A revised handbook offers Minnesota cities and counties the latest tips on how to meet new sign retroreflectivity requirements, as well as the 411 on sign maintenance and management – everything from knowing when it’s time to remove a sign to creating a budget for sign replacement.
The best practices guide – produced in conjunction with a new sign retroreflectivity study – also offers case studies from around the state.
“The life cycle of traffic signs, from installation to replacement, is a pretty complex issue and it can be a challenge to get your arms around,” said Tim Plath, Transportation Operations Engineer for the city of Eagan. “This handbook really boils it down into some basic concepts and also gives you the resources to dig deeper if necessary. It’s a good resource to have at your fingertips.”
This handbook updates a previous version issued in 2010, to include new FHWA retroreflectivity and maintenance and management requirements and deadlines.
“Maintenance/management of a large number of signs can potentially be an administrative and financial challenge for many local road authorities,” explained Sulmaan Khan, MnDOT Assistant Project Development Engineer.
Here’s a video demonstration of a sign life reflectometer (the Gamma 922), another resource MnDOT has available for local government agencies. Cities, townships or counties may borrow the reflectomer by contacting the Office of Materials and Road Research, (651) 366-5508.
Stormwater can pick up chemicals and sediments that pollute rivers and streams. Roadside drainage ditches, also known as swales, lessen this effect by absorbing water. But until recently, MnDOT didn’t know how to quantify this effect and incorporate it into pollution control mitigation measures.
In a recently completed study, researchers evaluated five Minnesota swales, measuring how well water flows through soil at up to 20 locations within each swale.
“There’s a big push in Minnesota, and probably everywhere, to do more infiltration,” Barbara Loida, MS4 Coordinator Engineer, MnDOT Metro District, said. “We know that our ditches are doing some of that, but we wanted to look at how much infiltration these ditches are providing.”
A key finding: grassed swales are significantly better at absorbing water than expected, which may reduce the need for other, more expensive stormwater management practices, such as ponds or infiltration basins.
This could save MnDOT and counties significant right-of-way and construction costs currently expended on more expensive stormwater management techniques. While swales were recognized in the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s new Minimal Impact Design Standards, there was a need to quantify the amount of water a swale can absorb so it could receive the appropriate MIDS credits.
Researchers also tested the ability of carbon, iron chips, steel wool and other materials to remove pollutants as ditch check filters—material put into swales to enhance removal of pollutants.
Gradations on a Modified Philip Dunne infiltrometer allow the measurement of stormwater infiltration.
What’s Next?
A follow-up project, which the MPCA is participating in, will seek to clarify the impact of swale roughness on infiltration rates. The goal is a calculator for real-world infiltration rates that MnDOT and local agencies would be able to implement.
MPCA, MnDOT and the city of Roseville are also partnering on a project to install and test the effectiveness of ditch check filters in real-world locations.
Maintenance recommendations should help MnDOT and local agencies ensure that swales operate at maximum efficiency. These recommendations should continue to be revised as knowledge evolves.
The nation’s two largest pavement testing centers are planning to partner in order to better leverage research performed at their cold and hot-weather facilities.
MnROAD, located in Albertville, Minnesota, and its southern U.S. equivalent, the National Center for Asphalt Technology in Auburn, Alabama, are full-scale test tracks that evaluate different types of pavement material under real-life conditions using semi-trailer truck and live interstate traffic.
Each facility has a history of evaluating the performance of pavement preservation treatments, including chip sealing, micro-surfacing, crack sealing and thin overlays. To address needs in both northern and southern climates, similar test sections would be developed at each facility to address national issues.
“By working together we can maximize the potential for each track,” said MnROAD Operations Engineer Ben Worel. “A closer relationship between NCAT and MnROAD is a logical progression in developing and evaluating new sustainable technologies, pavement systems and construction methods that lead to safer, quieter, lower-cost and longer-lasting roads.”
A test track at the National Center for Asphalt Technology in Alabama, MnROAD’s hot-weather equivalent.
The partnership idea was introduced to federal officials earlier this month at a national pavement performance conference in Minneapolis. Final details must still be worked out.
One of the workshops at the event discussed the proposed partnership between MnROAD and NCAT. Further talks are expected at the end of October.
“NCAT is thrilled about the opportunity for a partnership with MnROAD to address pavement research needs at a national level,” said NCAT Director Randy West. “Bringing NCAT and MnROAD results together will expand the climate base, loading distribution and other important pavement factors.”
Conference participants also reviewed the latest preservation techniques being developed for high volume roads. MnROAD’s chip sealing study, which demonstrated that highways with an average daily traffic (ADT) of 58,000 can be successfully chip sealed, was especially attention-grabbing for agencies who don’t chip seal on roads with more than 2,000 ADT.
A national panel of speakers included Michael Trentacoste, director of the federal Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center (pictured in top photo), who discussed Federal Highway Administration’s support of pavement preservation research and implementation.
With about 160 people in attendance over four days, MnDOT Materials Engineer Jerry Geib said the conference was successful in sharing the benefits of pavement preservation techniques with other state DOTs and federal highway officials who want adopt new practices to help alleviate budget constraints.
Thanks to a flexible new contracting method, the cost and time of delivering small highway projects in Minnesota should go down.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation is now able to put road construction contractors on standby for certain types of projects, rather than bid each project individually, due to the adoption of Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contracts.
“IDIQ contracts give MnDOT more flexibility and the ability to get to the field quicker for work that we need repeated routinely, such as culvert repairs, overlays and seal coats,” said Kevin Kosobud, project development engineer with MnDOT’s Office of Construction and Innovative Contracting.
IDIQs also provide flexibility when needs are uncertain. Contracts are often used for multiple small projects that are similar in scope, but difficult to quantify in cost and timing.
For instance, the state of Florida awards IDIQs for hurricane debris removal, activating and paying contractors only when a hurricane necessitates the service.
Although IDIQs showed great promise, MnDOT had to develop a framework to implement them.
The federal government has used IDIQ contracts since the 1980s, but only a small number of state DOTS have used them to procure construction services. No standard procedures existed for their use by state DOTs, and federal procedures are not always applicable at the state level.
MnDOT hired Iowa State University researchers to examine IDIQ usage across the country and develop implementation procedures for Minnesota. (Read a summary of their research here.)
Researchers examined contracting practices at 14 different transportation agencies to recommend guidelines for Minnesota to follow, which allowed MnDOT to begin awarding IDIQ contracts in April 2013.
Case study analyses show clear benefits where IDIQ has been used: acceleration of the project delivery period, reduced construction costs and flexible delivery scheduling.
“IDIQs can help DOTs get better prices for routine services via an economy of scale, for instance, by awarding a contract for a larger number of culvert repairs rather than awarding a single contract for each repair,” explained Doug Gransberg, professor of construction engineering at the Iowa State University Institute of Transportation.
Agencies can award IDIQ contracts individually or collectively.
With a single-award contract, a single contractor is awarded task orders based on the pricing furnished in the initial bid package; multiple-award contracts determine a pool of qualified contractors who may subsequently bid on task orders.
*Editor’s note: This article was adapted from the September-October 2014 issue of our Accelerator newsletter. Read it online or sign up for your free subscription.
Related Resources
Leveraging the Advantages of Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity Contracts – Technical Summary (1 MB, 2 pages); Final Report (expected Fall 2014)
There’s nothing like colored concrete to make a crosswalk, sidewalk or breezeway look snazzy.
But the extra touch that many cities are putting into their downtown streetscapes may not be so pretty in just a few short years.
Early cracking has prompted the city of Vadnais Heights to tear up its colored concrete, and the city of Centerville — which installed colored concrete only six years ago — plans to follow suit, said MnDOT’s Senior Road Research Engineer Tom Burnham.
Both cities participated in a recent study, sponsored by the Local Road Research Board and conducted by MnDOT, to determine what is causing the early deterioration.
Across Minnesota, many of the estimated 45 colored concrete projects have experienced early deterioration, particularly microcracking near contraction joints. While this type of distress also occurs with regular concrete, it appears to be accelerated in the colored concrete projects, within five years in some instances.
Although the newly released study identifies likely causes for the failing colored concrete, further research is needed to evaluate proposed solutions.
Findings
Researchers determined that the colored concrete mixtures have likely been too porous for Minnesota winters, allowing deicing chemicals to leach in and wreak havoc. Although not quite as problematic for sidewalks and medians — which aren’t salted as heavily — it is especially bad for colored crosswalks.
A denser concrete mixture (one formed with less water) is recommended; however, constructing the concrete panels this way will require extra steps.
“There are chemicals that can be added to the mixture to artificially lower that water-to-concrete ratio,” Burnham said. “This will allow a denser mixture to be more easily placed.”
The city of Centerville plans to tear up its colored concrete. This photo shows early joint deterioration.
Color in vogue
Although there was a spate of colored concrete construction in Ramsey County in the late 1990s, it has only come into fashion in the rest of the state within the last five to six years, according to Burnham.
“You go to almost any community and they’re installing it — on their sidewalk and medians and also crosswalks,” said Burnham, who coordinated the research study.
Because of the added expense, cities may be very disappointed in the results.
The city of Stillwater, which installed a colored concrete panel crosswalk on its main street just two years ago (see top photo), is already experiencing cracking and deterioration in several panels.
Possible remedies
Although reducing the porosity of the colored concrete mixture should help, it won’t solve everything.
Another issue is the curing. The typical white curing product can’t be applied like it is with standard concrete, so curing the colored panels is more challenging, Burnham explained.
There are possible remedies, however, to assist with the curing, such as wet burlap or curing blankets.
Adding complexity to the issue are the new deicing chemicals on the market, which are also impacting regular road materials.
Several test samples showed evidence of chemical attack of the cement paste and fine aggregates, as well as an alkali-silica reaction, which can cause cracking or spalling and isn’t normally seen in regular concrete.
“Is there anything unique with the coloring that would accelerate the observed chemical reactions? We didn’t feel we had enough samples and knowledge at this point to conclusively say,” Burnham said.
Different construction techniques could go a long way toward increasing the livelihood of colored concrete; however, it could take several years of observation to determine if other methods work.
MnROAD is considering adding colored concrete panels to its facility for testing.
Until more questions are answered, MnDOT researchers are recommending repair techniques and alternative streetscaping ideas to cities, such concrete stains, pavers or colored high friction surface treatments.
In addition to sharing the findings with cities and counties, Burnham wants to educate contractors.
“We hope this research is a wake-up call for the colored concrete industry too because we don’t want the industry to die in Minnesota,” he said. “If it can work, we want cities and counties to be able to use it.”
*Editor’s Note: This story was updated 09/04/2014 to specify that this research project was funded entirely by the Local Road Research Board, and that MnDOT conducted the research.
Related Resources
Investigation and Assessment of Colored Concrete Pavement — Final Report (PDF, 20 MB, 368 pages); Technical Summary (forthcoming)
Have you ever dreamed that all of your tinkering, fussing, and fiddling in the shop and on the road could help improve every road in Minnesota? Do you need funding to improve your sign maintenance and installation process? Or maybe you’ve come up with an idea for a new tool for controlling roadside vegetation or a design for a more effective work-zone safety product. Whatever it is, the Local Operational Research Assistance (OPERA) Program wants to hear about it.
Funding for 2015 OPERA projects is now available, and it’s easy to submit a proposal. Simply fill out the brief proposal application (50 KB DOC) and submit it via e-mail to Mindy Carlson at Minnesota LTAP. There isn’t a deadline to submit your proposal, but FY15 funds are limited and they often go quickly.
The maximum funding per project is $10,000, and local agencies are welcome to submit more than one proposal.
Project Guidelines
Your proposed research project should focus on the timely development of relevant ideas or methods that improve transportation or maintenance operations. Our goal is to collect and disseminate homegrown, innovative solutions to the everyday challenges our transportation workforce faces on the job. Counties, cities, and townships, this is your opportunity to encourage your maintenance staff to become actively involved in researching and testing their ideas.
To see what other local agencies have done with OPERA funding, check out our fact sheets and annual reports, or watch these videos highlighting previous OPERA projects:
Chip-sealing — spraying an asphalt emulsion over existing pavement and then covering it with fine aggregate — is a cost-effective alternative to resurfacing asphalt pavements. Traditionally, however, it has only been used on rural and low-volume urban roadways.
During a recent visit to MnROAD, we filmed a road crew chip-sealing a test section on I-94 and spoke with MnDOT Research Project Supervisor Tom Wood, who explained why chip sealing can also be an effective treatment for high-volume roadways.
*Note: This story was updated on 08/12/2014 to clarify that the chip sealing shown in the video involves spraying an “asphalt emulsion” rather than “hot liquid asphalt,” as stated in an earlier version of this post.
The only way to test pavements is to destroy them — slowly and painstakingly, one moving vehicle at a time. At MnROAD, the state’s world-renowned pavement research facility, the bulk of this monotonous-but-necessary work is performed by live traffic passing through Albertville on I-94. But on the facility’s 2.5-mile low volume road test track, which simulates rural road conditions, more controlled methods are preferred.
Doug Lindenfelser is one of several MnROAD employees who take turns driving an 80,000-pound semi tractor trailer in laps around the closed-loop low-volume track. The truck is loaded to the maximum allowable weight limit on Minnesota roadways. As it passes over the facility’s 23 distinct low-volume test cells, an array of sensors capture data on the pavement’s performance, which researchers then use to design stronger, longer-lasting roads. The truck only drives on the inside lane; that way, the outside lane can be used as an “environmental lane” to compare damage caused by loading vs. damage caused by environmental factors.
He has other duties as well, but on a given day, Doug might drive the truck 60 or 70 times around the low-volume road test track. It might not sound very exciting, but as Doug explains, some days his job can be quite interesting. We interviewed him on camera during a recent visit to MnROAD. The resulting video is available above and on our YouTube channel.
For those who might be wondering, all this diligent destruction of pavement has paid off. It is estimated that MnROAD’s first phase of research (from 1994-2006) has resulted in cost savings of $33 million each year in Minnesota and $749 million nationally. Cost savings from its second phase (2007-2015) are being calculated, and the facility is scheduled to enter its third phase in 2016.
As public works employees come and go, past research efforts — and the valuable knowledge gained — often goes with them.
But a recently launched web application allows users to track innovative pavement projects for a lifetime.
“It’s something everyone has always said we need to have,” said MnDOT Research Operations Engineer Jerry Geib, who worked on the project for the Minnesota Local Road Research Board.
Using an online map, city and county engineers can enter road test sections that they want to observe for many years due to a particular construction method or material that was used. Too often, the knowledge about such projects is lost when a particular staff person leaves an agency.
Not only will the lessons learned be remembered within the organization, but the results can also be shared with others.
More than 1,400 projects (including some on state roads) previously identified by MnDOT have been entered into the system. Search fields allow users to look for a particular type of project anywhere in the state or they can zero the map in on a particular area of the state.
The website is still in beta form, but functional.
“It’s complete, we just want people to use it so we can improve it,” said MnDOT Research Project Engineer Melissa Cole, who began planning the site two years ago.
One featured project is a 1.8-mile section of dirt road in Wabasha County that had an Otta seal applied in 2007 (photo below). It is one of only a handful of lightly surfaced roads in the state (an improvement over a gravel road, but less expensive than asphalt ) so there is great interest in watching how it performs.
One of the projects being tracked is Wabasha County Road 73, one of only a handful of lightly surfaced (Otta seal) roads in the state.
More to come
The LRRB initiated the project in 2009, but it was put on the back burner for a while due to funding constraints. MnDOT ‘s technology staff began development of the current site about 11 months ago.
Anyone can look at the website, but cities and counties require permission to post projects (contact ResearchTracking.DOT@state.mn.us for credentials). They can upload photos, plans and weblinks relating to a particular project.
“We want to track anything that is worthy of looking at a few years from now,” Geib said.
Because the website uses Google maps, users can also view archived satellite and ground-level 360-degree imagery of the roads and bridges.
The website is viewable on a tablet, but it still must be tested on smart phones. Developers hope that crews will be able to submit information right from the field.
“We’re pretty happy with it,” said MnDOT software developer John Jones. “We think we’re headed in the right direction.”
The website might eventually be expanded for other areas, such as geotechnical (foundation work), whose practitioners have already expressed an interest.
A rumble strip applied to a center line on Highway 14 near New Ulm in 2004 is one of the projects being tracked.
Soaring construction costs and a rapidly aging infrastructure will require states to revolutionize how they maintain their roadways — but without each other’s help, they won’t be successful.
That was a key message from pavement researchers last week at a MnDOT-hosted peer exchange event, where pavement experts from around North America shared their ideas and research experiences.
“You’ve got to partner with other states, the FHWA and industry,” said Research Engineer Steve Bower of the Michigan Department of Transportation. “We can’t go it alone anymore.”
Researchers at the event reviewed recent pooled-fund studies conducted at MnROAD, MnDOT’s innovative pavement testing center, to review successful implementation strategies, develop common practices to calculate benefits and help prioritize research topics for MnROAD’s core 2016 research and reconstruction.
State research departments often lack the time or resources to focus on innovations that could reduce future maintenance costs. If not for Minnesota leading the effort on many of these topics and providing a top-notch research facility, the peer exchange attendees said much of this research just wouldn’t happen.
“We don’t have a closed-loop facility with all these different test sections that MnROAD has; no one does,” said Larry Wiser of the Federal Highway Administration’s Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center.
Researchers came from Missouri, Maine, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, California, Ontario, Wisconsin, Indiana and Washington for the three-day workshop.
WisDOT Chief Materials Management Engineer Steven Krebs said the research done at MNROAD on the impact of modern farm implements on pavement was invaluable in drafting new state legislation. WisDOT was able to quantify the amount of damage done to the pavement and use the data to dispute mistruths and misinformation. The state is now working with counties on possible remedies and weight-limit enforcement techniques.
Whereas Minnesota has taken the lead on studying such issues, it is now asking fellow states to not only participate in future such studies, but to also partner in the operations at MnROAD. At the peer exchange, the response to this idea — especially from states closest to Minnesota — was positive, despite everyone’s lean budgets.
Peer exchange participants said more effort and funding is needed to implement research findings, which FHWA officials said costs significantly more than the research itself.
Past research also needs to be more accessible and there should be better sharing of information, particularly online, they said.
“This (peer exchange) gave us ideas to take back. Our research budget is getting tighter. It’s nice to be able to say, ‘You do a part of it and we’ll do a part of it,’ ” said California transportation researcher Joe Holland.
Crossroads 