{"id":30981,"date":"2023-03-09T13:43:20","date_gmt":"2023-03-09T18:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=30981"},"modified":"2023-03-09T13:43:25","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T18:43:25","slug":"polk-county-honored-for-pavement-preservation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/03\/09\/polk-county-honored-for-pavement-preservation\/","title":{"rendered":"Polk County Honored for Pavement Preservation<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Polk County\u2019s Roads & Drainage Division received the 2022 James B. Sorenson Award for Excellence in Pavement Preservation Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Left to Right (Joe Montoya, Katia Delgado, Jay Jarvis, Austin Potts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Sorenson award is presented annually to a city, township, county or state agency that demonstrates a high-level understanding and strategic execution of best pavement preservation practices throughout its roadway network It\u2019s named after Jim Sorenson who was senior construction and system preservation engineer, Federal Highway Administration Office of Asset Management, and a great champion of pavement preservation at the national level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Road management is critical to Polk County, which sits between Orlando and Tampa. The Roads & Drainage Division manages 2,535 miles of paved roads, which is more miles than four U.S. states have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Roads & Drainage Director Jay Jarvis, Polk County has doubled the number of road miles it treats per year in the last seven years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve accomplished this by moving from a \u2018worst-first\u2019 strategy to an \u2018optimized\u2019 pavement management strategy,\u201d Jarvis said. \u201cThis change has allowed Polk County\u2019s Roads & Drainage Division to repair 42 percent more roads and to significantly improve the overall network condition. We\u2019ve been able to wisely steward taxpayer money while giving residents a safer, better driving experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to 2015, Polk County practiced a \u201cworst-first\u201d road repair strategy. \u201cWorst-first\u201d means that roads are allowed to deteriorate to the point where they may need complete repair. Not only did travelers have to drive over roads that got worse with time, but the eventual reconstruction was expensive and required long-term road closures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2015, Polk County implemented an \u201coptimized\u201d pavement management strategy. This approach focuses on applying low-cost treatments to roads that are still in good condition, halting further deterioration and prolonging the life of the road. Polk County also has utilized predictive planning tools to strategically repair roads, and analysis showed that the \u201coptimized\u201d approach would \u2013 over a seven-year period \u2013 save taxpayers $28 million, increase lane miles in good condition by 28 percent and decrease lanes in poor condition by 13 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe \u2018optimized\u2019 approach keeps our good roads good through preservation,\u201d Jarvis said. \u201cIt provides a better roadway experience to residents, and it does so in a less expensive way. I\u2019m proud that our team has been recognized with the 2022 James B. Sorenson Award for Excellence in Pavement Preservation. Polk County is ahead of the curve.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Polk County\u2019s Roads & Drainage Division received the 2022 James B. Sorenson Award for Excellence in Pavement Preservation Wednesday. The Sorenson award is presented annually to a city, township, county… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[4723],"class_list":["post-30981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-polk-county-honored-for-pavement-preservation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}