ABSTRACT
The California state highway system is comprised of over 50,000 lane-miles of pavements serving a daily vehicle-miles-travelled (VMT) of 1.6 billion. The State highway system continues to age; requiring frequent maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) to improve ride quality and safety and extend pavement life. In response to the California State Assembly Bill AB 32, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has been promoting sustainable solutions to control greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions from all pavement-related activities including pavement M&R and vehicles operation. There has been no in-depth study utilizing network-level data to accurately evaluate GHG emissions due to M&R needs and ride quality deterioration. In this study, the Caltrans pavement management system (PaveM) was used to quantify GHG emissions attributed to M&R activities (Materials & Construction Stage) and vehicles operation affected by pavement roughness/smoothness (Use Stage) over a 30-year analysis period. Several scenarios employing different performance-based optimization/prioritization schemes commonly used in project selection simulated under variousfunding plans were analyzed in addition to freefall (do-nothing) scenarios. The estimated pavement repair budgets, condition improvement, GHG emissions reductions, and fuel cost savings were compared. The analysis demonstrated the effectiveness of the Caltrans’ PaveM system in evaluating the pavement carbon footprints of the state highway network, and identifying M&R funds allocation methods that minimize both the repair cost and negative impact on environment.
