing course (often 50 mm thick) on impermeable base courses and have wellknown advantages: reduction of splash and spray, mitigation of outdoor noise (high porosity, low flow resistivity), optimisation of skid resistance at high speeds in wet conditions (high macrotexture; Alvarez et al 2010, Praticò et al 2012a, 2012b, Praticò and Vaiana 2012 and waterstorm mitigation (Filianoti 2001).…”

An experimental investigation into innovative pavements for city logistics

“…The above advantages and disadvantages might suggest the possibility to use these materials in given applications (inverted pavement structures; softer asphalt concretes with lower modulus and higher allowable strain limit and lower noise, etc., see [14][15][16][17][18]). Static possible applications could refer also to equipment and automobile parking (porous asphalt on low modulus hot mix asphalts (HMA)), intermodal yard (traditional HMA on low modulus HMA), gate facilities and secondary gate facilities (traditional HMA on low modulus HMA), wheeled and grounded container storage (in association with rolled cement concretes), expansion areas (traditional HMA on low modulus HMA), wharf areas (in association with rolled cement concretes), historical locations (see [19][20][21]).…”