California Asphalt Magazine Special Innovation 2016

INSIDE: Caltrans new product approval process Q&A with Dr. John Harvey of UCPRC Q&A with Randy Iwasaki of CCTA

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Publisher’s Letter Dear Readers, The theme of this special issue of California Asphalt magazine is “The Path Toward Innovation.”

The key word in that title, obviously, is innovation. That’s something we all strive for, and as I look back on my long career in this business it is breathtaking how new equipment, new processes and new techniques have revolutionized our industry.

Today we are leaner, “greener,” safer, and capable of producing a product that lasts longer than ever before under traffic loading not even envisioned a couple decades back. I commend everyone who has worked hard to help improve our industry.

But another key word in the title is “toward.” That’s because innovation is not a destination, but rather a journey. In reality, you never get there; you must always be striving to be heading in that direction. Just when an innovation opportunity presents itself, and (hopefully) is implemented, another one is right around the corner.

Innovation can come in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes it is an exotic new asphalt additive, a new test method, some new technology incorporated into our paving equipment or even a new methodology on how to do it. That often happens due solely to the rejection of traditional ignorance.

Many new innovations, such as “Intelligent Compaction” and even the use of drones in our industry, have been highlighted in previous issues of this magazine, which is committed to always looking over the horizon so that when change is upon us, we are prepared.

Often innovation can be something simple, such as the metal grab bar and stop-cable I had installed on an asphalt windrow pick-up machine 30 years ago as a safety device after witnessing one of our paving crew almost fall in front of the moving machine. If he fell unseen by the operator, the bar would allow him to hold himself in front of the rotating paddles and the cable would disengage them, preventing further injury or death. This has been providential on many occasions over the last decades. I call it a “man-catcher” (with apologies for the use of construction jargon).

Only someone who has been out during the noise and chaos of a night paving job could envision such an idea, but that is at the heart of every innovation. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.

The larger point, however, is that innovation requires all of us to be constantly evaluating what we do, and how we do it, looking for improvement opportunities, large and small. That’s one sure way we can all be working toward a brighter, safer and more productive future for our industry.

Sincerely,

Skip Brown Co-Chairman of the Northern California Contractors Committee Delta Construction / Asphalt Consulting Services 4

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

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Contents 4

Publisher’s Letter

8

Caltrans’ new product evaluation process

Seeking to be innovative, the department looks to streamline process of how new products are evaluated & approved Page 8

12

Q&A with Randy Iwasaki

20

Q&A with John Harvey

38

The Contra Costa County Transportation Authority Executive Director talks about what autonomous vehicles, being tested in his county, will change transportation

The Director of the University of California Pavement Research Center discusses pavement research, trends and what the future may hold for asphalt pavements

Page 12

Advertiser Index On the Cover:

In this special innovation issue, California Asphalt magazine talks to some visionary leaders about what the future may have in store for asphalt pavements.

Page 20

CALIFORNIA ASPHALT PAVEMENT ASSOCIATION www.calapa.net

HEADQUARTERS:

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: MEMBER SERVICES MANAGER: TECHNICAL DIRECTOR: GUEST PUBLISHER:

PUBLISHED BY:

GRAPHIC DESIGN: CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: ADVERTISING SALES:

P.O. Box 981300 • West Sacramento • CA 95798 (Mailing Address) 1550 Harbor Blvd., Suite 211 • West Sacramento • CA 95691 • (866) 498-0761 Russell W. Snyder, rsnyder@calapa.net Tony Grasso, tgrasso@calapa.net Sophie You, syou@calapa.net Rita Leahy, PhD., P.E., rleahy@calapa.net Skip Brown, Co-Chairman of the Northern California Contractors Committee Delta Construction/Asphalt Consulting Services Construction Marketing Services, LLC • P.O. Box 892977 • Temecula • CA 92589 (909) 772-3121 • Fax (951) 225-9659 Aldo Myftari Brian Hoover, CMS & Russell W. Snyder, CalAPA Kerry Hoover, CMS, (909) 772-3121 • Fax (951) 225-9659

Copyright © 2016 – All Rights Reserved. No portion of this publication may be reused in any form without prior permission of the California Asphalt Pavement Association. California Asphalt is the official publication of the California Asphalt Pavement Association. This bi-monthly magazine distributes to members of the California Asphalt Pavem­­ent Association; contractors; construction material producers; Federal, State and Local Government Officials; and others interested in ensuring that asphalt remains the high quality, high performance pavement choice in the state of California.

6

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

Seeking to be INNOVATIVE, Caltrans re-examines new product evaluation process.

By Russell W. Snyder

Everyone wants to be innovative. The question is, how?

In California, home to the Silicon Valley, innovation is the stuff of legend, from garages that spawned Hewlett-Packard and Apple, to game-changers Google, Facebook and even Uber. The SR-71 “Blackbird” spy plane and “stealth” technology were born in the super-secret Lockheed “Skunk Works” facilities in Southern California, and at the neighboring Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a collaborative effort of NASA and Caltech, exploration of distant worlds went from science fiction to science fact.

In the area of asphalt pavements, California also led the way for many years. From Hveem mix designs to the California profilograph, the influence of California’s innovations in pavement design, testing and acceptance had a worldwide impact that continues to be felt today.

In recent years, however, the pace of innovation in California has slowed down, virtually everyone agrees. The much-publicized move toward “Superpave,” an outgrowth of the national Strategic Highway Research Program of the 1990s, was late to catch on in California, and other innovations in products and technology similarly piled up waiting for approval by the massive California Department of Transportation (Caltrans).

When it comes to innovation, the asphalt pavement industry and Caltrans are inexorably linked. California is the largest 8

asphalt market in the nation, and Caltrans, with a state highway system of more than 50,000 lane-miles, is the largest consumer of asphalt in the state. Many local agencies reference Caltrans specifications and test methods for local streets and roads.

Recognizing the importance of this symbiotic relationship, the strategic plan of the California Asphalt Pavement Association (CalAPA) includes a goal to have a positive and productive working relationship with Caltrans, and CalAPA members spend countless hours on technical committees that review every aspect of asphalt mix designs, testing, production, placement and acceptance. Being innovative is also called out in the CalAPA strategic plan so that the industry is always focused on producing the best possible outcome for the end-users of asphalt.

In recent years, however, many CalAPA members have complained that the process to get new products, new equipment or new technology approved by Caltrans was horribly broken.

Stories are legion of a process that is most often referred to as the “black hole.” Many company representatives contacted for this article declined to be quoted by name, fearing that it might negatively impact products or equipment that are in the review pipeline.

Like all associations, CalAPA does not advocate for specific companies or products, but the association does advocate for processes that are fair, transparent

and reasonable. That also holds true for the Caltrans new product evaluation process that is the source of many complaints to CalAPA. “We’ve been trying to get our product approved for two years,” one company representative said, who asked not to be named. “We find ourselves up against a wall.

All we want is some answers, or some guidance.”

Another flatly refused to be quoted, even anonymously, for fear that it could derail the approval of a project that has been lost in the approval process for several years. Yet another company representative, who initially agreed to be quoted by name, later declined after conferring with bosses. All did confirm, however, that the process is confusing, takes longer than reasonable, and has been frustrating as well as costly. As the complaints of needless red tape and slow responsiveness made it into legislative hearings and media reports, the department has come under increasing scrutiny.

Shortly after he was appointed as Secretary of the State Transportation Agency, Brian Kelly ordered an independent, top-down review of Caltrans, which was conducted by the State Smart Transportation Initiative, housed at the University of Wisconsin. Many outside entities provided input to the review, including CalAPA, which assembled a panel of member-experts to share the industry’s perspective in how it interacts with the department. [ Continued on page 10 ]

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

[ Continued from page 8 ]

The resulting report, issued in 2014, noted that, “Caltrans today is significantly out of step with best practice in the transportation field and with the state of California’s policy expectations. It is in need of modernization – both in the way it sees its job and how it approaches that job – and of a culture change that will foster needed adaptation and innovation.”

Since that report was issued, Caltrans has embarked on a number of initiatives to respond to that critique, and the words “innovation” and “Innovative” continue to crop up. The department developed a new Strategic Management Plan, and the plan called for the department to find ways to incorporate innovation in its operations.

In a September 2015 issue of the Caltrans publication “Mile Marker,” the department outlined a “Lean 6-Sigma” initiative, which it described as integrating “the powerful improvement tools of ‘define, measure, analyze, improve and control,’ or’ DMAIC,’ into a five-phase methodology to improve production and reduce wasteful or unnecessary practices and processes.”

Caltrans is training internal Lean 6-Sigma experts to help guide internal process improvement efforts with a special emphasis on tangible and measurable results.

One of the business-processes identified for scrutiny was the new product evaluation process.

“Innovation is really one of the touchstones in the department, and it is an inherent part of one of our goals, which is ‘Organizational Excellence,’” said Caltrans Chief Deputy Director Kome Ajise in an interview with California Asphalt magazine. “It also applies to our ‘Stewardship’ goal, which is about using what we have to the fullest extent possible, to optimize the resources that we have. So innovation is one way to make 10

Kome Ajise, Chief Deputy Director, Caltrans.

Sri Balasubramanian, Chief, Caltrans Office of Asphalt Pavement.

sure you get more out of the resources that you have.”

California’s reputation for innovation is not lost on Caltrans, Ajise said.

“We live in California, which is the home of innovation,” Ajise said. “The idea of innovation is that it is not an institution, it is not a department – it is part of every single work activity. It is really about trying to get everyone to think differently about what they do. That’s really what innovation is about. It goes to products, it goes to processes, and it goes to different outcomes.”

Pledging to bring that approach to the area of asphalt pavements is Sri Balasubramanian, chief of the Office of Asphalt Pavement within the department’s Division of Maintenance. In a separate interview, he said he has a personal commitment to innovation that he wants to see extend to how is department deals with asphalt pavements.

“For us, innovation is very critical. It’s one of our values.

And to me, innovation is one of my five personal values, the others being service, partnership, efficiency and pride,” he said.

“What we are trying to do with this ‘Lean 6 Sigma’ process improvement effort related to the new product approval process is to incorporate innovation much

faster, and also make this process transparent so people know where the innovation is in the approval process. And if we are transparent it also helps others.

When they look at what other innovations we are evaluating, they know we are open to innovation.”

When someone approaches the department with a new product, the process starts with the new product coordinator, who assigns the product a tracking number and then forwards the information to internal department subjectmatter experts to begin the evaluation process. This stage of the process is often, many say, where things get lost in the system. Personnel changes, a frequent occurrence in state government, also disrupt and delay the review process.

Meanwhile, new products and technology continue to come on to the market, and are introduced to Caltrans, creating further bottlenecks.

“That is another major challenge that you face when you talk about innovation,” Balasubramanian said. “When you have so many products, how do you evaluate them? How do you make sure they are uniform?

How do you make sure, when you come up with specifications,

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

you are not favoring one product over another? These challenges need to be addressed. While getting several products for evaluation is good for innovation, it should not stymie the process.”

Innovation got another highprofile boost on March 24 of this year, when Caltrans and the Federal Highway Administration announced the creation of the “California State Transportation Innovation Council,” or STIC, which, according to a press release, “will serve as a forum for advocating and overseeing the rapid deployment of innovations in the transportation sector.”

The goal of the council, the press announcement said, “is to identify new strategies to respond to the challenges impacting California’s transportation infrastructure and to promote innovations that will deliver a safer, more efficient and sustainable transportation system.”

The council will bring together representatives from all levels of the highway transportation community, including agency and industry partners, to evaluate which innovations are most appropriate for California.

“California’s infrastructure is aging and our resources are increasingly becoming limited, so the need for innovation is essential,” Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty said in a statement.

“Through the STIC, we hope to identify proven technologies and practices to pilot and implement in California, and ultimately move these proven innovations into use on our roadways faster.”

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), which has been pushing innovation in many arenas, including its “Every Day Counts” initiative, also threw its support behind the effort. It has promoted similar innovation councils in other states. California’s is the 52nd such charter to be established.

Jack Van Kirk, Director of Asphalt Technology for CalAPA-member George Reed/Basic Resources, next to a Heavy Vehicle Simulator at U.C. Davis.

“Innovative project delivery drives economic growth and accelerates the development of a safer and more efficient transportation system,” said Federal Highway Administrator Gregory Nadeau in the joint press announcement. “The charter we sign today with Caltrans demonstrates the strength of our partnership and is an important step toward our collective efforts to develop a national innovation network with local and state transportation agencies and our private sector partners.”

The charter of the STIC says it will “act as a catalyst for rapid deployment of those nationally and State-identified technologies, tactics, and techniques that have been demonstrated in ‘real world’ application and can offer improved performance/effectiveness in California.”

That such a council is even needed speaks to the state of “rapid deployment” of innovation in a risk-averse government agency such as Caltrans.

Nevertheless, taking a fresh look at how new ideas can be incorporated into its operations can only be seen as a positive step forward on the path toward innovation.

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

Jack Van Kirk, a former senior Caltrans materials engineer who now is director of asphalt technology for CalAPA member George Reed, remembers when Caltrans routinely led the way in innovation.

While at the department, he was instrumental in helping to bring a massive Heavy Vehicle Simulator from South Africa to California, a first in the nation. The hulking piece of equipment, which looks like something out of a “Star Wars” and “Mad Max” mashup, conducts accelerated pavement durability testing and still in use at the University of California Pavement Research Center in Davis, Calif.

Van Kirk, who currently serves as the Asphalt Task Group co-chair of the Caltrans-industry Rock Products Committee, said he is hopeful that the renewed emphasis on innovation at Caltrans will take hold.

“The evaluation of new products has been a real stumbling block for Caltrans for a very long time,” he told California Asphalt magazine. “Innovation is a very important part of providing a successful pavement program.

It is great to hear that Caltrans is making a new effort to improve this process.” CA 11

Q&A with

Randy Iwasaki

executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority

Autonomous vehicles and other looming innovations

By Russell W. Snyder, Executive Director, California Asphalt Pavement Association (CalAPA)

Editor’s Note: Randell H. Iwasaki has been the executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority since April of 2010. As the agency’s chief executive he is responsible for the overall management of the Authority, including its projects, programs, policies and procedures, the board-approved budget, and all personnel decisions. Prior to joining the Authority, Iwasaki was appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in August 2009 as director of the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). He was with Caltrans for more than 26 years, serving in various engineering and management positions.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and a Master’s in Engineering from California State University, Fresno. Throughout his professional career he has been at the forefront of innovation, from acquiring the first Heavy-Vehicle Simulator equipment in the United States to test pavement durability and championing long-life asphalt pavement designs, to his current role on the leading edge of autonomousvehicle technology research and development. He was interviewed shortly after his agency hosted a “Redefining Mobility Summit” in Concord, where the convergence of the powerful forces of change and technology in the area of transportation were examined.

California Asphalt Magazine: First, tell us about the transportation program in your county, which is located in the East San Francisco Bay Area and home to more than a million residents and an extensive road and freeway network, including Interstate 80, 580, 680, State Routes 4, 24, 160, 242 as well as Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and commuter rail lines.

Randell H. Iwasaki: Contra Costa County is one of the first counties in California where voters taxed themselves to fund transportation projects and programs. There are now 20 “self-help” counties in California. Our first measure was Measure C, which lasted 20 years and raised about $1 billion in 1988 12

Randy Iwasaki is interviewed by a TV news crew during a CalAPA asphalt pavement conference in 2009.

dollars to build mostly infrastructure, such as State Route 4 west and the Pittsburg-Baypoint BART station.

But it also funded some innovative programs, and more importantly, the Measure had a growthmanagement plan component. In order for local agencies to qualify for dollars to do paving, they had to adopt an urban limit-line or use the County’s ULL. Contra Costa County, back in 1988, was trying to contain growth to within the urban limit-line boundaries. If local communities wanted to continue to expand and sprawl, they weren’t going to qualify for Measure money to support that type of growth. Since then, cities have really focused on making sure they build within those urban limit-lines.

CA: When Measure C was getting ready to sunset, what happened then?

RHI: In 2004 the Board put on the ballot an extension of Measure C, known as Measure J, a 25-year measure, which was passed by more than 71 percent of voters.

It is about a $2 billion measure in 2004 dollars, which is comprised of 40 percent projects and 60 percent program. Since then we have been working on [ Continued on page 14 ]

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

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Checking out a piece of heavy equipment.

Randy Iwasaki, center, attends an event marking improvements to State Route 4.

[ Continued from page 12 ]

accelerating our projects by issuing tax-exempt municipal bonds at very attractive rates. We’ve helped fund the fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel on Highway 24, are nearly done widening State Route 4, extending BART out to Antioch, have constructed Interstate 680 auxiliary lanes, and more. We are an AAA-rated agency on Wall Street. As part of our innovative financing program, we are using the taxexempt municipal bond market to advance future dollars to build 25-years of infrastructure in 10 years.

We sold our first set of bonds in 2012 — $188.7 million — at 2.12 percent. We actually caught the interest rates at the lowest point in the history of the tax-exempt municipal bond market. In 2015 we went back to Wall Street and sold another $166.6 million in bonds at 2.61 percent. We’re always trying to find a way to get the best deal for our taxpayers and deliver transportation projects and programs faster and more inexpensively. Our mantra is “promises made, promises kept.” We make sure that the taxpayers know that they are going to get their product either on time or ahead of schedule and within budget or under budget, but never late or over budget. And so far we’ve been able to keep that promise.

CA: In an era when taxpayers have grown weary of delays and cost-overruns on large infrastructure projects, how do you keep these projects on track?

RHI: We really manage our projects pretty closely. I think that’s the “secret sauce” for success. You tell the public what you are going to do with the dollars, you tell them when you are going to deliver the projects, and tell them the status of the projects so they get an understanding of what is going on. That way, the next time, they are going to say, “Wow, those guys really get it. They deliver their projects on time.”

14

CA: You said about 40 percent of your program is in projects. What about the other 60 percent?

RHI: Sixty percent of our dollars go into programs.

Those are things like BART parking BART access, bus service, transportation for seniors and people with disabilities, major street improvements, bike, pedestrian and trails, etc. We allocate 18 percent of the annual 0.5 percent sales tax to our local agencies in Contra Costa County for street maintenance.

CA: California currently has a very high threshold for passing local sales tax increases devoted to transportation. Such measures must be endorsed by a two-thirds “super majority” of the electorate. It’s hard to get two-thirds of the electorate to agree on anything, much less taxing themselves. Yet your county’s Measure J passed by a comfortable margin.

There’s a lot of talk these days about transparency and accountability in government. How do you view this trend?

RHI: In our county, voters are a little more conservative than in some other nearby counties, and they want more information regarding expenditures, schedules of projects, etc. So we spend a lot of time on transparency. We pay for an independent financial audit every year. We’ve received a Platinum Award from the Government Finance Officers Association three years in a row for clean audits. We also get audited by the federal government when we use federal dollars, and we get audited by the state when we use state dollars. We always want to make sure we are doing things the right way, and we post information on our webpage so we are as transparent as possible. We are governed by an 11 member board of elected officials.

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

CA: The trend in recent years clearly has been that self-help counties are leading the way in terms of transportation funding, comprising about 60 percent of the total dollars generated in the state for these purposes. Having worked at Caltrans, and now at a local, self-help county, please give us your perspective on this relationship.

RHI: This is true, but transportation is all about partnerships. It takes more than one agency to plan, program and deliver transportation improvement projects. So when it comes to funding, it’s very difficult to leverage other people’s money if you don’t have money yourself. With every proposed funding package, I suggest they do a state and local partnership. This provides an incentive for counties that don’t have a sales tax measure to go out and get one so they can leverage those precious state dollars. We have been successful because we get projects ready to go to construction, and then we search for grant money to fill in the funding gaps and move the project to the construction phase. When Proposition 1B (the statewide transportation bond act of 2006) and the Recovery Act (the federal American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009, or ARRA) hit, we had all these projects on State Route 4, about $1.3 billion total worth of projects, ready to go out to construction. We were able to leverage those dollars because we had projects that were ready. In fact, at the time of allocation, the Caldecott Tunnel project was the largest ARRA allocation in the nation. We do everything from environmental analysis, planning, design, all the way through to construction administration. For most other counties, when they work on the state highway system, it is Caltrans that is administering that project.

Our board decided they are going to let us do that. We want to be an owner of choice. We pay very quickly.

We pay within five days or less of getting an approved invoice. In one case, we got an invoice in the morning, it was reviewed and approved the same day, and we cut a check that afternoon.

CA: Wow. RHI: I have been in this business a long time, and I can tell you that contractors will bid higher depending on the risk. We want to be the owner of choice, trying to lower some of the risk involved in building projects.

That’s one of the reasons why we pay quickly. We believe in partnering, with a clear dispute-resolution process. We have not had any claims on projects we administer. I think that’s because we really try hard to make sure that when we put our projects out, we have a good bid package, so that a contractor can take a look at it and know the plans are complete, that there’s not going to be a lot of changes. We’re not going to

do multiple construction reviews after the public is using the facility and it costs substantially more to complete the work. We push for those reviews to be done while the crews are still on the job and can be completed more efficiently. We’re going to work with the contractor to get the project built, get the bills paid according to the contract, and then let that contractor go and bid other work. At the end of the day, that’s how contractors make their money. They don’t make money sitting around waiting for the agency to do all these reviews and punch-lists. It is better to do it right the first time. We try to expedite all of that, and that is included with our payment plan. We want to get better bids for our taxpayers.

CA: What about protecting the system in place now.

Much has been made about how transportation funds have not kept pace with inflation, and maintenance is suffering. The current governor calls it a “fix-it-first” strategy in terms of allocating transportation dollars.

RHI: When I was deputy director of maintenance and operations at Caltrans, “fix it first” was critical. We were always trying to make sure we got in there with the right projects, at the right time. We worked with industry to come up with the right designs, the right materials, the right aggregate, the right oil. That’s what we’re trying to do here in Contra Costa County. We hold events we call “Tech Series,” because I want to expose the city engineers and the county engineers here in Contra Costa County to the latest and greatest in mix designs, and binders and aggregates, and how to mix them together, so your project lasts longer.

CA: Beyond the projects of today, your agency is also looking to the near and not-so-near future as it relates to transportation. You hosted a “Redefining Mobility Summit” April 21 in Concord. Please tell us what that was about.

RHI: This is our second annual Redefining Mobility Summit. Last year we coupled it with our announcement of the launch of “GoMentum Station,” the largest secure autonomous-vehicle and connected vehicle test facility in the United States. One of the things about technology is that it is moving at such rapid pace, people often times don’t keep up with it. Part of what I’ve tried to do in my career is make sure people are aware of what is going on as far as technology is concerned.

CA: And the impacts of these new technologies will be wide-spread, or to use a popular term of today, “disruptive,” to many different sectors of our economy and our lives.

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

[ Continued on page 16 ]

15

[ Continued from page 15 ]

RHI: At our Redefining Mobility Summits, we’ve had sessions on insurance, auto manufacturing and regulations. This year our first panel was on accelerating change, because change is coming, and if you’re not ready for it, it’s going to happen anyway. You’re either going to be ahead of it, on top of it, or behind it. I also presented on this same topic at a meeting of the national Transportation Research Board. How do you assemble the right crew? How do you make sure your board is in alignment? How to you make sure you have your procurement methodology in place to help you deal with this rapid pace of change?

CA: Fascinating. What other topics did the summit explore?

RHI: We had panel discussions on “smart cities,” the latest and greatest in the world of autonomous vehicles, and “first mile” and “last mile” innovation.

CA: “First mile?” Isn’t that the difficult gap between a person’s home or work or other final destination, and the mode of transportation they choose for most of the trip. That has been a longtime challenge for transportation planners. It’s clear that you see technology playing an important part in the future of transportation. How did you gather input from your community to develop this vision of the future, and how is that driving innovation?

RHI: When we updated our 25-year countywide transportation plan, we used social media, telephone town halls, etc., to gather information from our taxpayers. Using these techniques, we got more comments this cycle than the previous 25-years combined. A lot of our customers, our constituents, are saying, for example, “Hey, I live in Antioch, or Pittsburg, and I can’t get to the Pittsburg-Baypoint BART station because it is too far for me to walk or bike, so what I do is I drive my car, but the parking lots are full, so I end up driving to work.” So we signed an exclusive North American agreement with a company called EasyMile. EasyMile is a joint venture intended to deploy shared autonomous shuttles.

We’ve purchased two vehicles, in partnership with Bishop Ranch, and the idea is to test them out at GoMentum Station. Once they meet all the testing requirements, we plan on rolling them out at Bishop Ranch. Bishop Ranch is a 600-acre business park in San Ramon. This is the next generation of technology. In addition to solving the first- and last-mile issue, these automated people-movers, or shared autonomous vehicles, could help eliminate some of the need for parking. What these vehicles will 16

do is wait for a call to pick up people, and respond.

Hopefully we’ll be ready to roll those out sometime early next year. They would be the first purely autonomous vehicles rolling out in North America.

CA: But aren’t there some restrictions in law that must be addressed? Something about autonomous vehicles needing a steering wheel, brake pedal and operator, who presumably could take over if something goes wrong? Technology advocates have howled that this sort of regulation is short-sighted and ignores the fact that humans are the weak link in the transportation-technology chain.

RHI: We’ve introduced, through Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, AB1592, which exempts the GoMentum Station and Bishop Ranch from this requirement.

CA: We’ve seen again and again, new technology bursts upon the scene, and government finds itself running behind it trying to figure out how to regulate it, how to manage it, and how to protect the public interest.

RHI: Let me put it this way: According to a League of Cities study, there are less than 6 percent of all public agencies in the United States that have put autonomous vehicles and connected vehicles in their long-range plans. In our 25-year plan, technology is very prominent. For example, the old highway design manual says a typical freeway lane can handle about 2,000 vehicles per lane per hour. But with connected vehicles, with the human element removed, they can safely travel closer together. Let’s say a lane can now accommodate 3,000 vehicles per hour, a conservative estimate, because they follow closer and they don’t hit each-other. We’re trying to embed that technology in our long-range planning and model the benefits. We may be working on projects we won’t need in the future.

CA: In this brave new world, which is just around the corner, not only are safety and congestion addressed, but also the environment, right?

RHI: In our long-range plan, we assume an adoption rate of 58 percent zero-emission vehicles, and our models show that we can bring greenhouse gases down to the 80 percent reduction goal by 2050 that is contained in the governor’s executive order.

CA: Since this publication is geared toward the road-building industry, what might these trends mean for us? [ Continued on page 18 ]

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

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CA: So, in other words, very realistic.

RHI: For your members, one of the things these new technologies are going to need is better striping, better pavement conditions, so you won’t see where old markings are ground off but still visible during construction. It will confuse these sensors. In the future you may need some material embedded in the striping. You’re going to need more consistent striping, and signage, and signals. The car needs to understand what it is seeing. Think about toll roads. Rather than putting up those rather large signs, you may be able to get that information electronically, in your vehicle.

Your navigation unit may say, “Would you like to take the toll road? It will cost you $5 and save you 20 minutes.” And you can decide if that is worth it or if you want to stay in the mixed-flow lane.

CA: You’ve mentioned “GoMentum Station,” which as we understand it is a repurposed military facility that has been converted to an advanced transportation test bed where some of these technologies are being tried out in real-world environments. Some big players have jumped on board, such as Mercedes-Benz and Honda.

Tell us more about that.

RHI: In addition to Honda, we will be testing the EasyMile at GoMentum Station. Mercedes has left and are testing elsewhere. We have several car manufacturers and first tier suppliers that are reviewing our agreements. It is a public-private partnership. The facility itself is about a fifth the size of San Francisco. It’s like a mini-city. It has buildings, stop signs, curbs, gutters, parking lots, hills, two tunnels, bridges, under-crossings. It even has worn-out striping.

RHI: Exactly. It is a place where you can test technology without having to deal with state regulation because it is owned by the military. You are in relative seclusion.

It has a spine road that is about 7 miles long where you can go at higher speeds. We have parking lots for selfparking tests and could be used for skid testing. We have a lot of startups interested in testing out there.

CA: It sounds like a tech jobs generator.

RHI: It really started when one of my board members challenged me to help create smart jobs when they the City of Concord redeveloped the Naval weapons station. There are going to be a lot of homes out there.

The idea is how to embed some smart jobs nearby. As we get more and more partners, hopefully they will rent space and want to raise families there.

CA: This is an exciting time for transportation, isn’t it?

RHI: Absolutely. The autonomous vehicle deployment has so many possibilities. Think about how it will impact mobility and safety. Approximately 90 percent of all accidents are human error. If you can take that out of the equation you won’t have 40,000 fatalities on the roadways in the United States each year. Hopefully we’ll reduce that down to zero. If you have less crashes on the roadways, they become more reliable, and as I mentioned earlier, with zero emission vehicles you are going to meet your environmental goals as well. It’s a pretty darn exciting time. CA

©

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California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

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Q&A with

John Harvey Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Davis.

Research reveals the future of pavements

By Russell W. Snyder, Executive Director, California Asphalt Pavement Association (CalAPA)

Editor’s Note: Dr. John T. Harvey is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Davis and Director of the University of California Pavement Research Center (UCPRC), a “virtual multi-campus research unit” that has facilities on the campuses of UC Berkeley and UC Davis, where Harvey is based. According to its website, “Dedicated to providing knowledge, the Pavement Research Center uses innovative research and sound engineering principles to improve pavement structures, materials, and technologies.” The UC Davis campus is also home to the Advanced Transportation and Infrastructure Research Center (ATIRC) facility, which includes a materials laboratory and pavement test sections that undergo various tests, such as being trafficked under full-scale wheel loads by the Heavy Vehicle Simulator.

The UCPRC has an ongoing contract with Caltrans to conduct various types of research on pavements as well as projects with the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration.

He spoke to California Asphalt magazine recently to discuss current research, innovation and trends in the world of asphalt pavement.

California Asphalt Magazine: There is so much that is changing in the world of asphalt pavements in recent years that it poses a challenge to stay on top of all the new developments. Tell us about the mission of the UCPRC and some of the research your center is working on.

John T. Harvey: In a nutshell, if it touches pavement, or it is pavement touching something else, we do it.

So that runs through the entire lifecycle: materials, construction, use of the pavement, end-of-life, recycling, and then the economics and environmental aspects of pavement. So pretty much if it involves pavement, we deal with it. Our mission is to make pavements more efficient, and by efficient what we mean is economically efficient, environmentally efficient, and also anything that has to do with quality of life, such as tire/pavement noise.

20

John Harvey, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Davis.

CA: The pace of change and new knowledge being created in our field is breath-taking, isn’t it? Not only is there new research, there are new materials, new test methods, new equipment and technology at every phase of the operations.

JTH: I think what you are perceiving is reality. The pace of change and the pace of innovation is increasing. Things were pretty frozen for a number of years. It started with the shutdown of the highway building program in the country in the mid-1970s.

Things got frozen. There were huge innovations going on after World War II, or starting before the war, in the 1920s, through the ‘40s to the ‘50s and ‘60s – huge innovations. And when you went around the world you saw things that were developed in California by Francis N. Hveem (a Caltrans materials engineer). For example, concrete pavement design in South Africa is the California pavement design, or was until recently, of 1968. So this was cutting-edge technology that was exported all over the world. After things slowed down, that link to the continuous improvement process that those innovators were doing, got lost for a while. The other thing is, in pavement, a lot of approaches were very empirical. We build it, we watch it, we wait to see what happens, and that’s super-slow. It’s hard to keep innovation going fast. So pavement researchers

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

started reaching out, sharing information, building better mathematical models, testing machinery got better, sensing got better – radar in the field, X-rays in the laboratory. All of those things started coming together and then DOTs started coming together, recognizing the frozen technology they had, and that they were getting farther and farther behind in terms of new problems that came up. They kept having to attack the new problems with the same tools, and those same solutions weren’t working anymore. So that’s all driving this whole thing. And I think the pace of change is increasing pretty rapidly, and attitudes changed also. People are very much interested in this.

and homework and studying and solving the many problems of implementation, working together between government, industry and academia, and in terms of the industry, building these things, but as we start having successes they start building on each other, and over time the extreme risk-averseness has gone down. Risk-averseness has really gone down compared to 20 years ago. And a lot of that is success breeds success.

CA: In an environment when all government activity is scrutinized, and taxpayers are increasingly looking for a tangible return on investment for tax dollars invested, how do you make that link between what you are doing and what the motorist is experiencing when then venture out on the road in their car? People want instant gratification.

JTH: Doing all the really hard work, which takes a huge cast of characters: the owner’s side, writing those specifications, hammering out all those details, and then industry trying it and then evaluating it, and being there when it is not working, when the contractor can’t get it to work in the plant or in the field, something like that. You must work together all the way through the process. And that’s starting to happen in California, much more than a long time ago. It’s tremendous.

JTH: A couple of things that I have discussed with colleagues is that if you actually want to make things happen, it takes about a dollar of research, about two dollars of development and about seven dollars spent on implementation. So average time from idea to fullmarket penetration for pavement research around the world is 10 years.

CA: In a perfect world.

CA: So, in this context, you are talking about taking the research, learning something valuable, and then seeing it implemented.

CA: It’s amazing how one line of a specification, one table, one number, one footnote, can have such a massive impact across the state or even the nation.

The stakes are huge in a state as large as California.

JTH: And that’s the part researchers, typically, don’t want to know about (laughs). They don’t want to be involved with it.

JTH: Or it’s 10 weeks if there is a crisis (laughs).

CA: It’s scary.

CA: That is the intersection between research and practical reality, isn’t it?

JTH: It’s aversion to risk. Civil engineering is riskaverse. The environment we are in, government contracting, is risk-averse. And we must be somewhat risk-averse because there is so much money involved.

Bad things can happen if we are not careful, which is understandable. In reality, implementation is much more difficult than research because you have to write specifications. You have to get down to the nitty-gritty. You have to think of all the unintended consequences, etc. So despite those things, the pace of change is increasing, but in our program in California, we try to bridge that gap between research, carrying it through to development, and stay involved through the implementation. If researchers just turn out an idea that is half-baked, which is what research can actually do, and we don’t follow it through and bake 100 more cakes, and really perfect it, then we don’t really get the real implementation. What I’ve found in my career is that it takes a lot of hard work

JTH: Right! So what’s been great for us is that we have strong support from Caltrans. There are also other states that have successfully done this. It takes that work working all the way through it.

CA: The asphalt industry is also investing in research, as are the concrete industry and the aggregates industry. We all want to improve and offer the owner the best product possible. But it is a source of pride for all of us in California having this important, cuttingedge research coming out of our home state.

JTH: Our main client is Caltrans, although we are doing more work now for the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration, on airfields.

Our mission is primarily written to Caltrans and it is to support them in continuous improvement in anything that has to do with pavement, again aiming toward those efficiencies that we talked about.

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

[ Continued on page 22 ]

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[ Continued from page 21 ]

CA: One area where UCPRC research has resulted in practical applications on the state highway system is in the area of Long-Life Asphalt Pavements, otherwise known as perpetual pavements. The pavements are designed to last 40 years or more with minimal maintenance. Caltrans has constructed seven such projects at various locations in the state, and is considering more. One project on Interstate 5 in the north state has already won national and state awards.

UCPRC research was instrumental in leading to a greater understanding of what forces are taking place beneath the pavement surfaces that contribute to durability. Tell us more about the UCPRC research in this area.

JTH: The original ideas for long-life asphalt pavement came from some ideas that were tried in France, Australia and the United Kingdom. We took those, and some research that we did after the SHRP project (Editor’s note: The SHRP project, pronounced “sharp,” is the $50 million Strategic Highway Research Program of 1987-93 that was the largest, most highly focused research effort of its type in U.S. history and led to sweeping changes in design and testing that collectively became known as “Superpave”). I’ve always been interested in construction quality. When I worked in Africa, people blamed (pavement failures) on this material and that material, or a unique environment, but when we really got into it, it was construction quality. So really, the California long-life pavement concept was primarily built around compaction, which is different from the national paradigm, which is built around picking materials. The idea of the California version is to keep the materials simple, and to get the bang out of how we use those same materials and use construction quality. So that, including thesis work

by John Epps, led us to the “rich bottom” feature of Long-Life Asphalt Pavements. If you really get supergood compaction, you can get super-good properties.

You just can’t get super-good compaction unless you bump the asphalt content up, and you can’t do that near the top layer because it will rut. So we said, if you get thick enough with the asphalt, the temperatures at the bottom are low enough that we can add more asphalt and get compaction close to zero air-voids and not have rutting, so that’s where the “rich bottom” came from. And the stiff middle layer idea came from the French idea, and now RAP (Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement) is fantastic for that because RAP not only reduces the cost and the environmental impact, but actually does that stiffening effect that we really want.

And the surface material mix design was based on the research done in the SHRP project for rut resistance and the industry came up with the binder which also gives us top-down cracking resistance. So it’s 22

the right material in the right place, and using these construction practices to get the properties that we want.

CA: Once again we see that you can have the best mix design, the best material, but if you don’t have good construction practices you will not achieve the intended results. And the flip side is also true – you can have the best construction practices in the world, but if the design and the material is not up to the task, performance will suffer.

JTH: Many times what goes wrong on a pavement project is because of a problem in construction, assuming reasonable standard of practice for design.

There can be problems for materials and structural design, but many of the issues are construction-related across all kinds of pavement. The whole thing with quality is you have to be continuously working on it.

Once you rest on your laurels, quality starts to suffer.

CA: That sounds bad, but it demonstrates that there has been a heightened awareness of quality in all phases of asphalt pavement design, production of the materials and construction.

JTH: It is tremendous. The Caltrans Quality Control/ Quality Assurance program is an example of where improved attention to quality has improved pavement life. My estimate, based on review of compaction data before and after implementation of QC/QA is that we’re getting, on average, 30 percent longer life out of asphalt overlays than we were getting in the early 1990s, with exactly the same material. My preliminary expectation is that we will get even better life with Superpave mix designs, particularly for cracking, based on laboratory comparisons of Hveem and Superpave mix designs with same materials.

CA: It does seem that the attention being paid to construction materials, particularly asphalt, is very high. People are starting to realize that there’s a huge investment out there in the form of our pavements, and they want to know what is the best way to improve them and maintain them.

JTH: That is part of our big push right now. In 2000, we wrote a 15-year vision document for our pavement research, and for our working with Caltrans. Our major areas of emphasis were pavement management, mechanistic design methods, construction productivity and materials design. And Caltrans is using a lot of those things called out in the vision that have been created since then, although there’s more work to be done. We are currently working on an updated document, and it will include more definitive goals for [ Continued on page 24 ]

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

Far Left: John Harvey with Professor Emeritus Carl Monismith at the UCPRC facility in Davis.

Left: John Harvey examines a piece of Rubberized Hot Mix Asphalt with a Warm Mix Asphalt additive at the UCPRC.

[ Continued from page 22 ]

sustainability issues than we were able to call out in 2000 because we now have a tool for quantifying sustainability.

CA: That was going to be our next question.

The current administration and legislature have placed a lot of emphasis on the environment and sustainability, and we are starting to see that manifest itself in many of the areas of emphasis at Caltrans. They recently created a position of Assistant Director of Sustainability, who reports to the director, and are always looking at how pavements can support those principles. How do you see that from your perspective?

JTH: We don’t use the phrase “sustainable pavement.”

They’re not really sustainable by most definitions.

As one of my colleagues, Steve Muench at the University of Washington, says, it’s an “aspirational goal.” And we need aspirational goals. Previously we didn’t even have a tool to measure sustainability. Over the past six years we have developed the tool of environmental Life Cycle Assessment to be able to quantify a range of sustainability indicators such as greenhouse gas emissions, air and water pollution and energy and non-renewable resource use. We have worked with the FHWA Sustainable Pavements Task Group to further advance this approach on a national level, and with international partners as well. It’s something I’ve always been interested in. I’ve always thought of performance in terms of economics and resource use and environmental impact. And now it is becoming a market force.

CA: For our readers who may be confused by two very similar-sounding terms, environmental Life Cycle Assessment, or LCA, is relatively new and focuses on the environmental impact of pavement selection, while economic Life Cycle Cost Analysis, 24

or LCCA, is a more familiar concept to engineers and is focused on the economics of a particular pavement design over its design life.

JTH: I think the key is to produce a level playing field for competition within industries and between industries, just like Life Cycle Cost Analysis. If it’s done right, and you get good numbers into it, and you reduce the ability to fake it, or game the system, that’s what I want to happen in the environmental field for pavements. Then you can compete, fairly.

CA: The position of our industry has always been, and continues to be, to let engineers make well-informed decisions backed by sound science that is validated in the field – an apples-to-apples comparison, if you will. Fancy marketing can sometimes obscure this goal.

JTH: So that’s the direction we are trying to go in the future.

CA: What other areas of innovation are you looking at?

JTH: One of things we’re trying to organize is to take all this great research and development and implementation that’s been done at the state level, and in other states and other countries, and package that, so that it is useful for local agencies in California. It’s often not useable for local government right now. How do we package that and how do we get it out? If we look at the dollars, about 40 percent to 50 percent of the dollars spent on pavements are spent by local governments. They carry 45 percent of the traffic. They own 70 percent of the pavement lane-miles, so in terms of environmental impact, it’s really big, and they don’t have this infrastructure that supports them in terms of innovation. They don’t have an innovation infrastructure similar to what has been built on the state level in California and some other states. Over the next 10 years we want to put

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[ Continued from page 24 ]

the innovations in the hands of local government in a form they can use and help them get started on implementation.

CA: About a third of the attendees to our technical conferences and training classes are agency representatives, and most of them are from local agencies. They are an important constituency for us.

They seem to be hungering for valuable technical information.

JTH: Right. Another thing that is exciting is UC Davis is a local government, and the campus has expressed an interest in the UCPRC preparing these packages of innovative things for them to use as a local government. We are working to set up a more formal infrastructure for local government pavement innovation, and we’re looking at this early work with the UC Davis campus to produce content until we can get that set up. They are looking at potentially using roads, parking lots, bike paths and other pavement on the entire campus as a test-bed for some of these innovations that they are interested in. In addition to implementation of nuts and bolts improvement in design, construction and management, we also want to completely rethink pavements for some applications. For example, most city streets are basically a scaled-down version of a state highway.

Do we need mini-state highway pavements in our residential areas? Could we just start from zero and say, What do we want this pavement to do for us? In terms of environmental impact, we want to keep the rocks in there, we want to reduce the cement and we want to reduce the asphalt, but we still need them. So we need to find ways reduce the total amounts and when we do use them we need to get them to last longer which also reduces the total amount we use.

In some cases we need to recognize that they fail differently from highways, mainly due to utility cuts, and maybe we design them so they don’t last longer but we make them easily repairable and maintainable so that the overall life cycle cost and environmental impact is better.

CA: The concept of appropriate designs for local agency use is something that our industry has embraced, and we have been working with Caltrans to develop a special “low-volume” specification that industry thinks would be appropriate for local streets and roads. It should be noted that it is still in the development stage and not approved or endorsed

by Caltrans.

JTH: Going back to what I was saying earlier, perhaps that is an example of something that would be part 26

of the innovation infrastructure to support local governments and maybe doesn’t need to go through Caltrans. I think we need to find a more focused means to try to organize good content specific to local government, and leverage the work on innovation done by the state as well as some things focused on unique local government problems so we can get it to all those local government folks who are really good at what they do. Sometimes it takes looking at a local government problem in a completely different way that doesn’t fit what state government needs to focus on. For examples, how to design pavements to deal with utility cuts, which can happen frequently on local roads. And we’re also looking at un-paving roads.

CA: (Inaudible groan) Since I can’t pronounce the sound I just made, I’ll just say it was a muffled cry of anguish.

JTH: (Laughs). Well, we’re talking about very lowvolume roads that are currently surface-treated and would never see asphalt or concrete, and the local agency can’t afford to keep the surface treatment in good condition. So the idea is to full-depth recycle these, but add some clay as a binder. Dave Jones of the UCPRC helped develop a special technology when he was in South Africa. This produces a much better gravel road technology that will be better than what we do now in most of California. This produces a gravel road that can be maintained at low cost and is safe from dangerous pot holes. We call it engineered gravel and it is being implemented in Yolo County and was presented at the local government pavement conference in Sacramento in March.

CA: So we don’t need to be updating our resumes just yet?

JTH: No, but actually that’s part of my message to all the industries. You have massive skills, you have massive capital investment in people and equipment.

Sometimes innovation is going to come back and we need you to use that in a different way, that’s not necessarily in the way you are used to. The right pavement in the right place for the right client. We need some zero-sum thinking, some outside-thebox thinking. Take asphalt vs. concrete, for example.

We’re interested in cement-asphalt hybrid mixes, so we get the original stiffness from the cement and we get the flexibility from the asphalt, so it’s got the nice properties of both.

CA: You’re really trying to disrupt the universe.

JTH: (Laughs) As I get older, I get less afraid of disruption.

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

CA: Since we’re talking about the future, what is your take about workforce development? Our industry came through a very painful recession, but now it seems the pendulum is swinging the other way and there’s already pretty healthy competition for talent. Since your institution and others are feeding our industry a steady supply of technical and engineering students, what is your view on the upcoming war for talent?

JTH: Students are interested. We are limited by classroom size, but we have between 95 and up to 130 students in our undergraduate pavement engineering class which is primarily taken by seniors, making it a very popular elective class in civil engineering at UC Davis. They are really interested in the economic significance, the environmental significance. People want to make a difference. They want to have a reasonable quality of life in terms of salary, and they want something that’s interesting.

And pavement offers that. They get in the class, and some of the industry folks who have come to talk have really opened their eyes. What really helps drive a lot of that interest is the innovation. So I really want to connect those two things together. Today’s kids, the vast majority of them, want something where they are seeing change happen and they want to be a part of that change, they want it to be

the right type of change. And they see that in the pavement industry. Quality of life is important to them, however. They don’t necessarily want to work 100 hours a week. Twenty-five years ago, nobody wanted to go into pavements because it was all “cookbook.” It was so simple, so dumbed-down.

Connect the dots, here’s your answer, and no change, no ongoing improvement. So, today, give them an adequate salary, talk to them about innovation, and responsibility, don’t scare them off and you have a good chance of getting them to come into the industry.

CA: Our industry has a bit of a legacy of being rough around the edges, which can be intimidating to newcomers. But we’re working on it.

JTH: Yes that’s going away. Lots of folks are interested in construction. I also teach construction, and I have a waiting list of students who want to get into the class.

I have 70 to 80 students every year in that class, and there might be the potential for us to hire additional faculty because of the demand. You have a good product in terms of the jobs that the pavement industry is offering. Getting the message out, and connecting with the students, that is important. Innovation, reasonable salary, quality of life, those are the messages that will resonate with today’s students. CA

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

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ROAD FUNDING, TECHNICAL INFORMATION AT THE FOREFRONT AT CalAPA SPRING ASPHALT PAVEMENT CONFERENCE & EQUIPMENT EXPO IN ONTARIO When the governor’s transportation secretary stepped to the microphone on April 21 at CalAPA’s asphalt industry conference in Ontario, he had bad news and worse news.

Nearly everyone was aware of the bad news -- there’s not nearly enough money available to fix deteriorating roads in California. But the worse news is that the California Transportation Commission may cut even more money -- a lot more -- for roadimprovement projects.

The somber remarks by California State Transportation Secretary Brian Kelly underscored the increasingly tense environment at the Capitol, where three competing road-funding proposals are stuck in neutral while roads get worse and worse.

Kelly outlined the high points of the Brown administration’s road-funding plan, which has a “fix it first” emphasis, accountability provisions, and billions in new revenue through increases in fuel taxes and other fees. Elements of the $3.7 billion plan is featured in the governor’s 2016-17 proposed budget that is currently being evaluated by the

Legislature. Two other bills in the Legislature also include elements of the governor’s plan but contain higher funding levels. The annual increase in funding of the three proposals ranges from $3.7 billion to more than $7 billion.

At the same time, Kelly noted that the California Transportation Commission (CTC) is facing the prospect of hacking more than $750 million from the state’s multi-year transportation improvement plan due to dwindling transportation funds. The CTC staff report with the recommended cuts wasreleased on Friday, and will be considered by the commission at its meeting May 18 and 19 in Stockton.

“I am hopeful something will get done,” Kelly told the audience. “I think these cuts are avoidable.”

Earlier in the conference, Caltrans Chief Deputy Director Kome Ajise detailed the investments needed to keep the state’s roadway system in a good state of repair. It is estimated that the state must invest more than $7 billion per year on transportation system maintenance, but currently

only receives about $2 billion per year in funding, largely due to antiquated road-funding formulas that have not kept up with inflation.

Ajise stressed the importance of agency and industry partners speaking with one voice on the transportation system protection issue.

“When we talk about funding, it takes a partnership,” he said, adding that the public must be confident that “we are good stewards” of any dollars devoted to transportation. A vocal contingent of legislators want assurances that existing transportation dollars are used effectively, and not diverted to other purposes, before supporting additional funding.

The two-day conference, attended by about 220 agency and industry representatives, also included numerous technical presentations and panel discussions on subjects ranging from pavement smoothness, texture, preservation techniques and mix design, hot asphalt binder safety and more. CA

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• Asphalt Pavement & Recycling Technologies, Inc. • Ergon Asphalt & Emulsions, Inc. • RMA Companis • Roadtec, Inc. • Road Science a division of ArrMaz • Sully-Miller Contracting Company / Blue Diamond Materials

• Knife River Construction • R.J. Noble Company

• Pine Instrument Company • Sakai America, Inc. • Western Emulsions, Inc.

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• Consolidated Industrial Services • Controls Group USA • CRM Co., LLC • D & H Equipment • Dynatest North America, Inc. • Ergon Asphalt & Emulsions, Inc. • Ingevity • Instrotek, Inc.

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

Russell Snyder, CalAPA Executive Director (left), asphalt industry leader Stephen Matich of Matich Corp and CalAPA Deputy Director Tony Grasso.

Kome Ajise, Chief Deputy Director, California Department of Transportation (left) with Stephen Matich of Matich Corp.

CalAPA Member Services Manager Sophie You introduces the new 2016-17 CalAPA Membership Directory & Buyer’s Guide.

Safety consultant Barry Gundersen from Keynote speaker Brian P. Kelly is presented New Zealand a nationally known expert with a special CalAPA T-shirt by Executive on bitumen safety gave a presentation and Director Russell Snyder (left). demonstration

Roger Smith, Consultant and CalAPA Life Member poses a question to the expert panel on materials testing.

Amir Ghavibazoo, Twining, Inc. (center) with Margaret Holdsworth, safety technical Cal State Long Beach Civil Engineering coordinator begins the demonstration on students R. Avinash (left) and Rosita Bitumen Safety.

Oloumi.

Exhibitor area at the 2016 CalAPA Spring Asphalt Pavement Conference & Equipment Expo.

Over 230 attended the 2016 CalAPA Spring Equipment Expo at the 2016 CalAPA Asphalt Pavement Conference & Equipment Spring Asphalt Pavement Conference & Expo.

Equipment Expo.

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

Sri Balasubramanian, P.E., Chief, Office of Asphalt Pavement, California Department of Transportation was a member of the expert panel discussion on pavement performance.

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No (91

INDUSTRY NEWS FIGHTING FOR FUNDING: CalAPA DELEGATION WALKS THE HALLS OF THE CAPITOL TO PRESS ROAD ISSUES

CalAPA members meet with new Assembly Transportation Committee Vice-Chair Eric Linder, R-Corona.

The CalAPA delegation meets with Aseemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, left, a member of the Assembly Transportation Committee and also on a budget subcommittee overseeing road funding.

Assemblywoman Young Kim (R-Fullerton) listens as Brian Handshoe with Kenco Engineering (left) and Jeff Benedict of Valero Marketing & Supply discuss road funding.

This spring is shaping up to be a critical time for the roadfunding issue at the Capitol, but CalAPA members say the distraction-prone Legislature needs reminding that action is required now to address California’s rapidly deteriorating pavements.

CalAPA members met with legislators and key staff over two days March 8-9 seeking to keep the pressure on to take meaningful action on the long-neglected issue. Consensus was elusive on a long-term fix to the state’s flagging road funds.

A special session of the Legislature was called last year devoted transportation, and various funding scenarios have been floating around the Capitol, including provisions inserted into the governor’s budget proposal for 2016-17.

With leadership changes in the Legislature, election-year posturing and other diversions, keeping the focus on roads has proven to be a challenge so far this year. Nevertheless, elected

officials are well aware of the deteriorating state of California’s pavements, and the funding mechanisms that have not kept up with need Following the Fly-in, CalAPA members were steadfast in their belief that our industry, and indeed anyone interested in a safe, well=maintained road network, should be making their views known to their elected officials.

“We get tired of listening to, ‘Well, maybe next year,’” said Len Nawrocki of Valero, a Fly-in participant. “It is their job to do this. We’ll build the roads, but they’ve got to come up with the money, and it’s got to be done this year.”

First-time Fly-in participant Jordan Reed with George Reed Co. said “It was interesting to see all the little nuances of something that everyone agrees needs to be done actually get done.” He added, “My take-away is that we need to keep working on this, keep the pressure on, and not let the Legislature get away with passing a small

bill just to say they’ve done something.”

The cumulative effect of years of lobbying does seem to be making an impact at the Capitol, said Jonathan Layne with Sully-Miller, another Fly-in delegate.

“There’s definitely a lot more talk than what we’ve seen in the last three or four years, which is a good thing” he said. “However, I feel that we’re not moving as quickly as we should. As I said in a few of those meetings, if we continue to kick the can down the road, it’s going to fall into a pothole.”

The participants in the “Fly-in” included: Jeff Benedict and Len Nawrocki with Valero, Dan Briggs with Alon Asphalt Co., Don L. Daley Jr. and John Greenwood with California Commercial Asphalt, Brian Handshoe with Kenco Engineering, Tom Hicks with Ergon Asphalt & Emulsions, Jonathan Layne with Sully-Miller, and Jordan Reed with George Reed Co./VSS International. CA

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California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

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INDUSTRY NEWS CalAPA CONTRACTORS DINNER MEETING FOCUSED ON ‘PAVEMENT EVALUATION TECHNOLOGIES AND REHABILITATION STRATEGIES.’ The April 12 bi-monthly contractors dinner meeting at the Dal Rae restaurant in Pico Rivera featured a presentation

by Amir Ghavibazoo, Ph.D., Senior Pavement Engineer with CalAPA member firm Twining. The focus of his presentation was pavement evaluation technologies and rehabilitation strategies.

Depending on the existing condition of pavement, there are different technologies that can evaluate the existing structural capacity of pavement.

Also, there are multiple rehabilitation strategies that can be offered based on the evaluation results. In Ghavibazoo’s presentation, each pavement evaluation technology and rehabilitation strategy was introduced and the right project to propose each of them was discussed.

The evening also featured a presentation by Kimberly Wind with CalAPA member Hart King on the differences in state and federal prevailing wage compliance.

CalAPA contractors dinners are the paving industry’s premier events to socialize in a relaxed setting, enjoy delicious food and stay current with the latest industry trends, technical updates and more. Each dinner features an industry-specific presentation and “news you can use” on a number of topics, such as insurance, HR, and technical and practical aspects of paving. The program will also include updates on association activities and funding projections. The goals of the dinner meetings are to have fun, network and leave smarter than when you came!

For more information on future CalAPA contractor dinner meetings or upcoming events please contact the CalAPA office at (916) 374-8083. CA 32

Steve Cota, Southern California Contractors Committee Chairman greets the members and introduces the evening’s speakers.

Featured presenter Amir Ghavibazoo, Ph.D., Senior Pavement Engineer, Twining.

Kimberly Wind with CalAPA member Hart King presented on the differences in state and federal prevailing wage compliance.

Tony Grasso, CalAPA Deputy Executive Director informs members of upcoming CalAPA events.

Alex Arricaberri gave a presentation on Mar-Co Equipment who was the vendor of the month.

Scott Salandi, Patriot Risk & Insurance Services (left), Steve Kekich, Nixon-Egli Equipment Co. and Amir Ghavibazoo, Ph.D., Senior Pavement Engineer, Twining.

Loradane Arzadon, Travelers Bond (left), Celso Aguilar, Travelers Bond and Matthew Stone, Moss Adams.

Ed Galindo (left) and Emma Godinez of Volvo Construction Equipment & Services.

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

NEW MEMBER OF CalAPA HAZARD CONSTRUCTION COMPANY 6465 Marindustry Drive San Diego, CA 92121 P: 858.587.3600 F: 858.453.6034 www.hazardconstruction.com Jason Mordhorst, President jmordhorst@hazardcon.com

Vulcan Materials is the largest producer of construction aggregates in the United States. The Western Division proudly supplies the highest quality materials for the production of roads, highways, dams, airports, seaports, commercial centers and residential housing as well as other Construction Material needs.

CALENDAR UPDATE ANNUAL ‘DAY AT THE RACES’ Date: July 23, 2016 (Tentative) Gates open at noon Del Mar Thoroughbred Club 2260 Jimmy Durante Blvd.

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TECHNICAL SERVICES DEPARTMENT Northern California Pleasanton Laboratory Technical Services Manager – Dave Ruedi 925-485-5982 Central California Fresno Laboratory Technical Services Manager – Gary Dunkel 559-434-2714 Bakersfield Laboratory Technical Service Specialist – Bob Lee 661-398-6299 Southern California Los Angeles Laboratory Technical Services Manager – Tim Reed Technical Services Aggregate – Jeff Pollard Technical Services Asphalt – Pascal Mascarenhas 626-856-6190 Southern California San Diego Laboratory Technical Services Manager – Rob Piceno 858-547-4981 West Region Technical Services Manager LEED Green Associate – Ed Luce 619-843-3069

FALL CONFERENCE Date: October 26 & 27 Doubletree Hotel 2001 Point West Way Sacramento

Meeting dates are subject to change.

Watch the weekly Asphalt Insider newsletter for meeting updates or call CalAPA at (866) 498-0761 to confirm meeting date and location.

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

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California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

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YOUR NEW PARTNER IN SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTIVITY www.atlascopco.us

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Target Compaction in Fewer Passes Intelligent Compaction (IC) is rapidly becoming a requirement for Caltrans projects.

SITECH NorCal and SITECH Oregon have the cutting edge IC technology. Our CCS900 System enables your rollers to meet today’s stringent paving requirements: • Pass count mapping • Temperature mapping • Monitor Compaction Meter Values (CMV) • Wirelessly transfer data from the machine to the office for analysis

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California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

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Alon Asphalt Company................................ 2

Peterson CAT................................................ 5

Bomag America............................................ 9

Pine Instrument Co.................................... 33

Coastline Equipment................................... 9

Quinn Co....................................................... 5

CEI Enterprises, Inc.....................................11

RDO Equipment Co.................................7, 39

E.D. Etnyre & Co......................................... 37

Roadtec........................................................19

Gill and Baldwin, P.C.................................. 37

Sakai.......................................................17, 39

Hawthorne CAT............................................ 5

Scott Equipment........................................ 36

Herrmann Equipment, Inc..........................31

Sitech........................................................... 36

Holt of California.......................................... 5

Sully-Miller Contracting Co...................... 38

Johnson Machinery..................................... 5

Valero Marketing & Supply......................... 3

Matich Corporation.................................... 27

Volvo Construction Equipment & Svcs... 25

Nixon-Egli Equipment Co........... Back Cover

Vulcan Materials Company....................... 34

Pape Machinery.......................................... 35

Western Oil Spreading Services.............. 23

Pavement Recycling Systems................... 35

WE ARE NOT JUST ANOTHER PAVING COMPANY Sully-Miller Contracting is a company woven into the fabric of Southern California’s infrastructure, making vital connections since 1923 between people, transportation and safety in the following market segments:

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ENERGY & MINING

SPECIALTY PRODUCTS

ROAD MATERIALS

SCAN TO LEARN MORE! Simply scan the QR Code and visit sully-miller.com

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California Asphalt Magazine • 2016 Special Innovation Issue

NIXON-EGLI EQUIPMENT CO.,

WIRTGEN AND PREMIER PAVING, INC. Premier Paving, Inc. specializes in full asphalt reconstruction, asphalt overlay, patching, seal coating, striping and ADA upgrades. Established in 1989, Premier Paving’s work is focused primarily on commercial properties, shopping centers, homeowner associations and public works projects.

They proudly serve all of Southern California from their Ontario headquarters.

Steve Prescott serves as Premier Paving’s new Wirtgen W 120 CFi milling machine purchased from Superintendent for Nixon-Egli Equipment.

Premier Paving, Inc. and one of his many responsibilities includes the acquisition of heavy equipment and machinery. “We recently purchased a new Wirtgen 120 CFi milling machine from Nixon-Egli,” says Prescott. “This is our second Wirtgen milling machine from Nixon-Egli and it was our positive experience with the first 120 that led us to upgrade to their newest technology.” According to Prescott, the other Wirtgen 120 is now 10 years old, but it is still working strong out on the jobsites. “We go with Wirtgen for the reliability and the simple fact that it is so user friendly,” says Prescott. “Another important detail is that the Wirtgen has minimal downtime. That saves us money and every dollar counts in this business.”

Premier Paving, Inc. and the Prescott Family have worked with Nixon-Egli Equipment Co. for many years. “I have known Allen Hahn for more than 20 years.

He is extremely knowledgeable, a good person and an honest salesman,” says Prescott. “Nixon-Egli has always been there for us and have always followed through on their promises. It also helps that they are located in Ontario, like we are, and that makes any necessary service or parts runs a breeze. We look forward to continued growth with Nixon-Egli in the future.”

RATING 50 Y CELEB 1965-2015 EARS

California’s Largest General Line Construction and Municipal Equipment Dealer.

So. California: 2044 S. Vineyard Ave., Ontario, CA 91761 • (909) 930-1822 No. California: 800 E. Grant Line Rd., Tracy, CA 95304 • (209) 830-8600 www.nixon-egli.com