GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS

A pavement condition study of River Road, the main thoroughfare in Rosemont, Illinois, concluded that more than 35% of the pavement area was in need of patching. With 35% being the cutoff for patching on a road, the city elected to reconstruct approximately half of the road on the project and rehabilitate the other half. The principal reconstruction and rehab work began August 28, 1997, and had to be completed by September 19 because of an exhibition scheduled at the city's convention center. Traffic management was critical to the project, since the road has an average daily traffic count of 25,000-30,000 vehicles. Milling crews removed 75,000 tons of asphalt pavement from the roadway in the early days of the project. The reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) was taken to the contractor's asphalt plant where it was stockpiled for reuse at a later time. While only a small amount of RAP from the existing pavement was used as base material on the reconstructed sections, RAP from the contractor's existing stockpile was incorporated into the hot-mix asphalt (HMA) for the new pavement. In the reconstructed sections, the concrete and asphalt was removed and replaced by 15 in (381 mm) of HMA. The use of concrete was prohibitive on the project because of the time it would have taken for the pavement to cure.