Project Selection and Development
The Pavement Office is responsible for managing TDOT’s Standard Operating Guidelines for highway resurfacing. These guidelines ensure appropriate selection of paving treatment type and timing to optimize the Department’s return on investment. TDOT utilizes a long list of pavement resurfacing treatments, ranging from low-cost fog seals to total milling and replacement of asphalt. Resurfacing projects are selected based on existing pavement conditions such as distress, roughness, traffic level, and pavement age. Historical experience has proven that, when properly implemented, diverse pavement programs maintain highway networks at a much higher quality level than programs which only pave “poor” roads first. This diverse program type is referred to as a “pavement preservation” program, in which select roads with fair conditions are preserved with lower cost treatments before they have the opportunity to deteriorate. The Pavement office utilizes historical pavement data to continuously verify that all project selections are cost-effective, and pavement preservation has repeatedly proven to be a highly cost-effective approach. More information on Pavement Preservation can be found at https://www.pavementpreservation.org/