Publication Number: FHWA-RD-00-058
Date: May 2000

In Brief

The fifth and final Lead States Team workshop will be held September 17-19, 2000, in St. Louis, Missouri. The meeting will provide an official wrap-up for members of the seven teams, who have provided expert guidance on Strategic Highway Research Program technologies to other States since 1996. Teams will also discuss their transition plans for shifting responsibilities to the appropriate American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) subcommittees. For more information, contact Haleem Tahir at AASHTO, 301-975-5275 (fax: 301-330-1956; email: haleem.tahir@nist.gov).

Lee Smithson of the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) has taken over as coordinator of AASHTO's Snow and Ice Cooperative Pooled Fund Program (SICOP). Smithson will continue to work out of his Iowa DOT office while serving in the loaned staff position, which runs through 2001. He replaces Rod Pletan of Minnesota DOT, who retired in January.

SICOP was created in 1996 with the goal of identifying emerging technologies and unmet needs in winter maintenance, as well as ways to meet those needs. SICOP's top priorities currently include developing a national anti-icing/road weather information system (RWIS) training package. "There are basic winter maintenance things that everyone needs to know, regardless of location," says Smithson. The training package will cover those basics, including fundamental information on meteorology, chemistry, and RWIS. States will then be able to take the material and customize it to suit their purposes.

For more information on SICOP, contact Lee Smithson at 515-239-1519 (fax: 515-239-1005; email: lsmiths@max.state.ia.us).

Lisa Pope of Harrington-Hughes & Associates, Inc., is the new editor of Focus. She has been a writer on the Focus staff since 1995. She replaces Kathryn Harrington-Hughes, who has left to become the director of operations at the Eno Transportation Foundation in Washington, DC.

A new brochure available from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Ground Penetrating Radar for Measuring Pavement Layer Thickness, details the benefits of using ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to estimate the remaining service life of pavements and select the appropriate maintenance and rehabilitation activities.

Using GPR, pavement management engineers can survey subsurface conditions at a small fraction of the cost of conventional core sampling and gather data for network-level pavement management. This survey work can be done quickly and with minimal traffic disruption and safety risks. Several States, including Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina, and Texas, are already using GPR in their pavement education programs.

To obtain a copy of the brochure, contact Thomas Van at FHWA, 202-366-1341 (fax: 202-366-9981; email: thomas.van@fhwa.dot.gov). The brochure can also be found on the Web at

The long-term pavement performance (LTPP) customer service line has a new phone number. The customer service center, which answers questions regarding the LTPP data and programs and distributes the DataPave software, can now be reached at 865-481-2967 (fax: 865-481-8555; email: ltppinfo@fhwa.dot.gov).

Back to Articles in this Issue