San Bernardino County Pavement Management Program

Location

County Wide

City or County Responsible for Project

County of San Bernardino

Category

Roads: Efficient and Sustainable Road Maintenance, Construction and Reconstruction Projects.

Author

Sundaramoorthy (Sri) Srirajan, M.S., P.E.

Organization

County of San Bernardino Department of Public Works

Address

825 E. 3rd Street, Room 143, San Bernardino, CA 92415-0835

Phone

(909) 387-8166

Project Description

The County of San Bernardino has over 2,100 miles of paved roadway under its jurisdiction, which becomes a challenge to maintain with limited funds. Road surface quality is determined by a score from 0 to a 100 called the Pavement Condition Index (PCI), with 0 indicating a completely failed road and 100 indicating a new or resurfaced road. Paved roads deteriorate over time based on traffic, weather, sunlight, and other factors. As the PCI of a roadway drops, the cost of rehabilitation escalates exponentially if not addressed in a timely manner. The County developed a strategic Pavement Management Program (PMP) to manage the County’s road network to make the most effective use of resources in an environmentally responsible manner. The PMP allows the County to improve and preserve the overall condition of our roads to enhance the quality of life for our communities through a systematic and sustainable approach. The County assigned each road into one of five road categories based on traffic volume, truck traffic, urban/rural location, road importance, and functional class. Once the County’s roads were categorized, road repair strategies ranging from chip seals to full depth reconstruction were assigned to each category and entered into a pavement management system software program (ICON-6) to evaluate the best repair strategy for a given road and assist in creating an annual road project list. Since County unincorporated areas are distributed over more than 20,000 square miles, the County determined that the best practice is to group County roads into different geographical zones and that all road preservation treatments would be completed for the entire zone as a unit. San Bernardino County has its own operation forces to apply chip seals and maintenance overlays, which are among the most cost effective pavement preservation strategies. This “Once in, stay in/once out, stay out” philosophy helps reduce mobilization costs and allows application of over 200 road miles of chip seals per year. In addition, the public benefits by minimizing the presence of construction vehicles. This philosophy also reduces heavy equipment fuel consumption and reduces greenhouse gas emissions. By using a systematic approach and the support of a strategic pavement management program and efficient construction techniques developed over the past years, the County was able not only to maintain an overall road network system rating of 80 (PCI rating of “Very Good Condition”) but also to increase the overall road network PCI score on 2,100 miles of roadway from 73 in 2013 to 80 in just four years. The County invested approximately $18 million annually during this period to increase the PCI score from 73 to 80.