AOT: With current paving budget, 'very poor' roads could rise to 48% in 10 years; bridges show mixed outlook

Summary

Agency of Transportation staff told the House Transportation Committee that, under current paving funding levels, pavement conditions would deteriorate substantially over the next decade and that bridge conditions are less responsive to annual investments, with differing targets for interstate, state and town bridges.

Jeremy Reed, chief engineer for the Vermont Agency of Transportation, told the House Transportation Committee on Feb. 26 that the agency’s pavement and bridge condition projections show worsening network condition under the current funding plan.

Reed described the agency’s measurement approach: the pavement composite index (PCI) is calculated from data collected on five‑hundredths‑of‑a‑mile segments that include ride (roughness), rutting and two types of cracking, then translated into a 0–100 index and assigned condition labels (80–100 good, 65–80 fair, 40–65 poor, below 40 very poor). "We get a data point for every 5 hundredths of a mile," Reed said.

At today’s buying power for paving—$103,000,000—the agency reported a travel‑weighted average PCI of roughly 74 and said the share of…

AOT: With current paving budget, 'very poor' roads could rise to 48% in 10 years; bridges show mixed outlook

Summary

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