Digging below the surface of SC's road woes

By RICK BRUNDRETT

Editor’s Note: This story is part of a two-article package on road issues facing South Carolinians. The other story can be found here.

When it comes to roads, Randy West knows how to look below the surface for problems.

West is director of the National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) at Auburn University, which was established in 1986 and is described on its website as a partnership between the university and the National Asphalt Pavement Association Research and Education Foundation (NAPAREF) to “provide practical research and development to meet the needs of maintaining America’s highway infrastructure.”

NCAT was created to “ensure this industry’s ability to provide pavements that are durable, sustainable, quiet, safe, and economical,” according to the website.

West holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from Auburn and a doctoral degree in civil engineering from the University of Florida, according to Auburn’s website. He told The Nerve in a recent interview that he started his career at the Florida Department of Transportation.

“Our focus is on improving asphalt pavements and trying to do that through improving materials construction and educating the workforce, both at the academic level – future engineers, current engineers – as well as technicians in the industry,” he said about NCAT. “We do a lot of training all around the U.S.”

The S.C Department of Transportation is one of NCAT’s clients, West said.

The state’s crumbling roads and bridges have been a problem for decades. As the South Carolina Policy Council – The Nerve’s parent organization – pointed out in an analysis published last week, citing federal statistics, although the national average of "acceptable" road miles increased from 79% to about 81% from 2013 to 2024, South Carolina’s acceptable rate dropped from nearly 87% to 80% during the same period.

As for pinpointing specific problems with a road, it’s important to know how it was built and what materials were used, West said.

Modern asphalt roads typically consist of three main parts, according to West: the natural underlying soil; a base level that generally is made up of aggregate materials, such as crushed rock or stone; and the asphalt surface, which could be comprised of multiple layers.

West, who stressed that NCAT does not specialize in pothole repairs, said regarding pavement design, “You have to know what your (traffic) loads are and predict what the loads are going to be for the next 20 years, and then you determine a design structure that would consist of a base thickness and an asphalt thickness.”

“Generally, what people see is the asphalt,” West continued. “They think the asphalt is what the problem is, and a lot of times, it’s not. It’s something lower in the pavement structure.”

West said based on core samples that he’s analyzed from failing roads nationwide over the years, “putting an inch or two of new asphalt down” on the surface level isn’t the best solution when “there’s something underneath that needs to be repaired.”

“This may be a geologist question, but I know I have heard developers bemoan the fact we don’t have the best soils around … here in Lancaster County,” said Steve Willis, the county’s interim administrator, in a written response this month to The Nerve, noting that “clay made great pottery for the Catawba Indians, but it apparently isn’t the best for building roads and houses.”

If left untreated, the typical life of a road is 20 years, according to roadresource.org, an industry website funded by the Pavement Preservation and Recycling Alliance to “equip road managers, consulting engineers, and city, county, and state agencies with tools and resources to become better stewards of road networks and taxpayer dollars.”

“By performing the right treatments over time, pavement owners can get 40 years or more of life from their roads,” according to the website.

The site describes 18 different types of treatments ranging from applying a “fog seal,” described as a “single, light application of emulsified asphalt to an existing asphalt surface” and used for, among other things, sealing minor cracks; to providing soil “stabilization” or “modification,” which can provide “up to 25 years of life extension.”

Big projects, big costs

West said because states typically can’t afford to do many major reconstruction projects simultaneously, they “basically do a rehabilitation strategy that meets the budget rather than designing to meet the need.”

As an example, states “may realize that they need to add 5 inches of asphalt, and they need to do that on 100 projects across the state,” he said. “They don’t have the budget to do that, so they make a decision – ‘What can we do to maintain the road?’ – and they end up putting 3 inches or 2 inches of asphalt and knowing that’s not going to last as long as what the design strategy is.”

In his proposed state budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1, Republican S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster proposed using $1 billion in nonrecurring surplus general funds and additional $100 million in recurring general funds to “keep current and future construction projects moving and on schedule despite inflationary cost increases,” noting in a January press release that “nationally and here in South Carolina, inflationary construction and labor cost increases now threaten to create crippling delays and busted budgets for major road construction projects currently underway and those soon to break ground.”

The S.C. House’s version of the fiscal 2026-27 budget proposed a total of nearly $400 million for bridge “modernization,” interstate “acceleration” and a road “buyback” program that would allow the transfer of state-maintained roads to counties or local municipalities. The Senate version designated a total of $202 million for the bridge “modernization” and road “buyback” programs.

A joint House-Senate committee is expected to work out any differences between their respective budget versions.

As for pothole maintenance, West said although it typically is part of a state department of transportation’s budget, crews who handle those responsibilities usually are not pavement materials experts.

“So, they’re just going to go out and get something done as quickly as possible and open up the lane back to traffic as quickly as they can,” he said. “They’re not really identifying what is the underlying problem.”

“It’s like when you have a leaky roof,” West added. “You can go up and nail a couple of shingles on your roof. It’s going to stop the leak for a little while, but it’s not fixing the problem.”

Brundrett is the news editor of The Nerve (www.thenerve.org). Contact him at 803-394-8273 or [email protected]. Follow The Nerve on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) @thenervesc.

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