Roadmap to the Future

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has introduced the Pavement Management Roadmap to guide the future of pavement in the United States. This is part of a plan to bring together pavement design and pavement management in order to improve performance. In the past, state transportation agencies rarely used data on pavement management in pavement design because they were two separate divisions in most Departments of Transportation (DOTs). The Pavement Management Roadmap is intended to improve the effectiveness of pavement management programs by addressing needs at all levels and to overcome the separation between pavement design and management. The Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG), which helps develop pavement design, began the new era of pavement management and design and is being adopted by more and more local DOTs. The MEPDG uses existing performance data from pavement management systems, thereby improving the next pavement design. The Pavement Management Roadmap is extending the work of the MEPDG by broadening the role of pavement management and bringing it together with pavement design to develop a more efficient system.