 Pennsylvania's modern high-speed highways, carriers of millions of vehicles daily, linking city to town, town to countryside. But once out in that countryside, you can find other types of roads, carrying far less traffic, but just as important to the people who use them. Today, we will look at methods for effectively maintaining those low-volume roads, how to intelligently blend time, money, and materials to maintain these important links in our road system. Let's begin by determining just how much road we are talking about. Of our 45,000 plus miles of roadway, 8,500 or almost 20% is classified as low-volume, one in every five miles of our system. These low-volume roads range from the Type 10, the unimproved road, to the Type 20, the stabilized road, to the Type 30, the improved or pie crust road. This program will concentrate on the maintenance procedures for all types of these roads with the accent on the pie crust or Type 30 road, which makes up the great majority of our low-volume network. We will look at the differences in the procedures used, as well as the similarities. And we will especially consider the procedures necessary to maintain these roads in the best possible condition for the traveling public. As with any maintenance task, we first begin with the planning. Low-volume roads scheduled for maintenance should be inspected by the assistant county maintenance manager responsible for the area and the highway foreman whose crew is responsible for the work. Items such as permission to leave waste material, permission to enter upon private property, those things should have been done in the office along with the normal work planning. But out on the road, discussing problems like shoulders, ruts, drainage, and agreeing on why they occurred and how they should be corrected, ensures that the same deficiencies are noted and a mutual solution is agreed upon, one that is both adequate and economical. The key to highway maintenance, low or high-volume road, drainage. Lack of proper drainage is the root cause of 90% of the problems you will encounter. So any plan that you have should begin with drainage. Drainage correction procedures could include slope reshaping, ditch clearing, installation of drains, removal of poor material and replacement with new material, inlets and under drains must be cleaned out. But whatever you use as a method can only be determined by that on-site inspection. Only when the drainage problems are corrected can the remaining maintenance activities begin. Depending on the type of road, this could include grating, scarifying or reshaping, patching, stabilizing and rolling. Let's first talk about grating. If there is an essential piece of equipment for low-volume road maintenance, it is the grater. Just as essential as the grater itself is the experienced and knowledgeable operator. Here the grater operator is clearing the ditch on a type 30 or pie-crushed road. His first pass serves to pull the accumulated vegetation from the ditch. Note the careful pass around the inlet The final cleaning of the inlet and the inlet area is done with hand tools. Now the grater makes a second pass, smoothing the ditch line and pulling the material out to where the belt loader can get at it. The foreman uses the grade stick to check the shoulder slope. This periodic checking ensures that the ditch line stays at the slope agreed upon between the foreman and the operator as best suited for this road. The belt loader begins to pick up the material. Once again, be sure you have the locations for dumping your waste material agreed upon beforehand. Now is not the time to be wondering where or where. The key to belt loading efficiency is the presence of the truck under the loader. No truck, no production. The number of trucks needed is determined by the hauling time and the volume of material. Plan ahead. Where guide rail is in place, side dosing could be needed. Here again, that pre-job inspection by the assistant county maintenance manager and the highway foreman is required. If the width of the shoulder is greater than the stroke length of a side doser, or if small washouts are present, then manual work must be provided. More planning. Depending upon the availability of the equipment, you may get a chance to realign and or adjust the guide rail. As you can see, standard maintenance procedures for Type 30 roads are much the same as for any paved road. But when we start dealing with un-paved roads, there are some significant differences. The road that we have been working on adjoins a section of Type 20 or stabilized road. So let's examine the procedures for the Type 20 and compare and contrast them to the Type 30 road that we just looked at. As I said, Type 20 roads are stabilized. Stabilizing is defined as changing the quality of the soil by mixing it with material that will increase its load-bearing capacity and resistance to weathering or displacement. In short, it makes the road harder. But before that stabilizing material can be added, a lot of work needs to be done. Just as with the Type 30, we begin with the drainage, clearing and shaping the ditches. An essential part of reshaping the road with the grader is the establishment of a road crown. The ideal crown is shaped like a flattened letter A in that its highest point is at the center of the road and its lowest point is at the parallel ditches. It's important to maintain a crown like this because motorists tend to straddle the middle of the road and cause ruts to wear on both sides of the existing crown. This rutting allows water to stand and eventually deteriorates the surface of the road. Graded material is carried back to both edges and not allowed the windrow. Windrows can give you soft spots. These soft spots are generally caused by the lack of proper drainage. If you have, as was suggested at the beginning, done your drainage work, then the soft spots once corrected will not recur. Repairing soft spots is much like repairing potholes in that the old material is fully cut out and new material is put in. Properly placed material of suitable quality and compaction will add immeasurably to the wearability of the roadway. As the grading occurs, small rocks will be brought to the surface. These should be removed and the material put in their place. Sometimes normal grading is not sufficient. That's when scarifying is needed. The scarifier is attached to the motor grader. The scarifying is done when the surface material is still damp. Usually, along with the scarifying, is the addition of new material which should be thoroughly blended by grading before compaction is begun. You will find it necessary to roll the road. The surface should be rolled until the material is thoroughly compacted. The addition of a stabilizing agent helps, as I said before, to make the road harder as well as keeping down the dust. Calcium chloride, sodium chloride, or bituminous materials are most commonly used. Some success has been gained by using fly ash, which is a residue from power plants. As was mentioned earlier, type 10 roads are non-stabilized natural earth. The maintenance procedures used in type 10 roads are very similar to those that are used on the type 20 with a couple of differences. Here, the grader is making his path along the shoulders, pulling the material from the shoulder and pushing it towards the center of the road. Note that the roller is coming along immediately after the grader is impacting the graded earth. With type 10 roads, material is not normally replaced, but is indeed reused. The grader pulls the material into the center of the road and using the blade breaks it down. Soft spots are corrected as with the type 20. Cut out, new material put in, and compact it. As with our type 20 roads, the establishment and maintenance of a road crown is of paramount importance. Here, the earth pulled from the shoulders is being shaped by the grader operator so as to establish that road crown. The crown is checked with a string line. The accepted rule of thumb of one half inch of drop per one foot of roadway is a good rule to follow on unpaved and non-stabilized roads. Final compaction is done as was done with the type 20 with the roller. Proper compaction is important if you're going to get the road surface to last for more than a matter of days. Let's take a moment and go through what we talked about. We looked at the planning that went into low volume road maintenance. We recognized the grader, the grader operator, and the essential part they play in this operation. We looked at the similarities in the maintenance procedures for these roads, type 10, type 20, and type 30. As we said at the beginning of the program, the key to effective low volume road maintenance is drainage. It cannot be overemphasized that if drainage is not done, there is no purpose in doing the rest of the work. It's a waste of time and a waste of money. Intelligent and common sense advice from the assistant county maintenance manager will help to form an and his crew to correct and maintain our low volume road network. Every road regardless of type is a vital part of our road network, a link from city to countryside. Emergency vehicles need these roads to provide essential services. Remember, every road, no matter how small, is important to someone.