The Asphalt Pavement Alliance (APA) recently announced a historic degree of industry unity and simultaneously launched its new campaign in support of asphalt pavements. The announcements were made at a press conference on Feb. 17 during the World of Asphalt 2010 Show and Conference.
“This is a great partnership between the State Asphalt Pavement Associations (SAPA), the Asphalt Institute (AI) and the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA),” said David Yates, chairman of the SAPA group. Yates is the executive director of the Missouri Asphalt Pavement Association. “The state associations are at the grassroots. We’re the ones who are taking the messages to the customers. The alliance has teams working in all the right areas, and the SAPAs have people all over the U.S.—different climates, different terrain, different circumstances—who will be giving us feedback as to what’s needed.”
The unveiling of the new APA campaign included a policy white paper, a comprehensive technical document, a new website at www.asphaltroads.org and a new tagline and imagery.
“Just a little more than a year ago, the alliance restructured itself into teams. Each team’s members include all three groups: NAPA, AI and SAPA,” said Gaylen Ghylin of Commercial Asphalt Co. and co-chair of the alliance. “These teams are working in overdrive to provide a constant stream of new publications and products, at least one new product every month this year.”
The Engineering Team developed the technical document “Perpetual Asphalt Pavements: A Synthesis,” while the Advocacy Team released the white paper, titled “America Rides on Us. Asphalt.”
“‘Asphalt. America Rides on Us’ is our new tagline,” said Mike O’Leary, ambassador for MeadWestvaco in Kentucky. “It has the perfect double meaning: Asphalt is the pavement material that carries most of the traffic in the U.S., plus it’s a material that Americans can rely on—we’ve got a lot riding on asphalt. Along with the tagline, the alliance also has a new look for ads, trade show booths and printed materials. The printed materials are available as downloads from our new website, asphaltroads.org.”
The perpetual pavement concept was first articulated in 2000, and the concept has rapidly gained acceptance. NAPA’s Dave Newcomb, the principal author of the new synthesis document, said it “captures the activities that have taken place over the last 10 years, synthesizes the information in a way that is useful to providing guidance for perpetual pavement design and construction and provides a vision for further research and development to refine perpetual pavements.”
