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Show Heavy Truck Traffic wearing out State Highways Utah's roads are wearing out faster than they can be repaired according to a Utah Department of Transportation Tran-sportation report. The report, entitled "Good Roads Cost Less," says because of the lack of funds to rehabilitate roads, even more roads will deteriorate to an unacceptable level in the future. UDOT engineers explained ex-plained that every time a vehicle drives on a road, a little bit of the road is "used up." The effect of each vehicle is cumulative. Highways High-ways are designed to withstand the predicted number of "load applications" ap-plications" over a 20 year life of the road. (UDOT engineers measure load applications in 18,000 pound equivalent axle weights. It takes the passage of 12,500 passenger cars to equal the damage of one legally loaded semi-trailer truck.) As a road approaches the end of its design life, it starts , to deteriorate noticeably. The road should be resurfaced resur-faced at this point. The longer resurfacing is delayed, the greater the thickness of asphalt (and greater the expense) necessary to restore the road to a useful condition. Many roads in Utah have now exceeded their design lives, the UDOT says. Because of the lack of funds for resurfacing, UDOT maintenance crews have attempted to keep these roads "patched together." As the roads deteriorate, the maintenance effort becomes more intensive and expensive. ex-pensive. The report noted that existing pavements should be upgraded as . expeditiously ex-peditiously as possible due to inflation trends and the interests of energy conservation. con-servation. The report concluded con-cluded the $69 million necessary to improve the system could be recovered in a little over four years through improved benefits. There would be a net savings to the individual motorist per mile of vehicle travel (due to reduced operating costs) even with a fuel tax increase, UDOT officials said. |