As required under MAP-21, Federal Highway Administration has announced a notice of proposed rulemaking* to assess the condition of pavements and bridges on the National Highway System (NHS).
Under the proposed rule, the agency also proposes the process for States and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) to establish and report on performance targets reflecting the proposed measures, as well as the methodology to evaluate whether a state has made significant progress toward achieving those targets.
Finally, FHWA proposes a minimum level for the condition of pavement on the Interstate System and incorporates the minimum condition level established by MAP-21 for bridges on the NHS.
Proposed Pavement Condition Measures
FHWA proposes measures that would be applicable to all mainline Interstate System and non-Interstate NHS pavements regardless of ownership or maintenance responsibility of roads within a given State or metropolitan planning area. The FHWA is proposing four measures for pavement condition to determine the percentage of pavements in good, fair, and poor condition within the Interstate and non-Interstate highway systems. The measures for concrete pavements include International Roughness Index, cracking, and faulting (for CRCP punchouts are used in lieu of faulting).
ACPA’s National Performance Measures Task Force is in the process of reviewing the proposed rule in detail, and will be discussing the rule prior to offering formal comments, due to FHWA on April 6.
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* The Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) requires the Secretary of Transportation to develop new regulations to establish Transportation Performance Management requirements for the purposes of carrying out the National Highway Performance Program. The Pavement and Bridge Condition Performance Management “notice of proposed rulemaking” (NPRM) was published January 5, with a final deadline for submitting comments of April 6. The NPRM is available online. Additional details are available in an FHWA fact sheet at: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/tpm/rule/pmfactsheet.pdf.