...being built, congestion is increasing. Existing roads require more repairs, further disrupting traffic and leading to public displeasure at work zone-related travel delays. These trends only stand to become worse unless the transportation community can craft innovative solutions, such as accelerating urban freeway reconstructions.

According to The 2005 Urban Mobility Report by the Texas Transportation Institute, from 1982 to 2000 the number of urban areas in the United States with more than 20 hours of annual delay per peak-hour traveler grew from 5 in 1982 to 51 in 2003, caused in part by work zones. During the 2001 peak roadwork season, for example, there were an estimated 3,110 construction work zones on the National Highway System. In the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA's) Moving Ahead: The American Public Speaks on Roadways and Transportation Communities, 32 percent of survey respondents expressed dissatisfaction with work zones.

On the Fast Track In California

As with other States, California is searching for a way to address the problems caused by the converging trends of more congestion, lower budgets, and roads in need of repair. The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), which oversees a State highway system of 78,000 lane-kilometers (km) (48,467 lane-miles), is achieving some success through its Long-Life Pavement Rehabilitation Strategies (LLPRS) program. The program, initiated in 1998, addresses California's need for cost-effective practices in rebuilding the aging pavements in its urban highway network. The goal is to rebuild approximately 2,800 lane-km (1,740 lane-miles) of high-volume urban freeway with pavements that are designed to last more than 30 years.

In 2004, Caltrans applied an innovative, fast-track reconstruction program to a heavily traveled LLPRS project on I-15 in the city of Devore in southern California. A 4.5-km (2.8-mile) stretch of badly damaged concrete lanes was rebuilt in only two single-roadbed continuous closures (also called "extended closures") totaling 210 hours, using counterflow traffic (opposite direction to the main traffic flow) and 24-hour-per-day construction operations. Traditional nighttime-only closures would have required 10 months' work, as estimated on the preconstruction schedule. Instead, the rebuilding took 19 days, with each extended closure for one roadbed lasting 9.5 days.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Other innovations adopted for this I-15 Rapid Rehabilitation (Rapid Rehab) project included:

* A moveable barrier system, which provided dynamic lane reconfiguration to minimize traffic disruption

* A rapid-strength concrete mix that made it possible to open the project to traffic 12 hours after its placement, while still allowing for slipform paving in...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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