Roadway Asset Services (RAS) is an engineering firm headquartered in Austin, Texas, with regional offices dispersed throughout the United States. As a pavement and asset management consulting firm, RAS specializes in automated pavement inspections, AI processing supplemented with manual pavement engineer quality control, right-of-way imagery capture, pavement analysis optimization, and consulting services to transportation agencies and municipalities across the United States. The RAS team has vast experience with various nationally accepted pavement standards including ASTM D6433, Pavement Quality Index, Overall Condition Index and Institute for Transportation Research and Education (ITRE).

A national presence

Since 2020, RAS has successfully collected and analyzed 100,000 miles [160,000 kilometers] of pavement condition surveys, right-of-way (ROW) asset inventories and data analysis from transportation agencies. Our leadership team, composed of seasoned pavement management professionals, boasts over 150 years of combined experience in pavement management. The RAS team has been involved in pavement condition and ROW asset surveys for agencies of similar size across the country including: Corpus Christi, San Antonio and Austin, Texas; Denver, Colorado; Charlotte, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio; Birmingham, Alabama; Virginia Beach, Virginia; and Salt Lake City, Utah.

Advanced paving systems

All RAS projects begin with the mobilization of an automated Roadway Asset Collection (RAC) vehicle to drive all paved roadways maintained by an agency. The RAC vans are equipped with a Second-generation Laser Crack Measurement System (LCMS-2) for pavement distress imagery, a Ladybug 360 degree camera for views of the Right-of-Way and a Class 1 Inertial profiler for roughness and ride measurements.

Following data collection, RAS utilizes an advanced pavement rating tool to calculate profile, roughness, rutting, detection of cracks, lane-markings, potholes, patches and other distresses. The severity levels are identified based on the defined limits (ASTM D6433, ITRE or MTC) and verified for resolution through visual quality control checks of the image files. Once data collection and pavement rating are completed, RAS can begin to analyze data to determine maintenance and rehabilitation strategies, predicted pavement life and develop projects.

Planning with precision

The RAS team reinforces data-driven decisions through the creation of comprehensive final reports which illustrates the health of the roadway network for defensible management strategies. As a part of the analysis, RAS works with agencies to financially optimize the network by identifying critical versus non-critical roadways. Through a cost of deferral analysis, RAS can sequence projects or roadways by financial criticality to ensure an agency is getting the greatest return on investment. These reports can be presented to City Councils or Boards of County Commissioner’s to justify expenditures and create actionable plans for maintenance and rehabilitation decisions in compliance with GASB34.