Paving pain | The skyrocketing cost of asphalt means more potholes and more innovation for Maine's roads
A drastic rise in liquid asphalt prices means Maine drivers are in for a bumpy ride, and some fear that deteriorating roads could also put a brake on the state’s economy.
In the last year, the price of liquid asphalt — the sticky petroleum product that is heated and mixed with small stones to make pavement — has more than doubled from $330 per ton in January to a high of $800 in August.
The price has eased somewhat in the last two months, but not in proportion to the drop in the cost of oil. The sudden rise in asphalt prices has forced both state and local highway departments to curtail paving for projects scheduled for the season. It has also spurred new interest in asphalt recycling and less energy-intensive techniques of producing pavement.
Members of nearly every public works department in the state describe 2008 as a year of triage in respect to road maintenance, with departments making selective use of whatever asphalt they could afford and forgoing some projects altogether. In Bangor, for instance, the public works department, which usually resurfaces 13 miles of road per year, only finished about eight miles before exhausting its budget. Workers also thinned the usual 2-inch application of new pavement to one-and-a-half inches.
The situation was no different on state roads or the Maine Turnpike, where road improvement projects were scaled back this year because of asphalt prices that shot up 40% in July alone. The Maine Department of Transportation suspended its repaving efforts in August, after running through its $105 million paving budget but only completing 740 of the 825 miles of road scheduled for paving this year.
Recycled roads?
Though the paving program will resume next spring, MDOT spokesman Mark Latti said the deferred maintenance will inevitably take a toll on the overall quality of state roads. Latti said the state will address serious safety issues, but in general drivers should be prepared to encounter more pot holes and posted bridges.
“Basically, it means that some roads needs are going unmet,” he said. “Without projects being done it means some roads will be in a little rougher shape than we’d like to see.” On the Maine Turnpike, which typically repaves seven miles of roadway a year, road crews paved only the travel lanes this year, leaving the shoulders untouched in order to save on material costs. Another planned improvement on the turnpike, a $1 million repair of deteriorated roadway around the Wells interchange, was reduced to a $150,000 temporary fix. Road construction crews will have to return to both projects in the near future to finish the jobs.
“That’s quite unusual for us,” said Maine Turnpike spokesman Dan Paradee. “I don’t think it’s necessarily the way we’d like to do business but it was a decision forced by the cost of pavement and everything else.”
Even before this year’s jump in asphalt prices, many roads in Maine were suffering from inadequate maintenance, according to a study by the Maine Better Transportation Association. In a 2007 study, the Augusta-based non-partisan group reported that 25% of Maine’s roads were in poor condition in 2004, up from six percent in 2001.
No one trying to figure out how Maine will keep up with road repairs expects to see a return of cheap liquid asphalt. The black substance is one of the last and least profitable products derived from refining crude oil. With the increase in diesel, gas and other fuel prices, refineries have found ways to squeeze more high-profit fuels from a barrel of oil, which translates to lower asphalt production, according to Charles Banks, executive director of the Maine Asphalt Pavement Association.
There is no futures market for asphalt, meaning contractors cannot lock in a certain price and budget accordingly. “We just have to take it as it comes. What the price is, is what we have to pay,” said Scott Leach, northeast regional manager for Lane Construction Corp., based in Cheshire, Conn. Leach estimated liquid asphalt would remain close to $700 per ton for the remainder of the year.
Even if liquid asphalt remains at a near-record price, the state hopes to bring down the cost of pavement through greater recycling of old road materials. Though recycled asphalt has been used for years, the state only allows contractors to use limited quantities of this material because of quality concerns. This year, the MDOT has begun working with a contractor in Phillips on upgrades to his plant that would allow stricter quality controls and greater use of recycled materials.
The MDOT hopes to launch several more similar projects by next summer. If successful, these methods could boost the use of recycled material and achieve savings of up to 20%, according to Brian Luce, a paving specialist with MDOT.
Luce said it will require some experimentation but the benefits of the new techniques could be great. “We don’t really know what the potential is,” he said. “This wasn’t even on the radar for the state of Maine a year ago.”
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments