The Asphalt Pavement Alliance (APA – www.driveasphalt.com) has announced its newest awards (2021) for Perpetual Pavements.  New pavements that are designed for a 50-year life and that meet PerRoad design criteria are eligible for the APA Perpetual Pavement By Design award.  Pavement that rebuild and add a new asphalt structure over an existing road, and which meet the 50-year/ PerRoad criteria are eligible for the Perpetual Pavement by Conversion award.  WSDOT won both of these awards in the first year of the program and has now followed up with three additional awards this year. Congratulations!

The list of the Washington state 2021 APA Awards are here: 2021 PPA WA Press Release FINAL. Learn more about Perpetual Pavement Awards at www.driveasphalt.org/awards

There is also a great article about 2020’s Perpetual Pavement by Conversion award winning project published by Roads & Bridges magazine.  View the article here.

All three of 2020’s Perpetual Pavement award winning projects were featured in the September/ October 2021 edition of Asphalt Pavement magazine.  View the article here.

The asphalt industry has a long history of using greenhouse gas reducing materials such as reclaimed asphalt pavement, recycled tire rubber, and more to build ever more sustainable roads. As countries stop importing waste plastics, the question of “What to do with our plastic waste?” has grown. One potential solution is to use recycled plastic in asphalt.

As strong supporters of recycling responsibly, the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) is working alongside other partners within the asphalt pavement industry and with plastics manufacturers to study the practical feasibility of reusing plastics in asphalt pavements.

NAPA has launched a webpage to showcase the start of our research.  Many questions remain related to the long-term performance impact of plastic in asphalt pavements, the true environmental impacts, potential material cost increases, worker health & safety, operational feasibility, and the eventual re-recyclability of asphalt mixtures that incorporate plastic in “first generation” plastics enhanced asphalt mixtures.

The NAPA plastics in asphalt dedicated webpage is located here.  NAPA most current publication on the state of knowledge regarding plastics in asphalt is provided here.

When it comes to flexibility, asphalt pavements provide Performance for a Lifetime.

Watch this quick APA video highlighting the sustainability, innovation, value and flexibility of today’s asphalt pavements!

And please also review these three recent FHWA videos covering Asphalt Pavement Principles (select the topic in the upper right hand corner of the video block).

The Asphalt Pavement Alliance (APA) has begun publishing its Western / Pacific Coast Regional Council Blog, The Western & Pacific Smooth Ride Sentinel, featuring articles and resources targeted to this APA region.  You can find the blog at https://apapacific.com/

Jon Young, the Executive Director for the Hawaii Asphalt Pavement Industry (HAPI) is the current leader of the Western / Pacific Coast Council.  Please contact Jon with asphalt pavement related articles of interest from the region.

The APA will soon have its four regional councils for the USA in place.  As part of its continuing refinement of advocacy across the country, the Pacific Coast Regional Council approved the addition of  several western states to its regional effort at the 2019 NAPA Annual Meeting, thus forming the Western/ Pacific Regional Council.

Once again, asphalt paving tops the list of the most recycled material in America!  82.2 million tons of hot mix asphalt pavements were reclaimed and reused in 2020.  The Executive Summary is available here: Asphalt Industry Recycled Materials Report 2020 – Executive Summary and the entire report can be viewed at: 2020 NAPA Recycled Materials Usage Report

For a fun overview of asphalt pavements, watch this short video from the Practical Engineering YouTube broadcast.

2021 Paving Awards winners were celebrated at WAPA’s 67th Annual Meeting on November 5^th.  A wide range of “Best of the Best” awards were presented to Washington state’s premier asphalt paving companies alongside the private sector and public owners of the projects.

The public works paving awards were graciously presented by Josh Thomson, the 2021 President of the Washington State Association of County Engineers (WSACE), Lorelei Williams, Immediate Past President of the American Public Works Association of Washington (APWA-WA) and Kevin Dayton, our state’s Chief Engineer and Assistant Deputy Secretary of Transportation.  John Madden of Inland Asphalt Paving Company, WAPA’s newly elected 2022 President, led the awards ceremony and presented the awards for Commercial, Innovative, Heavy/ Industrial and Intermodal paving.

This year’s Carl Minor Award (the highest rated public works paving project of the year) was awarded to WSDOT Contract 9349 – I-90 – Sprague Interchange to Argonne Interchange Paving.  Mark Allen, P.E. led WSDOT’s project management team and Shamrock Paving Inc. of Spokane was the General Contractor and self-performed the paving, placing over 43,000 tons of top quality hot mix asphalt, “magically” transforming the ride on this stretch of the freeway.

The Awards Presentations are available here: WAPA/WSACE/APWA Paving Awards and WSDOT/WAPA Paving Awards

2020 WAPA Awards

2020 WAPA Paving Awards

2019 WAPA Awards

A list of the projects that received awards in 2019 is shown in the Banquet Program booklet, available here: 2019 WAPA Paving Awards Catalog – Web Version

The presentation that accompanied the awards is available here: 2019 Paving Awards Presentation Slideshow

2018 WAPA Awards

The complete list of 2018 WAPA Paving Award Winners is included here: 2018 WSDOT-WAPA Paving Awards

The PowerPoint slide show highlighting each project is available here: 2018 WAPA Paving Awards PPT Presentation

Asphalt Pavement, the national industry magazine of the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA), is published six times per year.  The current edition and past editions are available at the link provided:

Asphalt Pavement

To view past issues of Asphalt Pavement, visit the NAPA archive.