Editor's Note: As 2013 draws to a close, we highlight our choices for the Top 10 stories that impacted the asphalt industry in California over the past year. Look for our 2014 predictions in next week's newsletter. Click HERE to read last year's predictions and judge for yourself how well we did.
1. The nation began the year with a compromise, short-term surface transportation bill in place but little consensus as to what to do after it expires on Sept. 30, 2014. The stop-gap measure known as MAP-21 contained $100 billion in funding, but did nothing to address the long-term issues surrounding dropping gas tax revenue that could lead to the insolvency of the federal highway fund. With the outlook on federal transportation funding looking bleak, a sudden budget compromise hammered out in 
Washington at the end of the year, coupled with renewed dialog about the gas tax and other forms of revenue, raised hopes that policy makers will roll up their sleeves and address transportation funding in 214 before another fiscal crisis, and election cycle, ushers in a new era of political gridlock.
2. The advocacy group Transportation California proposed a statewide ballot measure hiking the state's vehicle license fee to pay for transportation programs, jump-starting the transportation funding policy debate. The governor's top transportation official, State Transportation Agency Secretary Brian Kelly, told a budget hearing in December that improving state government finances might allow the state to repay early the hundreds of millions of dollars of transportation funds that were diverted in the past few years to shore up a general fund leaking red ink. While a poll of Asphalt Insider readers showed increased optimism for 2014 on the road funding front, many uncertainties remain.
3. The California economy began to show the first real signs of life in its agonizingly slow recovery from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. As the year drew to a close, economic indicators were trending up, but the construction industry recovery continued to lag behind other sectors, due largely to the improving but still wounded housing market. In the meantime, competition for projects remained robust. California's vast size meant that the state was home to several "micro-climates" of economic activity, with the Silicon Valley, Southern San Joaquin Valley and Bay Area showing brisk construction activity, while many parts of the Central Valley and the Inland Empire east of Los Angeles remained in the economic doldrums.
4. California's foray into Long-life Asphalt Pavements, otherwise known as perpetual pavements, garnered national attention, with media coverage in national trade magazines and a "Pavement Pioneer" award presented to Caltrans by the national Asphalt Pavement Alliance for work on two projects on Interstate 5 in the north state. A successful demonstration project was previously built on the I-710 Freeway in Los Angeles County and is performing to
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| Work on I-5 in the north state. |
expectations according to an analysis by the University of California Pavement Research Center. A collaborative effort that involved Caltrans, industry and academia resulted in the pavement strategy being rolled out in other areas of the state, including the Bay Area, where Teichert Construction followed long-life designs in rehabilitating a stretch of Interstate 80 that connects San Francisco and Sacramento.
5. Coming on the heels of pro-recycling legislation by then-Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco, Caltrans published an update to its specifications in 2013 permitting up to 25 percent of RAP in asphalt pavement mixes, up from the previous standard of 15 percent, and touted the move in a special report on the department's various "green" initiatives. The move was also hailed by industry as a way to save tax dollars, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make the most efficient use of our national resources. The specification continues to evolve, meanwhile, as Caltrans announces its intention to go to a "binder replacement" system of calculating RAP usage, and also to incorporate more recycled tire rubber and roofing shingles in asphalt mixes.
6. Environmental regulation in California, led by major changes air quality regulations, continued to make news in 2013. The industry continued to grapple with stringent air-quality regulations imposed by local air districts and the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Companies also continued to be peppered with letters from advocacy groups warning of the potential punitive actions for non-compliance of Proposition 65, the state's toxic substances reporting law. The CalAPA Environmental Committee was active in assessing the various changes, engaging regulators on behalf of industry and communicating important developments to members. Caltrans published a new report, meanwhile, that signaled out innovate asphalt pavements as the department's No. 1 greenhouse gas reducer.
7. Caltrans huddles with industry representatives throughout the year as the department refined its asphalt specification to more closely conform to the national "Superpave" asphalt pavement
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| 'Superpave' testing equipment demonstration and class in Sacramento. |
standard. With numerous issues to resolve, the department announced in December it was pushing off its review deadline for the latest version of the specification to January in the hopes of giving the widest possible opportunity for industry and local agency representatives to study and comment on the changes. At various CalAPA technical committee meetings across the state, "Superpave" is a topic of high interest.
8. The City of Los Angeles, facing a daunting backlog of delayed road repairs, advances a bold, $3 billion "Save our Streets" initiative to tax homeowners to pay for the upkeep of local streets and roads. While studying the concept is endorsed by the City Council, plenty of political hurdles remain before the funding begins to flow to the city streets and address a repair backlog that in some instances is 50 years or more.
9. Caltrans published a new smooth-pavement standard, ushering in the era of using sophisticated computers and sensing devices to gauge pavement smoothness. Pegged on the International Roughness Index, or IRI, the smoothness standard sought to further incentivize smooth pavement jobs, a characteristic very noticeable to motorists. Research, meanwhile, continues to point to pavement smoothness as a contributor to increased fuel economy and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. To implement the new standard, which requires new mobile measuring equipment, Caltrans unveils a calibration location near Sacramento. The move signals the beginning of the end of an era for the venerable "California profilograph" that has been measuring pavement smoothness in California and elsewhere for decades.
10. U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairwoman of the powerful Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is named "Legislator of the Year" by the National Asphalt Pavement Association for her work in shepherding the $100 billion "MAP-21" surface transportation act through a gridlocked Congress. Boxer was praised for her masterful job in lining up bipartisan support for the bill during an era of partisan bickering on Capitol Hill.
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| U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California (center) speaks with asphalt industry leaders earlier this year at the U.S. Capitol. |
