CHARLESTON, W.Va. — With much discussion around the state in the past few weeks on road conditions, last week some West Virginians and folks from all over the southern United States were learning about how to better preserve roads right in the Mountain State’s capitol city.
The 2019 Southeast Pavement Preservation Partnership (SEPPP) was in West Virginia for the first time, hosted by Charleston last Monday through Wednesday.
The group, that consists of road and transportation leaders from 14 states, meets annually to discuss pavement preservation and discuss treatments that are less expensive but help extend the life of pavements.
Travis Walbeck, the State Pavement Engineer for the West Virginia Division of Highways said a lot of people at the partnership see the same problems on secondary roads in their state.
“There are several of these treatments that we currently do that came out of our participation in this group,” he said. “Years ago some of our folks started attending the Pavement Preservation Partnership.”
Sayings to work by from the summit included “Keeping Good Roads Good” and “Using the Right Treatment on the Right Road at the Right Time.”
Judith Corley-Lay, Director of the National Center for Pavement Preservation, said once a state gets control of road conditions and keeping good roads good, it will have a much easier time maintaining them.
“If the state can get to a place where roads are in fair to good condition, they can use very low-cost treatments and try to touch 10 percent of their network every year,” she said.
Corley-Lay, the former State Pavement Engineer at the North Carolina Department of Transportation, added the easiest way for states to fully get a hold of road conditions is to have a dedicated road fund.
Walbeck said West Virginia currently does not have a dedicated road fund as in the past, as legislation for more resources for West Virginia road repair have not had much luck.
Once roads are caught up and in good shape, Corley-Lay said states will have to touch them up yearly with seals.
“Chip seals and fog seals or a whole variety of treatments,” she said. “When you do that you keep water out and make it so that you are repairing at the top of the pavement and not having to go down and dig out potholes.”
Walbeck said chip seals have worked for a long time on the roads, especially in West Virginia.
“A lot of people have a negative connotation when it comes to chip seals because they think we have turned an asphalt road into a gravel road,” he said. “What we are really doing is preserving the structure of the asphalt road.”
States in the summit included West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas.
In 2017, the partnership group met in Montgomery, Alabama and last year was in Biloxi, Mississippi.