California Asphalt Magazine – 2022 Special Innovation Issue

SPECIAL INNOVATION ISSUE

A SMOOTH RIDE After a bumpy start, CalAPA and Caltrans collaborate on an innovative new pavement smoothness standard

INSIDE: Exclusive Q&A with USC transportation authority Dr. Jim Moore Member Profile: California Paving & Grading

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Publisher’s Letter Everyone wants smooth pavements. On that we can all agree. But achieving smooth pavements is another story (and a rather complex one). For that reason, this issue of California Asphalt magazine includes an in-depth examination of the long and bumpy road (pun intended) in the development of a new pavement smoothness specification by the California Department of Transportation.

CalAPA, as a trusted resource of expertise and insight for Caltrans, played an integral role in the development of this new specification, which today is universally recognized as innovative and is resulting in tangible improvements in ride quality on the state highway system that is noticeable for millions of California motorists while also saving many millions of tax dollars. But getting there wasn’t easy.

For many years, it seemed, the biggest problem to achieving a smooth ride was a lack of funding to maintain our roads. Regular readers of this publication know that CalAPA has been at the forefront in campaigning for prudent investments to protect and enhance California’s pavement infrastructure. A breakthrough happened with the passage of SB1, the Road Repair & Accountability Act of 2017, that committed more than $50 billion over a decade to address our state’s crumbling roads and bridges. It also included requirements for measurable results on ride quality (a prominent accountability part of the bill). Thanks to SB1, repair and maintenance work on our roads and freeways is now taking place in every corner of our state. And I like to think that SB1 created a “fix it first” template that contributed to the passage last November of the federal Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act, a $1.2 trillion bipartisan commitment to protecting and enhancing the vital transportation infrastructure that is essential to our nation’s economy and quality of life.

But in addition to dollars, there is another critical component to smooth pavements. It is the specifications and construction standards that agencies publish dictating how contractors are to achieve a smooth ride on the finished paved surface. In that case, breakthrough technology and equipment was also turning into a gamechanger. Caltrans recognized that emerging technology like the use of the Inertial Profiler was going to overtake the venerable straightedge or California Profilograph in measuring pavement smoothness, bringing a level of precision to paving that had never been seen before.

The initial approach taken by Caltrans to revise its pavement smoothness specifications ran into difficulty, but to the credit of department leadership they recognized they could benefit from industry expertise to fully understand all the implications of the newly revised (and complex) specifications and construction standards.

CalAPA, representing the asphalt pavement industry in California for more than a half-century, was perfectly positioned to facilitate this collaboration, holding many meetings at CalAPA offices and bringing in subjectmatter experts, data, research, best practices and other key information to inform the discussions. Some courageous and forward-thinking Caltrans executive managers, including Tim Greutert and Tom Pyle, helped guide the new spec through some early opposition and a formidable state bureaucracy to final publication.

Every step of the way, CalAPA was educating agency personnel and contractors on the new standards and the best practices that would be required to meet them.

By all accounts the end result is a win for everyone – the Department, the contractors they hire to perform the work, and the taxpayers and motoring public. My take-aways from the experience were that effective collaboration requires mutual respect among all parties, empowerment, access to good information, taking the time to make sure everyone understands other perspectives and issues, and staying laser-focused on a positive outcome that is fair and works for all parties. I was pleased to be one of several industry and agency representatives to be recognized by the department for this gold standard in industry-agency collaboration and problem-solving. The recognition reinforced for me a universal truth – there is no limit to what we can achieve when we work together. And in the case of smooth-riding asphalt pavements, that’s a winner for everyone.

Sincerely,

Don Matthews Division Manager Pavement Recycling Systems, Inc.

4

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

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Contents Volume 25, Issue 2

4

Publisher’s Letter

8

A bumpy road to a pavement smoothness specification CalAPA plays a prominent role in working with

Page 8

Caltrans to develop landmark new standard

22

Caltrans pavement smoothness specifications appear to be making a difference in the finished product

24

Exclusive Q&A with USC transportation authority Dr. Jim Moore

32

California Paving & Grading

Q

&

A

Page 32

Stands tall as one of the enduring veterans of the Southern California paving industry On the Cover:

Photo taken in 2019 of grinding on an asphalt pavement road leading to the campus of the University of California, Davis. Photo by Russell W. Snyder.

Page 38

CALIFORNIA ASPHALT PAVEMENT ASSOCIATION www.calapa.net HEADQUARTERS: EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: TECHNICAL DIRECTOR: MEMBER SERVICES MANAGER: MEMBER SERVICE COORDINATOR: GUEST PUBLISHER: PUBLISHED BY: GRAPHIC DESIGN: CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: ADVERTISING SALES:

P.O. Box 981300 • West Sacramento • CA 95798 (Mailing Address) 1550 Harbor Blvd., Suite 211 • West Sacramento • CA 95691 • (916) 791-5044 Russell W. Snyder, CAE, rsnyder@calapa.net Brandon M. Milar, P.E., bmilar@calapa.net Sophie You, syou@calapa.net Jackie Henry, jhenry@calapa.net Don Matthews, Division Manager, Pavement Recycling Systems, Inc. Construction Marketing Services, LLC • (909) 772-3121 P.O. Box 892977 • Temecula • CA 92589 Aldo Myftari Russell W. Snyder, CAE, CalAPA, Brian Hoover, CMS Kerry Hoover, CMS, (909) 772-3121

Copyright © 2022 – 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 bimonthly magazine distributes to members of the California Asphalt Pavem­­ ent Association; contractors; construction material producers; Federal, State and Local Government Officials; and others interested in asphalt pavements in California and gaining exclusive insight about the issues, trends and people that are shaping the future of the industry.

6

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

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A BUMPY ROAD TO A PAVEMENT SMOOTHNESS SPECIFICATION CalAPA plays a prominent role in working with Caltrans to develop landmark new standard

By Russell W. Snyder

Above: A grinding operation along a winding route. Early in the development of the new Caltrans pavement smoothness specification it became apparent that is was not possible for contractors to achieve the same level of smoothness on winding mountain roads than could be achieved on flat, straight routes.

Pavement smoothness is a daily fact of life for Osvando Morales.

The Door Dash driver delivers restaurant food around Yolo County in her older-model Toyota Camry, and the pounding from rough pavements has cost her in aggravation and car repairs, and she fears another trip to the auto mechanic may be just around the corner.

“If you go some places, it’s horrible,” the longtime Davis resident said earlier this year after making a delivery of food to a student housing complex on the campus of the University of California, Davis. “There are a lot of holes. It causes a lot of problems with tires, U-joints, struts, and stuff like that. I changed the struts late last year, and I need to change 8

them again because the roads are in bad condition.”

Indeed, surveys of motorists place pavement smoothness near the top of the list of things they notice and value the most.

As noted in a 2016 report by the National Center for Asphalt Technology at Auburn University: “The importance of ride quality to the traveling public has been illustrated through national, regional, and state surveys. In a nationwide survey conducted in 2000 by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), respondents were asked which highway characteristics should receive the most attention and resources for improvement.

Twenty-one percent selected pavement surface conditions

including quiet ride, surface appearance, durability, and smoothness of ride, which was rated just lower than traffic flow (28%) and safety (26%).” The report goes on to state, “A more recent national survey conducted by Edelman Berland for the Asphalt Pavement Alliance in 2014 asked respondents to identify the road attributes they believed were of greatest importance. Of the 3,000plus drivers surveyed, 69% said they were willing to accept periodic maintenance delays if it means they get to enjoy a smooth driving experience.’”

Yet several studies by TRIP, a national transportation research nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., pegged California as having some of the roughest pavements around.

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

Driving on deteriorated urban roads costs motorists as much as $1,049 a year, TRIP found in a 2018 report, which pegged the cost to drivers nationwide at a whopping $130 billion annually. California roads and highways were among the roughest nationally, occupying six of the Top 20 spots on the TRIP list, including San FranciscoOakland, San Jose, L.A.-Long Beach-Anaheim, Sacramento, Riverside-San Bernardino and Fresno.

For many years, the culprit has been identified as underinvestment.

As has been chronicled in this publication and elsewhere, the last time the state’s fuel tax devoted to transportation was raised was in the Deukmejian administration, and by the time the TRIP report came out in 2018 the buying power of California’s fuel taxes, which have provided the bulk of road repair funds for nearly a century, was about half of what it was in the 1990s. And numerous studies found that the cost of fixing pavements skyrockets the worse condition they are in, further adding to the urgency.

The California Legislature recognized the worsening crisis, and after several false starts finally passed Senate Bill 1 (SB1), known as the Road Repair & Accountability Act of 2017. The 10-year, $52 billion investment the state’s transportation infrastructure included an increase in the state’s fuel taxes devoted to transportation, plus increases in fees paid by electric vehicle owners and other revenue. The “fix it first” emphasis of SB1 placed the condition of pavements squarely at the forefront of every public works director in the state, including Caltrans, which manages a system of 58,000 miles of freeways and highways connecting every corner of the state. Specifically, SB1 requires that Caltrans upgrade 98% of all three classes of state highway pavement to good or fair condition by 2027. The Department must

also achieve an 80% rating based on Level of Service (LOS) standard for pavement deficiencies, according to a Caltrans performance report published in 2020. All of this must be reported annually to the California Transportation Commission – the centerpiece “accountability” feature of SB1.

But aside from funding, the standards, specifications, technology and construction practices used to achieve smooth pavements also were experiencing dramatic changes. In one head-snapping example, the venerable “California Profilograph” used to measure pavement smoothness in the field was well past the end of its useful life. The gangly, walk-behind device that resembles a child’s playground structure on wheels first came into widespread use in the 1940s. Before you could say “Control-Alt-Delete,” it was being made obsolete by inertial profilers that measure pavement smoothness via vehicles traveling at freeway speeds, utilizing lasers to collect digital measurements and store them on computers. The technology was a dramatic leap forward in safety and accuracy, and enabled Caltrans to move toward implementing the gold standard for measuring pavement smoothness, the ”International Roughness Index (IRI). The IRI, which is obtained from measuring longitudinal road profiles over a set distance, is not without its own imperfections but nevertheless has been deemed much more accurate than the measurement standards that preceded it. IRI values are commonly converted to a number represented as inches per mile. In anticipation of this trend, the FHWA in the late 1990s attempted to utilize IRI numbers in the context of something called “Acceptable Ride Quality,” which was published in the FHWA’s1998 Strategic Highway Plan. In order to determine the Acceptable Ride Quality, the Mean Roughness Index

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

Above: CalAPA organized a “ProVal” software training class on March 8, 2019 in Sacramento, one of many educational efforts the association conducted to help raise the level of awareness of the Caltrans pavement smoothness specifications.

(MRI) is determined by averaging the IRI values of the left and right wheel paths for the same traffic lane in 0.1-mile segments. The Acceptable Ride Quality at that time was determined to be an IRI of 170 inches per mile. That number would loom large later in this saga.

At the same time, pavement smoothness software known as “ProVal” was also coming into widespread use. An engineering software application that allows users to view and analyze pavement profiles in many different ways, it was first introduced in 2001 and has gone through numerous upgrades since. CalAPA hosted ProVal training workshops where attendees were required to bring their own laptop computers to learn ProVal functionality and to run scenarios, such as developing a grinding plan.

Another new technology that promised to impact smoothness was the emergence of “Intelligent Compaction” technologies on asphalt pavement rollers. CalAPA also partnered with Caltrans and member firms to host a demonstration of the technology in 2013 at a paving project on Interstate 80 in Solano County. The 9

Right: One of many meetings held at CalAPA offices on the pavement smoothness specification.

Don Matthews with PRS is walking the group through a new set of data.

demonstration project utilized various models of equipment by different manufacturers, and density gauges were used to check compaction at different temperatures.

As Jeff Hoyle, Territory Manager with Caterpillar said at the time, “We’re always glad to take part and see advances in technology for ease of operations and improvements in quality. We’re committed to working toward developing and implementing technologies that will further the industry, both in operations and quality, so that we can deliver the best value for the customer.”

Around this time Caltrans announced that it was moving to establish tighter pavement smoothness standards, and began floating draft documents that would establish an MRI value of 60 inches per mile, the most ambitious pavement smoothness standard in the nation (remember, the FHWA had earlier pegged “Acceptable Ride Quality” at 170), backed by harsh penalties for those companies that do not meet the standard. For example, companies that failed to meet the new standard would be forced to perform grinding on the newly placed pavement at their own expense. Remember that California already had some of the roughest roads in the nation.

Expecting a contractor to achieve world-class pavement smoothness with a single lift of asphalt on these roads was a recipe for disaster.

This was a conclusion drawn by CalAPA based on its surveys of other state asphalt associations, equipment manufacturers and instate contractors. On large paving 10

projects, the cost could rise to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and even millions of dollars in extreme cases.

Paving contractors who didn’t factor in this additional expense on early projects with new smoothness standards quickly ran into difficulty.

Complaints rapidly began mounting.

Those complaints became claims, and claims became lawsuits. While the risk to the contractor rose considerably, the final pavement surface looked like a patchwork quilt of black asphalt and grey milled squares.

At this juncture it is worth noting an observation drawn from a PowerPoint presentation on pavement smoothness developed by the Asphalt Pavement Alliance, which is underwritten by CalAPA and other state asphalt pavement associations. The presentation introduces the pavement smoothness conundrum in stark terms: “Smoothness is specified by the owner, but it is achieved by the contractor.” The conundrum occurs when the specifications are unrealistic and unachievable, which was the position of many contractors who saw where the Caltrans smoothness specification was headed or who got some of those early projects. Mike Robinson, a longtime consultant to public works agencies and contractors and who conducted pavement smoothness training

classes for CalAPA around the state, summed up the situation around 2015-16 this way: “It’s hard to say which problem was the biggest, but I saw these issues: Caltrans was initially placing the same requirements for every project—thin overlay, structural overlay, mill and fill, new construction —with no consideration of existing smoothness or number of opportunities (lifts) the contractor has to achieve the smoothness standard. Also, there was no apparent effort to educate designers about costs vs. benefits and the level of effort potentially required with the new standards, and also an unwillingness to listen to, let alone implement, contractor concerns, many of which actually came from CIR (Cold In-Place Recycling) meetings early on.

Many of the changes ultimately implemented were discussed years prior.”

As the controversy continued to heat up, many of those complaints surged through the industry-agency Rock Products Committee, which would later be known as the “Pavement & Materials Partnering Committee.” It was partly because of the expertise of the various PMPC participants and partly because the entity had a loose problem-identification and problem-solving structure. The first warning flares were sent up by [ Continued on page 12 ]

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

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Above: CalAPA Technical Director Brandon Milar, P.E. (right) presents a special award from the association to Don Matthews with Pavement Recycling Systems in recognition of his work on the Caltrans pavement smoothness specification.

The presentation took place during the CalAPA Annual Dinner held Jan. 16, 2020 in Los Angeles.

[ Continued from page 10 ]

the CIR Committee, as Robinson noted, the topic eventually merited its own special pavement smoothness committee.

On Sept. 28, 2015, CalAPA co-sponsored an educational event with Caltrans on pavement smoothness attended in Sacramento by more than 100 industry and agency representatives.

The varied program, titled “HMA Smoothness Technology Forum,” gave many different views of pavement smoothness, from an overview of new Caltrans pavement smoothness standards, the use of the Inertial Profiler, the use of ProVAL software, experiences from other states and FHWA resources.

The meeting was packed, contentious and portended bigger difficulties to come.

Don Matthews, P.E., with Pavement Recycling Systems, Inc., attended the forum and was quoted 12

Above: CalAPA Executive Director Russell Snyder signs a new charter for the Caltrans-industry Pavement & Materials Partnering Committee on Feb. 15, 2018, surrounded by Caltrans executive managers. The revised charter provided a new framework for industry-agency collaboration.

afterward in the CalAPA newsletter, California Asphalt Insider, “Everyone wants smooth roads. However, there is no general consensus on how we get there and to what extent. This was evident at the HMA Smoothness Technology Forum.”

“The ProVAL software is a valuable tool when used to calculate the International Roughness Index (IRI) and in determining correction locations and extent to meet smoothness requirements,” Matthews said, “but it was clear from the forum that there is a strong need for education across the state on how to use ProVAL, and more specifically, how to apply it in making corrections.”

“The forum was a good first step in industry and Caltrans coming together to work through the confusion and get a general understanding of an inertial profiler and how to use ProVAL,” Matthews concluded. “Hopefully, the recommendation generated at the forum to form a Smoothness subtask group (within the joint Caltrans-industry Rock Products Committee) will provide the opportunity for both Caltrans and industry to work together to provide smooth California highways at a reasonable cost to the taxpayers.”

By the time of CalAPA’s Fall Asphalt Pavement Conference that year, held on Oct. 28-29 in Sacramento, it was clear that the problematic new Caltrans pavement smoothness standards were not abating, “resulting in unexpected costs for pavement grinding to meet the new standards,” the CalAPA newsletter reported at the time. One participant at the conference remarked, “There are two types of contractors: those who have lost money because of the new smoothness requirements, and those who will.”

Still, Caltrans and industry appeared to be at loggerheads with no appreciable compromise in sight. By the time the 2016 paving season was in full swing, the controversy over the new standards was in full bloom. Horror stories began to circulate of contractors grinding freshly placed asphalt and concrete, day after day, to achieve the standard, sparking claims and finger-pointing.

By the end of 2017, the controversy had broken into the open and threatened to blow up the goodwill created by the passage of SB1. A Page 1 story in the Sacramento Bee newspaper on Dec. 15, 2017 carried the headline,

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

Above: Tim Greutert with Caltrans (left) speaks with CalAPA Board Member Chris Gerber with G3 Quality in 2021 during a tour of the Joint Training & Certification program at San Jose State University held for former Senator and SB1 author Jim Beall and other elected officials.

“You’re paying for America’s smoothest roads. Can you tell?”

“California’s newly paved roads are built to standards of smoothness that are the strictest in the country,” the newspaper reported on its front page. “With that standard comes high costs that have surprised contractors, who are fighting for reimbursement and bitterly condemning a level of smooth they say no driver would ever notice.” Yet in the story, Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty held firm on the Department’s position, telling the newspaper, “They knew the requirement when they bid on the job. They knew what the specifications were.”

In the same article, CalAPA was quoted as saying, “Our feeling is that doing something new and just seeing how many claims you get is not a good way of getting new standards and specifications.”

With the issue boiling over, CalAPA initiated a meeting with Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty on Jan. 30, 2018 to continue to press industry’s case.

The meeting was attended by Jeff Reed, owner of CalAPA member firm George Reed, Inc. and CalAPA’s Technical Director, Brandon Milar, P.E.

“Contractors were placed in a no-win situation,” recalls Milar.

“If the contractor figured out how to mitigate the existing pavement smoothness condition, they would run into several challenges. Will those mitigations be allowed since the specifications limit what the contractor could do to the existing pavement? Those mitigations included limits to the amount of material a contractor could remove without Engineer approval.

Could the contractor incorporate those costs into their bid and compete against contractors that do not include those necessary corrections? It was difficult for companies that got the contracts, and potentially unfair for those companies that didn’t get the contracts.”

The feedback and data from contractors on projects were shared and supported the industry concerns. Unfortunately, there were few at Caltrans who were willing to make adjustments to the specification.

With the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown, a SB1 champion, winding down, Daugherty left Caltrans and was replaced by a career Caltrans administrator, Laurie Berman, and soon the word

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

Ray Hopkins, Chief, Caltrans Division of Construction.

came down from on high: work with the construction industry to resolve the pavement smoothness problem. Fast.

At about the same time, CalAPA and Caltrans HQ managers took the lead in rewriting the charter that relaunched the Caltrans and industry partnering committee.

This committee develops and implements innovative and efficient strategies that improve the pavement and materials used in the State’s roadway infrastructure. The charter established a framework on how the Department and its technical advisors should conduct themselves when working through problems. The Rock Products Committee, which had a checkered past of accomplishment and was often a forum for airing grievances rather than solving problems and pushing innovation, was renamed the Pavement & Materials Partnering Committee and a new committee charter placed greater emphasis on transparency, accountability and building mutual trust among all parties. That charter was signed by the Caltrans executive managers on Feb. 15, and its first test was on March 15, when 13

A grinding operation in Southern California, with an SSI inertial profiler gathering pavement profile information. Contractors and Caltrans learned that it was easier to meet strict smoothness standards on flat, straight highways than it was on winding routes.

[ Continued from page 12 ]

another contentious meeting took place on pavement smoothness.

Although nothing was solved at the meeting, there was the first official concession by Caltrans leadership, including Deputy Director for Maintenance & Operations Steve Takigawa, that the problems were real and the pain being experienced by contractors was substantial.

It also marked other significant changes in Caltrans leadership that altered the tone of the industryagency meetings to one that was less confrontational and more collaborative. Two key figures who emerged during this time were Tim Greutert and Tom Pyle. Both were seasoned and battle-tested executive managers in the Department who had rotated to other duties and were now returning to the divisions, Pavements and Materials, where the controversy was burning hottest. Shortly afterward, a third important leader came on the scene, Ray Hopkins, who arrived at the Caltrans Division of Construction from District 5, which covers the Central Coast.

Greutert is currently chief of the Materials Engineering & Testing Branch within the Division of Engineering Services, but on temporary assignment as acting division chief for the Division of Construction. He recalls vividly 14

his early days stepping into the controversy at the request of the Caltrans directorate.

“I certainly got the impression that Caltrans wasn’t being the great partner we could be,” he recalled recently. “We were causing harm, or pain, to the contractor, and not necessarily sharing risk well. It definitely got the ire of the construction industry, and they very respectfully let us know, and the number of people who were dissatisfied and felt that there could be a better way.”

Added Pyle, the Caltrans State Pavement Engineer: “It was almost like an emergency situation from the past when I was responding to an earthquake or a fire under a bridge. It was like, all the normal rules were set aside because this was so urgent. It had to be solved as quickly as possible, because it was affecting Caltrans and contractors as a whole across the state. It had the emergency kind of a feel to it. That’s the way it felt to me.”

Hopkins is currently the Chief of the Division of Construction, but on a temporary assignment as Division Chief for Environmental Planning. He brought a no-nonsense approach to the discussions drawn from his military background.

“It was tough to get started, for the industry and the Department,” he recalled recently. “As we were

learning, we had to be transparent and have good communication between all parties. CalAPA didn’t pull any punches. They let us know exactly where the risk was. Through transparent communication and collaboration, we were able to land on a spec that I think was good for the public and worked for both the contractor and the Department.”

“The outcome of the March meeting with the key stakeholders,” recalls Milar, “included direction to find a solution that accounted for existing pavement conditions, that considered the number of opportunities to achieve smoothness, that provided strategies to improve smoothness at the design phase, and that provides an incentive for contractors to achieve better-thanexpected smoothness. Our initial meetings to create a smoothness solution focused on understanding the current capabilities of the industry with field data. We also recognized that we would need to revisit this solution with data and make necessary adjustments.

We used the data to determine an expectation curve based on the existing smoothness values and the opportunities available to improve smoothness.”

Suddenly, the adversarial approach was out, replaced by collaboration and data analysis. [ Continued on page 16 ]

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More technical meetings ensued, including some hosted at CalAPA’s modest offices in West Sacramento.

The change of scenery, some would later recall, provided a new environment for the participants to think outside the box.

Two key participants on the industry side were Matthews, from PRS, and Nick Schaefer, P.E., Systems Engineer, with CalAPA member firm Surface Systems & Instruments, Inc. Combined, they probably had millions of miles on the roads investigating and diagnosing pavement smoothness problems and implementing solutions.

“It was almost like a blanket specification,” recalls Schaefer, explaining that the initial Caltrans standard did not fully recognize the varying profiles, characteristics and conditions of the diverse state highway system. “That was the frustration from the industry.

Caltrans was saying, let’s try to meet 60 or 75 (IRI). The white pavement guys (concrete pavement contractors) were really struggling because they were 100% grind, all the time. We weren’t that confident that when we walked on a project we would pass.”

Matthews vividly recalls how the CIR meetings, where the initial problems with the smoothness specification were identified, were quickly overtaken by asphalt contractors and then concrete contractors, all with the same complaints.

“You’re hoping that road is really smooth,” Matthews said. “If it’s not, then you’re settings will be off. It was a growing experience for everyone. That was where there was a realization that data needed to be collected. We weren’t getting the data collected really well. Contractors weren’t getting the data to the state. So what happened was I started keeping the data ourselves for all our jobs. I was normally just focusing on CIR, 16

and how well can we do it. Then I started realizing, when I was getting the overlays, that there was only so much that could be improved upon, and nobody had those numbers.”

Greutert also recognized the problem that objective data was lacking, and he was very appreciative of the information, perspective and depth of knowledge that industry representatives brought to the discussions.

“I think the key is to make sure you have the right stakeholders at the table,” Greutert said. “In this case, we had the paving contractors. We had materials suppliers. We had inertial profile operators. We had designers.

We also had Federal Highway Administration representatives, spec writers, and the Headquarters Construction folks. So there was getting the right people in the room, and then really take the time to listen to what they are attempting to accomplish.”

Once that was established, the momentum was unstoppable.

“Don and Nick, these guys knew their stuff well, they were passionate about it, they loved to share, and they wanted to help other people get there,” Greutert said. “When you get folks like that who have technical knowledge, and a passion, and a willingness to share and bring other people in, I really appreciate that. I just have to hand it to those guys. They were phenomenal during all that.”

Once the problems with the current specification were well-established, the group brainstormed on different ways the specification and acceptance protocol could be written to achieve the overall smooth-pavement objective. “Noodling,” as Greutert called it. At one point during the discussions a straw man proposal developed by Matthews and Milar – base smooth pavement standards with incentives for

contractors who exceed the targets -- was presented to the group. Like Ph.D. candidates defending a dissertation, the two leaned in as members of the group took turns challenging the proposal. When the smoke cleared, much of the concept remained intact and ultimately became the framework, with many refinements, that emerged from the meetings.

One of the loudest and skeptical voices was Caltrans pavement engineer Pete Spector. But as the model began to take shape, and various scenarios were run through it, he began to come around.

Now retired, he was contacted by California Asphalt magazine and offered this assessment: “The new Hot Mix Asphalt smoothness specifications developed under the Pavement Materials & Partnering Committee (PMPC) charter is a great example of a great partnering,” Spector wrote in an e-mail. “Early on, we agreed on a process, first piloting the initial incentive-disincentive payment adjustments tables, then evaluating the data from a full construction season of those projects and using that data to make further improvements to the adjustment tables.

“We had a lot of data, in excess of 500 lane miles,” he recalled.

“We modeled that data against numerous potential adjustment tables, then after thorough discussion came to agreement on the final set of payment adjustment tables. Under these new specifications, we expect the average performing contractor will still likely get an incentive payment, but fewer contractors getting the full incentive. These changes should drive continuous improvement in the ride quality of HMA projects across the state and provide a big benefit to the taxpayers by providing them smoother longer lasting pavements.”

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

There were still a few bumps ahead for this smoothness specification, however. When the proposal was presented internally to other Caltrans engineers in internal department meetings, it was loudly rejected.

“One of the hard things was breaking through the traditions of Caltrans,” Pyle recalled. “We knew we were breaking the traditional way of specifying work and we had to rely on other states and other partners to help us through this because it was breaking new ground for us.

“Incentives are very new and ‘un-normal,’” Pyle continued.

“They are not a Caltrans way of doing business. Typically Caltrans writes a specification, and we write it such that it is what we want, and contractors understand that.

We have a typical way of doing business, and we specify what we want, and contractors build it.”

By now, however, the smoothness committee was firmly behind the proposal, and pushed hard against the bureaucratic inertia inside the 20,000-employee department. Every opposing opinion was met with a counterargument backed with examples, data or experience from other states. Opposition began to crumble.

Said Matthews of early Caltrans naysayers: “They were like, ‘The contractor should be able to pave to this,’ and I said, ‘The data is not showing that.’ I’m talking good contractors. There’s only so much you can do. And they had those pre-paving grindings that they were spending huge on, and they were grinding to the wheel-path. I remember because I was asked to speak at a Caltrans management meeting, and I said, ‘you’re spending millions of dollars on these pre-paving grindings, and then the contractor is using skis and referencing on the lane line, which you haven’t touched. How is that improving it?’ People started

to realize, we’ve gone in with this pre-determined approach, and it wasn’t what was occurring out in the field.”

As it evolved, the specification initially appears very complex, but achieves the objectives through a straightforward process. The pavement designer will evaluate the pavement smoothness from either pavement management data or conducting an updated scan of the existing pavement.

Based on the existing smoothness the designer can adjust the design to meet Department goals. The smoothness data used during the design is included with the bid documents for the contractor’s consideration. Before the contractor begins paving, they measure the MRI of the existing pavement and compare it to the roughness measured at the design phase, which about 1-2 years prior to construction. Any significant deviances are shared with the state. The Caltrans Resident Engineer determines if changes need to be made to address the deviances and meet the Department goals. Once the contractor establishes the initial MRI, the contractor will begin paving. When paving is completed, the contractor measures the MRI of their work and compare it to the pre-paving MRI. This comparison between the original roughness and the work the contractor did, demonstrates the amount of improvement, and thus the bonus or penalty the contractor receives.

The Quality Assurance for smoothness includes the utilization of verified contractor smoothness data to determine pay adjustments.

The state will verify a minimum percentage of the contractor’s data.

Spector of Caltans was instrumental in the success of the whole initiative. He developed the spreadsheet that compared all the smoothness data and calculated the bonuses or penalties. Because

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

Spector is known in the committees as a straight shooter and is dedicated to the right answer, no matter who that benefits, the spreadsheet was accepted by Caltrans and Industry. It became a revered “Rosetta Stone” to help everyone make sense of the data and help define the target in a way that was mutually agreeable and understandable to all parties.

This solution ultimately achieved those initial goals of this effort: incorporate smoothness during design, account for the existing pavement smoothness, include opportunities in determining smoothness targets, and provide an incentive for surpassing expectations.

With a few more refinements, the newly minted specification with contractor incentives was ready to be inserted in pilot projects. Early feedback indicated that it was different but easy to comprehend and contractors understood how to meet the smoothness targets, and what investments in training, equipment and execution would be required to go after the extra money.

For those measuring the pavements, however, life got a lot more complicated. Schaefer, with SSI, noted, “Percent improvement puts more pressure on inertial profiler because every project has a different spec. The operators are worried that, if you have a four-lane project, 10 lanes long, 400 segments for each lane, each one could have a different approach.” Also, Caltrans designers had to do a little more work to customize designs based on actual conditions, rather than assumptions made in a cookiecutter design. Compared to the previous controversies, however, issues like these were considered manageable.

On March 4, 2019, the Caltrans Division of Construction issued a directive announcing the new pavement smoothness 17

Left: CalAPA Technical Director Brandon Milar, P.E. (left) is presented with an award on Oct. 17, 2019 for his work on the Caltrans pavement smoothness specification

by Acting Chief Engineer Cory Bins (center) and Deputy Director for Maintenance & Operations Steve Takigawa.

[ Continued from page 16 ]

specifications for Hot Mix Asphalt.

Ironically, the directive was issued under the signature of Bob Finney, acting chief of the Division of Construction who was an early skeptic of the new standard.

Significantly, the directive allowed for contractors on existing contracts that did not contain the new specification language at the time of award to seek to have a change order applied to the contracts using the new language.

“The pavement smoothness contract requirements will be based on recognition of the preexisting pavement smoothness,” the directive stated, codifying a longstanding criticism levied by industry. “This new specification will allow contractors to take a payment disincentive for 0.1-mile segments that do not meet the specified full pay mean roughness index (MRI) requirement.

The new specification will also pay an incentive for pavements that are smoother than the specified target MRI requirement. This new pavement smoothness incentive and disincentive specification cannot be implemented on on-going projects because it changes the basis on which the projects were bid. This directive allows for change orders on projects without the smoothness incentive and disincentive specification that have a pavement smoothness of 0.1-mile segments that exceed the contract MRI requirement; Caltrans will grant contractor requested payment deductions to avoid and reduce corrective grinding. Change orders allowing deductions take into consideration the constructability issues that drove the specification change but do not allow a payment incentive. Change orders allow for a payment deduction instead of grinding for 0.1-mile pavement segments that do not meet the specified target MRI plus MRI disincentive range.”

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Later in the document the directive introduces the concept of “percent improvement” in place of the hard smoothness targets that had been a bridge too far for many contractors. “For an existing pavement MRI greater than 136 inches per mile the target MRI requirement is based on a percent improvement,” the directive states, and goes on to provide examples of how the new standard should be applied on different paving jobs.

The transmittal included a prior approval document from the Federal Highway Administration indicating that they have reviewed and approved the change to the standard Caltrans specification language as contained in Section 39-2.02A(4)(i) (iii) Pavement Smoothness, of the Standard Specifications. A similar set of directives was issued by Caltrans for concrete pavements on Aug. 9, 2019. That memo hints a bit more at the “why” of the new guidance, stating, “Caltrans is implementing an incentive/ disincentive specification for concrete pavement smoothness. The revised specification encourages better concrete paving practices and smoother pavement with incentives and requires payment deductions for rougher pavement.”

By this time, the new specifications were picking up supporters both at Caltrans and

within the construction industry, and contractors were investing in equipment and training to go after the incentives.

There’s an old saying in politics, “When you see a parade, get out in front of it.” The pavement smoothness equivalent to this occurred on Oct. 17, 2019 at the Caltrans Headquarters building in downtown Sacramento when Caltrans and industry participants in developing the new pavement smoothness specification were invited to a special ceremony where they were presented plaques commending them for their work.

Caltrans’ Takigawa, the Deputy Director for Maintenance and Operations, and Cory Bins, the Acting Deputy Director for Project Delivery, presented the awards, which stated: “In recognition of your outstanding contributions in developing and implementing the new pavement smoothness specification for the Department along with your partnering efforts with the Pavement & Materials Partnering Committee, Caltrans staff, external partners and stakeholders.”

Earlier this year the new spec was officially published via a regular update to the electronic version of the Caltrans Standard Specifications, making it official. [ Continued on page 20 ]

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

[ Continued from page 18 ]

Although a pandemic has overshadowed the work done to develop the new specification, a more detailed chronicling of its journey that can fit on a plaque was required, if nothing else to provide a template for other problem-solving efforts in the future.

Looking back, Pyle said the success was a true team effort that required the best of all parties.

“We could not have done this on our own,” he says now. “We couldn’t have done this without having an association who is independent. We didn’t have the experience or the knowledge of someone like Brandon or Don, who’s experience is outside of our own Caltrans circle. We needed you guys to come in. And we relied on those longstanding relationships. You can’t come into a sea-change, a massive change, and you don’t do that with untrusted partners. This is truly a Caltrans and CalAPA achievement that was based upon trusted relationships. We were all putting ourselves out there, trying this new type of specification that Caltrans does not employ. We were only able to get there because of all of our previous work together. There will always be problems. It’s how we work through the problems that makes the difference. I think that’s part of the story."

Greutert echoed a similar sentiment. “Getting the right people at the table, and listening.

That’s the key. Defining what those goals are. We can do this. But are we going to get there? Is this the ‘what’ that will get us to the finish line? So just writing down and establishing what those goals are, that is key.

“I found it very rewarding to see all that collaboration between all these divisions, all these different folks between Caltrans and industry, to come up with something that was much, much better than what we had,” Greutert 20

said. “And now, we are revising it, and looking at the data that the program is bringing us, and making improvements to it still. Refinements, I would call them. It’s really exhilarating to work with a bunch of folks with a singular focus to make sure the roads are smooth but we’re also not harming our construction industry partners to get there.”

The changes appear to be making measurable progress in pavement condition on the State Highway System, according to Caltrans data collection and reporting (SEE SIDEBAR). All types of pavements showed marked increases in condition, a recent Caltrans report found, and overall the state highway system is on track to meet or exceed SB1 targets by 2027.

Robinson, the consultant and CalAPA trainer, said the current version of the pavement smoothness specification sets Caltrans and its contractors on a path to demonstrably smoother pavement without all the cost and conflict of the earlier version.

“The latest version is better in that it recognizes the effects of initial smoothness and the number of opportunities, and offers some bonus,” Robinson said. “Properly structured incentives are great tools to access contractor innovation.

Low-bid environments are not fertile grounds for figuring out how good we can be. There also seems to be more recognition, and willingness to pay for, pre-paving improvements where appropriate.

There can be some good value there. The bonus/penalty curves aren't great, and the MRI "reset" prior to open grade isn't good — being penalized for an MRI of slightly over 60 inches per mile.” In other words, the debate about the smoothness specification continues, but now it is on the finer points.

“Smoothness is important to the user, the ultimate customer, and adds value in that smooth pavements last longer and are

safer and more comfortable and reduce user costs,” Robinson added. “Inertial profiling is a huge improvement over straightedges and profilographs. When design and industry are both trying to achieve the same things in a fair environment, focused on what's best for the project, we can accomplish some amazing things.”

Still, Robinson notes, pavement designers need to do a little homework on the specific requirements of a project to ensure that the design is appropriate. In other words, a “one size fits all” approach is asking for trouble.

“The level of effort (to achieve smooth pavements) needs to be appropriate to the facility, and needs to evaluate cost versus benefit,” Robinson said. “Just as we cannot raise the overall pavement condition statewide overnight, even with huge, and inefficient, expenditures, we cannot expect smoothness to reach an ideal each and every time we touch a roadway. Working together in a step-by-step fashion allows contractors to understand what is desired and figure out what works, and what doesn't, and to educate and train themselves. It also provides an opportunity for the agency to get a sense of what is reasonable to expect along with what might be ultimately possible, what the costs associated with the effort are, and identify limitations.”

Hopkins, who says he is looking forward to returning to his former job as chief of the Division of Construction for Caltrans, sees the pavement smoothness work as a foundation for other collaborations between the Department and the construction industry.

“I don’t think what the Department was originally looking for was unreasonable, and I don’t think what the contractor was asking for was unreasonable,” he says now. “Everyone was uneducated as to what could be achieved by the means and

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

methods for paving. When we got to a number, there were some growing pains, and a lot of grinding.

Collectively, the Department and the construction industry, we have proven that we can build smooth roads that are better for the public in the long run.

“I feel honored to be in this position. I look forward to continuing this kind of transparency with industry, with all specs, not just asphalt smoothness, but also better Greenhouse Gas reductions, how we incorporate more recycled materials in our mixes in the long run,” he said. “We need to have some very raw discussions to make change. That’s really the big thing. We can’t continue to do things the way we have done in the past. The world demands that we change. We need to be at the forefront of those changes and guide them with all the state and federal initiatives.”

Another way of looking at the relationship between Caltrans and the companies it hires with taxpayer dollars to perform work is to think of them sitting on the same side of the table, as opposed to on opposing sides, Hopkins said.

“I am the owner, and you are the contactor, but together, when we use the word ‘industry,’ we are the transportation industry,” he explained. “Neither one can provide that transportation system without the other. We need to have the constructive discussions to be proactive in how we are building roads and maintaining the transportation system.”

Epilogue: In 2020, Caltrans and industry met to gather data collected from over 45 projects that used the new specification. The MRI data collected was evaluated and showed opportunity improvement like the initial data set used to determine the smoothness specification. A minor adjustment to the equation was made. Also

the data supported the removal of the 75 target MRI table. Finally, adjustments were made to the incentive and disincentive ranges to align with recommendations from FHWA. The revised specification was adopted by Caltrans and contractors can expect to see the specifcation on several projects in 2022.

As often is the case, innovations and trends that take hold in California eventually show up in national policy. With the passage of SB1, the state showed it was willing to invest in transportation infrastructure but also put in place various goals and accountability metrics to ensure that those targets are achieved. Pavement smoothness was a centerpiece of the legislation. Fast-forward four years and infrastructure investment and accountability was also at the forefront at the federal level when, in November of 2021, Congress passed the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act, which also has a heavy emphasis on road repair, innovation and accountability. With asphalt surfacing about 95 % of paved surfaces nationally, and also in California, The New York Times recently concluded that “the asphalt industry may ultimately receive the biggest share” of the federal road-repair dollars. With a template established in California for innovation, collaboration and saving tax dollars, the expectations are higher than ever that those additional federal dollars be spent wisely. If other new, emerging or even unimagined innovations are part of that future, the bumps that were smoothed out during the Caltrans pavement smoothness specification journey, and the lessons learned along the way, will be another California innovation to be emulated nationally.

The story of getting to a new pavement smoothness specification may not matter much to a Door Dash delivery driver in Davis, but

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

a rough ride and unwanted car repairs do. And Osvando Morales really notices when repair work is not done right. “It’s horrible,” she said. “Some places were better, but they left some places worse.”

And with that, she sped off to make another delivery, just one data point – albeit a very important and representative one — in a state of 40 million. CA Russell W. Snyder, CAE, is executive director of the California Asphalt Pavement Association.

REFERENCES: “Bumpy Roads Ahead: America’s Roughest Rides and Strategies to Make Our Roads Smoother” (2018).

Report by TRIP, a national transportation research group. Report released Oct. 17, 2018. Accessed 2022.

Robbins, M., and Tran, N. (2016) “A Synthesis Report: Value of Pavement Smoothness and Ride Quality to Roadway Users and the Impact of Pavement Roughness on Vehicle Operating Costs.” (2016). National Center for Asphalt Technology at Auburn University (NCAT Report 16-03). Accessed 2022.

Snyder, R. (2015) “Not the same old grind: New Caltrans pavement smoothness specifications generate plenty of interest at HMA forum.”

California Asphalt Insider newsletter, Oct. 5, 2015.

Snyder, R. (2013) “Collaboration Leads to Successful Intelligent Compaction Demonstration Project in California.” California Asphalt magazine, Journal of the California Asphalt Pavement Association. Vol. 17, Issue 5, PP 8-10.

Snyder, R. (2017) “The BIG Fix – The Inside Story of the $52 Billion Transportation Bill.” Journal of the California Asphalt Pavement Association, Vol. 21, Issue 3, PP 8-21.

“Mile Marker: A Caltrans Performance Report” Published Spring of 2020. Accessed 2022.

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CALTRANS PAVEMENT SMOOTHNESS SPECIFICATIONS APPEAR TO BE MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THE FINISHED PRODUCT Senate Bill 1, the “Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017,” requires the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to keep track of how transportation dollars are spent and to measure if those dollars are improving the overall condition of the State Highway System (SHS) and in alignment with the department’s Transportation Asset Management Plan (TAMP). According to a Caltrans report, as it relates to pavement condition, it appears those investments, working in conjunction with the new Caltrans pavement smoothness specification, are making a difference. The following is an excerpt from the Spring 2020 edition of a Caltrans publication, “Mile Marker: A Caltrans Performance Report:”

Scott Taylor

P: (714) 587-2595 Ex 101 scott.taylor@tayloresinc.com

Susana Mitchell

P: (714) 587-2595 Ex 102 susana.mitchell@tayloresinc.com

The percentage of pavement on Class I routes – consisting of interstate highways and other major arterials, urban freeways and expressways – determined to be in good condition improved almost 20 % from the end of 2016 to the same time in 2018.

Almost two-thirds of all Class I roadways, 65 %, are in good condition, the survey found, up from 45 % two years earlier – already exceeding the 2027 target of 60 %.

Only 1.3 % of Class I pavement was declared poor, and 16.7 % was rated fair, according to Caltrans’ Automated Pavement Condition Survey.

There are 27,151 lane-miles of Class I highways in the state, Caltrans’ largest pavement category and representing more than half of 50,259 lane miles in the SHS. Class II pavement, on non-interstate roads such as State Route 20 through Mendocino County, SR 29 in the Napa area, and SR 74 in Riverside, also showed significant improvement. Class II routes showed a 10.3 percent jump in the good condition, to 45.6 % at the end of 2018 from the same period in 2016. Roads in fair condition declined to 53.3 % from 57.6 %, and less than 1 % of Class II roads in the state were in poor shape. With almost 16,400 lane miles, Class II roads make up about one-third of the SHS. Improvements in condition also extended to Class III roads in more remote areas, such as SR 167 in Mono, SR 36 in Humboldt and SR 58 in San Luis Obispo counties . About 5 % more of those roadways moved into good condition, or 42.5 % of the 6,700 lane-mile Class III total. Roads rated in poor condition dropped to 1 % by 2018’s end, compared with 8 % two years earlier. Class III routes rated as fair made up the biggest category at 56.5 %.

All measures met or exceeded TAMP targets, and were on track to satisfy SB 1 requirements by the end of 2027. CA

www.tayloresinc.com 22

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

Q&A with

Jim Moore

Professor at University of Southern California

By Russell W. Snyder

Editor’s Note: Dr. James E. Moore III is a professor of industrial and systems engineering, public policy, and civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California. He is an influential voice and thought-leader in the transportation policy arena in California with a no-nonsense way of framing issues about how best to invest limited resources to achieve the maximum benefit for the efficient movement of people, goods and services around our state. Moore received his BS degrees in Industrial Engineering and in Urban Planning from Northwestern University, his MS degree in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University, his Master of Urban and Regional Planning degree from Northwestern, and his Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from Stanford. He specializes in transportation engineering, transportation systems, and other infrastructure systems. He joined Northwestern's Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty in 1986, and transitioned to USC in 1988. He became chair of the USC Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in 2004, serving until 2010. He is Director of the Transportation Engineering program in the USC Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and served as Vice Dean for Academic Programs in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering from 2011 until 2017. He has served as president of the Institute for 24

Operations Research and the Management Sciences’ (INFORMS) Transportation Science and Logistics Society, and President of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE). True to his reputation, he has some pretty strong opinions on what is working and what isn’t as it relates to our transportation system.

California Asphalt Magazine: This is a broad question, we know, but what trends to you see in Southern California and around the state and nation in how we move people, goods and services around? In this publication we like to look over the horizon and make forecasts.

James E. Moore III: We all make lousy forecasts (laughs).

CAM: Understood (laughs). But we appreciate your insight as someone who is an expert who has followed these issues in California for many years, and sees the intersection between mobility, the economy, our quality of life, the environment and equity. And, long term, there is a question of how we will continue to pay for our transportation system and to improve it to be sure it works for future generations.

JEM: Nobody knows what is going to happen in the long run.

There are some trends I like and some trends I don’t like. The increase in the use of congestion pricing, for one, is something that makes economists feel all warm

Dr. James E. Moore III and fuzzy, and they’ve argued pretty consistently for the last 60 years that the only systemic solution to congestion is pricing, but we’ve really just dipped our toe in the water with respect to this.

It is argued that we need more of this for multiple reasons, such as managing the level of service, and because we’ll need an alternative financing mechanism for road supply if we succeed in weaning ourselves off fossil fuels.

CAM: For most people, including many motorists in Southern California, that looks like the various toll roads that charge more during peak travel times and charge less during off-peak times.

JEM: Correct. I’d push that further.

If I get on the freeway during rush hour, I slow everybody else up and I foul the air a little bit, and because everyone’s time has

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

value those costs are real, but I don’t pay them so I ignore them when I make my decision about when and where to get on the freeway. If there is a mechanism for internalizing those costs to my decision, which is what congestion tolls are for, then I only travel when the benefits to me exceed the costs to everybody else. From a bloodless, ivory tower economist point of view, that’s a win.

CAM: (Laughs). Wow, that’s pretty harsh take on how economists look at transportation!

JEM: It is an abstract way to frame travel decisions, but for the most part it’s a substantially correct view of what’s happening. If I were king, we’d price everything, all the time, and if there was nobody out there on the road, if it was free flow conditions, there would be no congestion toll. If the road was congested, there would be a congestion toll that reflected the aggregate value of the delay associated with adding another vehicle.

CAM: There is a cost, and people make conscious decisions on trip selection based on factors like how long it will take them to get from Point A to Point B. It sounds like what you are saying is if people absolutely must get on the freeway during certain hours, they will pay the toll, but if they have some discretion they may choose to go at a different time, which spreads out the trips and makes the system more efficient.

JEM: Correct. They will travel at another time, or on a less congested route, or to a different destination.

CAM: Even though our amazing system of streets, highway and freeways affords us maximum flexibility and interconnectedness in how we get around, there is this

persistent drumbeat to demonize the car, restrict travel by road, or make it less efficient. It is like punishing people who must have the flexibility of getting around by car. Another tangible impact happening largely out of public view is the change from “level of service” to “vehicle miles traveled” as a metric to justify a transportation improvement project. This is being done by faceless bureaucrats in windowless conference rooms. We have strongly opposed this every time we encounter it.

JEM: It’s really insidious. Mobility is a big part of quality of life. You’re absolutely right – eroding mobility erodes quality of life. The people making these decisions don’t have enough technical expertise to know which end of the screwdriver to hold. They don’t appear to have ever taken a basic course in microeconomics. I agree that the policy-making in this arena has become extremely frustrating.

There’s a little small part of me that wants them to keep screwing up, because if they start getting it right then I have to find work (laughs).

CAM: You and me both!

JEM: But that's a very small part of me. But getting back to ‘the vehicle is the enemy’ issue, and if you look under the hood there, if I had a magic wand and could replace all those internal combustion engines with electric vehicles, then nobody would be on the road because there would be no way to get that much power to the charging ports for those vehicles. We don’t have the electricity infrastructure to make this transition quickly. Let’s give the climate change activists their argument and say there is anthropogenic climate change, and it could be expensive. Well, avoiding it is also expensive. So, you’re making a decision about two competing sets of costs. You

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

need to examine those two sets of costs very carefully, and you need to be realistic, because if you’re not realistic, then that’s yet a third set of costs. Natural gas is much better for the environment than either diesel fuel or gasoline, and we could make an incremental technological shift here, and increase the technology for implementing natural gas vehicles – not a very sexy thing to say.

Maybe we use liquified natural gas. Then we would make a very significant step forward in reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions, both methane and nitrous oxide. We would retain mobility, and we would pay a lower total cost. What we ought to be doing is focusing on incremental technologies we understand, implemented in steps, rather than making moon shots.

Because the people who are calling for moon shots don’t understand what it will take to get there.

CAM: And yet, with the current spike in gas prices, there’s a hue and cry about eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels, particularly as it relates to powering our cars.

JEM: As I look at the current situation, our national and state leadership loves high gasoline prices. They think it promotes a shift in behavior that they want. I just see it as really as hurting people because it makes it harder for them to get what they want in their lives that makes them happy.

Now, the indirect costs of the automobile are real. I think we ought to be working toward a system that can diminish them in incremental ways and attach them to the decision-makers who impose them, the traveler.

There’s much we can do to better manage the transportation system from a point of view that accounts for the economic behavior of people and the current state of technology than we are 25

currently doing. We’re using force, basically, to take a number of steps that are harmful to the economy, harmful to households, harmful to the wealth that would otherwise be accumulating in society. Transportation is critically important. These gasoline price hikes have got people thinking about that, the fact that transportation touches every aspect of our activities, even if you are at a production site someplace. Raw material had to get there somehow. Products have to get delivered somehow.

CAM: Like manufacturing asphalt!

JEM: Right. It’s not just the true cost of transportation for people who are dropping off goods to me.

Transportation touches just about everything physical in what we do.

So, these are really very high-stakes decisions. I’m of the opinion that our policy-makers have been getting them wrong for quite some time. We should be focusing on installing policy-makers who can get them right.

CAM: Bringing this conversation around to what we do, we care about pavements. We care that they are well-maintained, they are safe, and that they are an efficient system that all these vehicles travel on. We don’t see that going away any time soon. And we have been consistently advocating for reasonable investments to maintain that system. There are costs associated with rough and congested roads, costs like lost productivity, reduced fuel economy, vehicle repairs, etc. Prudent investments in maintaining the system in a state of good repair pays dividends for everyone. After many years of neglect, the Legislature passed the $50 billion Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 that raised fuel taxes to pay for road repairs, and late last year Congress passed the 26

$1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act, which contains a large component for road repair. It seems like elected officials are finally coming around on this issue. Our system of roads and freeways was built and paid for by our parents and grandparents, and largely works pretty well. All we need to do is maintain it, but we have been neglecting it for far too long.

That’s how we view things. How do you see it?

JEM: I was an SB1 proponent.

There were people who supported SB1 for the wrong reasons, but when people want to do the right thing for the wrong reason, I don’t care. I’m perfectly content for them to do the right thing.

CAM: We agree. But SB1 was partly sold on the basis of reducing congestion, yet a lot of decisionmaking since then seems to be determined to increase congestion.

JEM: We’ve never built our way out of congestion, and we never will. The benefits that accrue from new facilities and new capacity don’t accrue to existing users, they accrue to new users. There are benefits, and they are real. But they are never going to include congestion elimination. Congestion tolls would, however. When I say we could do a better job of managing the road system, this includes maintenance. So bundled up in my assertion that we need to do a better job of managing is that we need to be scientific and objective about maintenance decisions.

CAM: Sometimes people pit transit vs. vehicles, but in actuality most transit trips are on the same pavement that cars and trucks travel on. Heavy rail seems to get all the attention, but there are lots of ways to move people around in buses and with other

types of transportation that aren’t as sexy but work quite well.

JEM: I worry about the quality of our commitment to public transit.

The trend that really aggravated me was the way LA Metro was systematically losing ridership before the pandemic, and this came after pouring $26 billion into a rail transit plan. When you spend that kind of money and you manage to reduce transit use, I argue that there is no way this is a win. It doesn’t matter how optimistic you are, or how much cheerleading you do, it’s not working out. The problem is not that it’s inherently impossible to provide transit. It is very feasible to provide cost-effective transit.

Just don’t build rail. Focus on buses and roads. And every time they have done that, ridership on the Metro transit system has increased. We saw it when Proposition A money was used in the 1980s to suppress bus fares, and ridership just exploded. In fact, it hit its peak, a peak that we’ve never managed to return to. But then we transferred Proposition A money to the capital account for the Blue Line (light rail system) and raised bus fares, and transit ridership went down. It cratered until about 1996, because that was the time the MTA and the bus riders’ union and the NAACP settled a federal suit that had been launched with an argument that was, basically, when you make hopelessly ineffective decisions that hurt everybody, this includes members of protected groups. The MTA settled on terms that they needed to improve bus services and reduce fares, and when they did that ridership improved, and it did so consistently for the 10 years the consent decree was in force.

Ridership grew every year until 2007 when the consent decree expired and it was back to business as usual, shifting bus [ Continued on page 24 ]

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SALES • RENTALS • PARTS • SERVICE MINI EXCAVATORS / SKID STEERS BACKHOES / SKIP LOADERS 27

[ Continued from page 22 ]

resources to an unrealistic rail construction schedule. Bus service goes down, bus fares go up, bus frequency goes down, load factors go up, and people flee transit.

The arguments that some may make are that congestion tolls are regressive, and to an extent they are, because there are income differences across groups, but there are mechanisms that we might use to make them less regressive. Still, harming transit is much more regressive than imposing tolls. Transit is, first and foremost, a wealth transfer. You’re making sure everybody has access to at least a minimum degree of mobility, and access to employment, and access to some cultural options they wouldn’t have otherwise. So, transit is extremely important, and it makes me a little bit nuts to watch Metro mismanage modal investments. We know how to do the job right, and we don’t do it for purely political reasons.

We pretend that we don’t know the harm that we are doing, when in fact our leadership absolutely does. So, the trend I don’t like is undercutting transit and the impact doing so has on lower-income groups that normally use transit and benefit the most from it.

CAM: Well, buses are not sexy.

There are no ribbon cuttings when a new bus line opens up, but there are ribbon cuttings for a new rail line, even though it is obscenely expensive and very inflexible. On top of that, at least in the case of Southern California, the region spread out with many different urban centers, which is not conducive to a rail system.

JEM: You really nailed the core of the problem. Buses are not sexy.

They are just effective. We’ve got an MTA board that does not have an advocate for public riders at the table. The board is a committee of elected officials with specific 28

constituencies. The MTA’s sales taxes have made it the wealthiest public agency in the history of public agencies, so everybody wants a piece of a physical project that touches their constituency and that’s what drives the transit investment choices that the board makes. You’ve nailed the core of the problem. Everyone wants to deliver something for their constituents.

CAM: And now we have a pandemic. It has been said that COVID-19 cast a fresh light on many aspects of our lives, including where and how we work, how we get around, how goods and services move about, etc.

It will be interesting to see what changes in behavior are temporary and which ones become permanent.

JEM: Employers compete for labor. They’ve always competed for labor. That’s one of the reasons why we see a long term trend of North American cities decentralizing. Employers have been pursuing advantage, by trying to locate in more suburban areas and attract workers who have easy access. There are many forces that drive these changes – avoiding congestion, avoiding pollution, and now avoiding contagion, which has been front and center of late. So, competing for employment is not new. I think people like flexibility.

That’s one of the reasons they like automobiles. They give us a lot more flexibility in how we work than we realize. We were working a certain way because of cultural norms, and technology, which has been a big part of the decentralization story since there have been telephones. A big share of the blame for decentralization goes to Alexander Graham Bell (laughs).

CAM: It’s amazing to think of it that way.

JEM: High-value, human capital work can be done remotely, and we don’t know how much of that practice will persist, but employers are incentivized to make that an option for people who want it because it helps them compete more effectively for labor. I think we will certainly see less work travel. But that doesn’t necessarily mean less travel. No one has really been clear, for years, on whether travel and telecommunications were a substitute or a complement.

More flexibility and more time under your own control, when you have the discretion to schedule your activities, could lead to consumption of more goods and services that require travel. If you think about it, the only reason that travel occurs is that it makes the consumption of something else possible. All travel is a derived demand in this respect. If we change the way people are able to meet their objectives, if we give them more time, some of that time will go to the consumption of goods and services that involve travel. I think our focus on the work trip has been a little bit misplaced.

One in four trips per day is a work trip, an important one, certainly, but most trips are not work trips.

We’ve just diminished the value of work trips when it comes to planning for transportation capacity, and yes, it makes rail transit an even worse idea than it is now. But we don’t know what is going to happen to work trips, and we shouldn’t fret all that much, frankly. There are other impacts that are coming down the pike that are going to be as important, like automated vehicles.

CAM: That’s a lengthy conversation all by itself.

JEM: Right. But the way I try to address the transportation system and its trends, and where it’s going, or where it ought to be going, is to remind myself that

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

human beings are economic animals and step back a moment and not think so much about the details and the context so much as think about what I expect selfinterested people in a good state of information to do? How do I expect them to behave? And if the behavior is not what I want, what are low-cost ways to change those behaviors into something that better serves the public interest.

If it’s not clear what that change ought to be, then I shouldn’t be promoting a change.

CAM: But it really seems like automated vehicles will be a real game-changer, and they will travel on asphalt roads just like regular vehicles do today.

JEM: If we had a very pervasive road tolling system, and there were a lot of automated vehicles out there, even if they had no one in them, just being sent to the dry cleaners to pick up the dry cleaning, say, if they are taking up too much road space, we’d charge them and we’d either charge the dry cleaner or the person who dispatched the vehicle, or made the decision to put it out there. If we identify whatever costs are bothering us, and internalize them to the decision-maker, then we’ll get decisions that don’t bother us so much, decisions that produce costs that are diminishing.

We will have automated vehicles. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying that. I think that the folks that see transportation as a service have the story at least partially right. Their point of view was polluted somewhat by the venture capital flowing into Uber and Lyft, which suppressed the cost of those rides, but if you remove that distortion then you get a more realistic cost structure for those trips. And the thing about those trips is that they are part of a solution that I would have always

offered: Again, if I were king, I would lower the barriers around the market for transportation and let more people enter and exit to produce and consume transportation services. I would allow private transit and jitney services. If they didn’t produce the level of service we wanted, then we could use public coin to ensure that low-income groups receive the alternative that the market wasn’t delivering for them.

Or we could do something like use congestion toll revenues to subsidize transportation vouchers for lower-income households and let the market continue to respond to demand.

CAM: Improving access and affordability. Where does the lowly taxicab fit into all this? They ride on asphalt roads as well.

JEM: I’m unhappy about the pounding the taxi industry has taken by continuing to have to play by a set of inefficient rules, so I would have reduced the set of rules imposed on cabs and brought them into the transportation-on-demand fold.

That industry may ultimately survive, but we do over-regulate transportation services. Take airport vans, for example. It used to be you got off the plan at SFO or LAX and there were a bunch of vans bidding to try to acquire your business. These were largely mom-and-pop operations, with very small fleets. The vans weren’t buses, or taxis. One end of the trip was an airport so they were in an unregulated niche. But the people who complained about it were the big shuttle operators, who had high coordination costs and were being out-competed.

So, the net result was more regulation, and more expense to the providers, and more expense to the consumer, and many people squeezed out of the business.

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

CAM: What other trends do you see with regard to technology?

JEM: One technology I see that is somewhat overlooked is the development of solid-state batteries. Lithium ion batteries are heavy because they require a gel.

We took a foray into solid-state batteries with Samsung phones.

You might recall they tended to set people’s clothes on fire, and the lesson there is solid state batteries were not yet ready for prime time.

But when they are, I would say that services like electric air taxis are going to be technically very feasible, but we don’t yet have a set of rules to deal with them. So, getting back to what I said earlier, we all make lousy forecasts, but when we have the technology on that side nailed down, there will be a demand for those services.

I have no idea what the rules structure that is going to emerge will look like, because there is a host of questions that public policy makers are going to have to respond to with new rules.

CAM: A lot has been made recently about automated vehicles and safety. Ultimately, humans are at the root cause of almost all crashes and congestion. Taking them out of the equation seems inevitable. What are your thoughts on this?

JEM: I am a big fan of safety, and I do agree that human beings are bad control systems. Our wiring is really slow. No one really knows what share of congestion is attributable to accidents. Whatever it is, it is a significant share. One of the nice things about automation is, if we can imagine a different kind of fleet, then we not only have a much safer system, but we also have a much higher capacity system because it can operate at higher speeds and volumes.

It’s not just automated vehicles, it is connected and automated 29

vehicles. We have had to let the technology grow, and this creates standards questions that public authorities are slow to answer. We really don’t have good standards for vehicles communicating with infrastructure, because that requires decisions that no one in public authority has enough information to make. So, what we wind up with is vehicles communicating with vehicles, eventually. We would certainly improve that model further by defining standard ways for vehicles to communicate with the roadway. So, as I said, I’m a big fan of safety, and I think automation is a big part of the solution to safety challenges, coupled with connection. This also adds capacity. Thinking about capacity reminds me that I am annoyed by the complete streets movement.

CAM: So are we. To remind our readers, “Complete Streets” are defined by transportation planners as streets designed and operated to accommodate all users, including bicyclists, pedestrians transit users, etc. Complete Streets elements may include many elements, such as sidewalks, bike lanes, bus lanes, transit stops, median islands, curb extensions, modified vehicle travel lanes, streetscapes, etc. These enhancements become controversial because they are often done at the expense of efficient vehicular travel, and often there is a public outcry when a roadway is reconfigured with these elements when that work results in a dramatic increases in vehicular congestion.

JEM: I’m annoyed by it because I’m in the university business, and, basically, dumb is the enemy. I think it’s a dumb idea. People who want to get on a bike, I’m fine with that. The people who want me to get on a bike can take a long walk off a short pier. I have zero interest.

I live in downtown Los Angeles. I’m 30

a big fan of urban culture, and I want to experience as much of it as I can. But frankly, it doesn’t matter how much I restrict mobility, there’s no payoff right now because Los Angeles County has 60,000 homeless people in it. And if what you want to improve street life, that’s where the attention has to go. Anything that Complete Streets delivers in terms of benefits is very marginal, very small, and the costs are quite real. I think of the money we have poured into L.A. D.O.T.’s ATSAC system (Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control center) since 1984 – all of that was with the objective of initially improving mobility and improving traffic throughput.

It’s impossible to manage 5,000 traffic signals together, and yet, somehow, the magicians at ATSAC manage to do it. For them, its all about improving throughput in a congested network. In contrast, Complete Streets is all about destroying throughput in a congested network. I can imagine that there are a lot of folks in the ATSAC Center who do a lot of drinking after hours because the leadership of the L.A. DOT is following the mayor’s lead, focusing on Complete Streets in Los Angeles and destroying throughput for no good reason.

CAM: It is really counter-intuitive for engineers to make a transportation system less efficient. Yet it seems like the trend recently is those who would make the system more inefficient are pulling the levers, commanding all the attention, and forcing design changes on the transportation system that is slowing us down, sapping our productivity and our quality of life. Our industry is all about making things better, fixing roads, being part of building and maintain a system that moves us around safety and efficiently. We shouldn’t have to fight every day to do something that everyone seems to agree about.

JEM: Right.

CAM: We haven’t really talked about construction materials, but in our prior communications we have shared the work our industry is doing to contribute to the climate change challenge, including things like developing Environmental Product Declarations, improving technology and techniques to show we are being proactive in this area. After all, we live and work in the community and care about our environmental footprint and operating in a sustainable way.

What are your thoughts in this area?

JEM: Environmental Product Declarations, as you know, are relatively new. I’m a fan of industrial hygiene. And I put this line of thinking in the industrial hygiene category. We’re all competing.

It looks like a lot of work to me, but I don’t think that making this information available (in an EPD) is a shallow thing. Your association’s members are competing to sell asphalt. Your information is going to project deliverers and project owners, and those folks are often living in a fairly political landscape, and they want to account to for as much as they can that is relevant to their constituents. I think it is a shrewd and astute thing to do, and I mean this in a very positive way.

And frankly, the value of quality information is never negative.

Doing this, making this information available, does improve the decisions that it feeds. It allows the identification of tradeoffs that would otherwise go unidentified.

And it puts attention on processes, on entire supply chain processes, on constituent elements of products. Focusing the attention on the process introduces the prospect of improving the process, in terms of extra efficiencies or reducing externalities. I can see where EPDs could become burdensome. I’m not sure I want

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

public entities mandating them. But industries and firms choosing to do it because they want to compete more effectively and understand what’s more important to their clients and customers, that makes excellent sense to me. However, another way to look at this is, if our basic approach to regulating, controlling externalities like pollution or greenhouse gas emissions was really based on charging producers who generate them, supplies who generate them, we wouldn’t need Environmental Product Declarations because the environmental impacts of everything suppliers were providing and buyers were purchasing would be contained in the price, and decisions that were made on price and competitiveness in a competitive environment would account for all of the things that we’re trying to account for with this mechanism, but of course we tend to do things with regulation rather than pricing. One of the things trade associations can do and do usefully is promote improved information for the membership so the membership can be more effective in competing for the work.

CAM: That’s basically the core purpose in our association’s strategic plan in a nutshell.

JEM: It sounds like your members are getting good value for their dues.

CAM: Thank you for sharing your insights with us and thank you for elevating the level of discourse on these important transportation policy issues. CA

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Russell W. Snyder, CAE, is executive director of the California Asphalt Pavement Association.

909.771.2131

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

khoover@calcontractor.com

31

CALIFORNIA PAVING & GRADING Stands tall as one of the enduring veterans of the Southern California paving industry

By Brian Hoover, CMS

Left: Foster S. Dennis, President, California Paving & Grading.

Right: Kent Dennis, CFO, California Paving & Grading.

I

f you have ever met Foster Dennis, you know that he is a no-nonsense straight shooter who doesn't pull any punches.

Dennis is an accomplished veteran within the grading and paving industry, where he has collected a paycheck for the past 50 years.

"When I was in high school, I started to work at my future wife’s family’s paving company. After working there during and after high school, I received a call in 1977 to work full time for my aunt, Lee Sepielli at Goode & Schroeder, which was established in 1941. In 1977 we changed the company’s name to California Paving & Grading.

We also went from union to nonunion, and Lee eventually started preparing me to take control so that 32

she could eventually retire," says Dennis. "She gave me half of the business in 1979 and then when Lee died in 2012, my son Kent and I started sharing ownership of the company."

California Paving & Grading is a full-service paving company that performs everything from patching potholes to paving parking lots, freeway on-and-off ramps and city streets. The company also offers various other services, including grading, trenching and miscellaneous concrete work.

"Most of our work is done within the private industry for commercial and industrial developers and other private enterprises such as the entertainment industry," says Dennis. "Our concrete crew has

grown from one to three dedicated crews that perform curb & gutter, sidewalk, planter curbs, aprons, streets and approaches. We stop shy of things like building bridges but regularly perform structural concrete construction like block walls and footings."

California Paving & Grading currently has several crews working out at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, performing a variety of services. "We got our name in with the construction coordinators at Warner Bros. many years ago and they know that we will drop everything to take care of them.

The first time you don't show up is the last time you will do work for many of these production companies. It is not about the cost

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

Above: California Paving and Grading Field Team.

1

Foster Dennis wears many hats throughout the day.

1.

2.

3.

4.

Going over the day’s schedule.

Checking on equipment.

Moving equipment around the yard.

On the phone with a superintendent.

for these guys, it’s about being there when they call," says Dennis "We are currently at Warner Bros. installing a patio for a soundstage and doing some trenching and backfill for newly installed utilities.

We are also constructing a security wall and paving an asphalt roadway into a newly built parking structure.

We have an onsite superintendent who previously worked for Warner Bros., and he runs these types of jobs for our company. They have a certain way of doing things, and security is tight. It is nice to have someone who knows the ins and outs of the movie business working for us on these projects."

Dennis points to some of the other memorable jobs his company has done for Warner Bros. over the years. "After 9/11, we put up around a quarter-mile of security wall around Warner Bros. Studios," says Dennis. "We also did some work on a movie for another production company, Terminator 3, where we paved the roadway for the notorious crane chase scene.

It is a unique situation where you put in a roadway one day and then take it out a few days later. But that's the movie business."

Dennis says that another job that stands out is when they were called in to do some work on a major network series filmed on a private ranch. "There was this freakish rainstorm at the end of filming atop a hillside in Acton. The filming crew had several camera and grip trucks, among other vehicles on the hill, and the dirt roadway had completely washed out during the rainstorm. We received an emergency call on a Friday requesting that we haul and place around a half-mile of base material. They also wanted us to pave a thin coat of asphalt so that they could get the vehicles down the hillside. The production crew was due on set Monday morning, and they were facing a loss of more than $1 million if they could not shoot the scene," continues Dennis. "We dropped everything, sent in several crews, and had

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

2

3

4

33

Top Left: Goode & Schroeder paving in the Hollywood Hills.

Above Left: Goode & Schroeder paving at Warner Bros studios in 1940.

Above Right: California Paving & Grading crew paving a street in Hollywood for a private developer.

the hillside roadway paved by Sunday morning. The cost was more than $250,000, and to add insult to injury, the rancher wanted it immediately removed after the trucks and machinery made it safely down the hill. We sent in a milling crew and left everything just like it was before paving the roadway.

Again, this is the kind of thing that can only happen in the movies."

From movie sets to potholes to million-dollar-plus projects, California Paving & Grading has the equipment and crews to get it done right. "We are currently on two million-dollar-plus jobs in Orange County for apartment building developers. Our crews are paving the road in front of the project sites and paving the common areas in and around the apartment complexes," says Dennis. "Another typical private job is represented by the work we are doing at The Grove/Farmer's Market in LA. We have been paving and maintaining their asphalt walkways for 60 years.

We are out there doing scheduled monthly maintenance work, with another crew up the street performing street improvements for a private developer. It's all in a day's work for our team members that represent some of the best in the industry."

34

Dennis acknowledges that one of the secrets to providing an excellent finished product is the equipment the crews rely on every day. We stay with the suppliers that have treated us right over the years. We go with Vogele and Hamm from Nixon-Egli Equipment Co. for our paving machines and rollers. For skip loaders, we turn to John Deere and Coastline Equipment. We just purchased two brand-new John Deere 210 LE skip loaders from Coastline and a new wheel loader from Quinn Company Cat," says Dennis. "When it comes to choosing a particular brand, it comes down to parts availability. Companies like NixonEgli, Coastline, and Quinn stock massive inventories of the wear parts we need daily."

Dennis has made many close friends in the paving industry over the years, such as Andy Andrews of Mission Paving, and that is due in no small part to being a member of the California Asphalt Pavement Association (CalAPA).

"Being a member of CalAPA means that you have access to the experiences and knowledge base of all of the members and staff, which has come in handy many times over the years. I have known most of these guys and gals for a

long time, and it is always good to share daily challenges with others in the same boat," says Dennis. "Andy and myself share daily stories of challenges and pitfalls in this type of work. This is a unique and grueling business, and we are always getting hammered by things like workers’ compensation, insurance issues, CARB requirements, and now oil and fuel prices that are threatening the future of our business. We have our fuel tanks in the yard, and the cost to keep them filled has gone up by around $7,000 every 10 days. That is hard to manage when you consider that we bid most of these jobs last year and now have to figure in these fuel increases."

Dennis says that he has around 150 jobs on the board at any given time, and the price of oil not only affects their fuel prices but also the price of asphalt. "We just saw a 20 percent increase in asphalt material costs," continues Dennis. "There will always be asphalt streets and roads, but as the cost of asphalt continues to go up, developers may start thinking about going with alternative products like concrete for their parking lots and other internal roadways. These are the sort of topics and issues that I [ Continued on page 36 ]

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

35

Right: Kent Dennis, CFO (left), Prentice Brand, Estimator, Joanne Gastelum, Operations Manager and Tom Dilsworth, Chief Estimator.

1

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1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Joanne Gastelum, Operations Manager.

Lisa David, Accounts Receivable.

Jeffrey MacDuffie, Office Manager.

Luis Alvarez, Estimator.

Jon Pinion, Estimator.

Barry Palmer, Superintendent.

[ Continued from page 34 ]

4

regularly bring up with my fellow CalAPA members and friends in the industry."

According to Dennis, the paving business is a hands-on industry. "I am fortunate to have a wife whose family was in the paving business.

She gets that you have to be essentially married to this business to remain successful," says Dennis.

"I get to the office every day at around 4 a.m. to get everything

lined up for the numerous crews and specific jobs. Then I leave the office to go out to the field with my assistant, Barry Palmer, to begin managing the jobs, much like a movie director or field general. I love what we do here, but also realize that I can't do it forever and have to start focusing on the future leadership of this company."

Dennis points out that the future of California Paving & Grading sits mainly on the shoulders of his son,

5 Right & Below: California Paving & Grading performs a variety of projects at Warner Bros. in Burbank. They recently paved the access road leading to the entrance.

6

1 2 3 4

1.

2.

3.

4.

California Paving & Grading paving a street project in Hollywood.

CP&G uses a roller on a project in Hollywood.

CP&G striping team at the Hollywood Bowl.

Paving a parking lot at an apartment complex in Van Nuys.

Kent Dennis. "Kent has done an amazing job of managing procedures in the office like managing our five full-time estimators and ensuring our bids are competitive and profitable," continues Dennis. "He has recently been gaining a lot more experience and knowledge out in the field in areas like drainage, materials and trucking logistics. It will be up to Kent to carry on this 81-year-old legacy, and I have complete faith in the great things he will bring to the future of this company. He has been groomed for this spot since he was born, and has shown the characteristics that I had back in the day. I taught Kent how to roll,

check grades, and run jobs when he was 10 years old, something nowadays will land you in jail.”

It is not all work and no play for Foster Dennis, as he finds time for a vacation now and then and has a few other interests like collecting John Wayne memorabilia. "I have collected John Wayne memorabilia for many years, including many of his costumes, his hair piece, a coonskin hat from 'The Alamo,' his shotgun from 'McClintock,' and even his 1973 Pontiac station wagon," says Dennis. "I wanted others to have the opportunity to view and enjoy all of these amazing artifacts, so I donated some of my collection to the John Wayne

California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

Birthplace Museum in Winterset, Iowa. I attended the 2017 grand opening and learned that they are building another wing to the museum to further entertain the 60,000 people that visit that little town every year."

California Paving & Grading offers various services, including asphalt paving, seal coating, concrete paving, fine grading, striping and Petromat overlays. Please visit www.calpave.com or call the company's LA headquarters at (323) 255-1144. CA Brian Hoover is co-owner of Construction Marketing Services, LLC, and editor of CalContractor Magazine.

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California Asphalt Magazine • 2022 Special Innovation Issue

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