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Editor's Note: In last week's Asphalt Insider, we offered up our completely subjective picks for the Top 10 stores that impacted the asphalt industry in 2013. Click HERE to read the roundup. This week we offer our predictions of the Top 10 stories that will be making headlines in 2014. If you're curious how our prognosticators fared with last year's predictions, you can read them HERE.
1. The California economy continues its slow, painful crawl out of a deep recession, with some areas experiencing brisk economic activity while other areas remain in the doldrums. Residential construction, in particular, begins to gain traction, leading to more asphalt paving work. After shedding hundreds of thousands of construction jobs during the Great Recession, 2014 will mark a renewed flurry of hiring to replace workers that had been laid off or retired in recent years.
2. Caltrans publishes a new pavement specification intended to more closely mirror the national "Superpave" standard, but confusion over the biggest change to asphalt pavement specifications in years leads to a flurry of training classes and other outreach efforts to bring agency and industry representatives up to speed.
3. The political gridlock in Washington begins to ease somewhat, clearing the path for a bipartisan agreement on a long-term surface transportation funding bill. The compromise won't be done prior to the Sept. 30, 2014 expiration of the current federal transportation funding bill, leading to a series of short-term extensions until the broad outlines of a final bill is agreed upon by year's end. U.S. Rep. John Garamendi of California emerges as an influential and pragmatic voice for a compromise bill.
4. New air-quality regulations at the state level are implemented in 2014, causing widespread economic hardship for the asphalt pavement industry. In 2013, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency authorized the California Air Resources Board to enforce CARB's much-despised In-Use Off-Road Diesel Vehicle Regulation, including the regulation's performance requirements, such as turnover requirements and restrictions on adding older, dirtier Tier 0 and Tier 1 vehicles. CARB announced that it would begin enforcement of restrictions on adding Tier 0 and Tier 1 vehicles on Jan. 1, 2014. Enforcement of the first fleet average for large fleets (more than 5,000 total fleet horsepower) begins as scheduled on July 1, 2014. Those companies that have not yet invested in their fleets face economic hardship with little recourse.
5. The advocacy group Transportation California, working in concert with the California Alliance for Jobs and others, moves forward with an ambitious program of transportation funding reforms, including backing legislation to lower the voter threshold for approving local sales tax measures devoted to transportation, reducing transportation fund diversions and going to voters with a ballot measure to increase the state's Vehicle License Fee to pay for road repairs and other transportation system management activities. While polls show growing public support for the ballot measure, it loses by a razor-thin margin on Election Day in November, throwing state transportation funding into a crisis.
6. A "top to bottom" evaluation of Caltrans conducted by the Smart State Transportation Initiative at the University of Wisconsin is released and provides a laundry-list of opportunities for improvement for the department, which are the subject of Legislative hearings later in the year.
7. Owing largely to an improving state economy, and increased tax receipts into the general fund, the Brown administration announces that it will accelerate the repayment of more than $300 million in loans made from the state highway fund during the recent economic downturn. State and local officials immediately draw up plans to push the funds out on the street for road repair projects.
8. An ambitious effort to raise $3 billion to repair streets and roads in Los Angeles fails to garner enough support to go before voters in 2013, but the effort's backers vow to continue to press for a way to pay to address the city's 60-year backlog of road repairs.
9. The use of thin-lift asphalt overlays gain momentum as one more tool in the pavement preservation toolbox, adding longer life, additional structural integrity and a smooth ride to existing asphalt pavements.
10. Research on asphalt pavements will make headlines in 2014, including new studies on "green" pavement strategies. New research also adds insight into Life-Cycle-Cost Analysis (LCCA), which attempts to fix the true cost of pavement over the entire cost of the project, and pavement Life-cycle Assessment, which delves into the environmental impacts of pavements. The research helps elevate the discourse over pavement selection criteria.
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