The American Concrete Pavement Association sees good prospects for mainline paving and overlay projects, with overall 2020 activity nearly matching last year’s levels. “We expect 2019 market volume to be about 51.5 million square yards. The current projection for 2020 is about 50.2 million square yards. Although this represents a slight decrease of 2.5 percent, the change is attributed to several strong state reconstruction projects and new alignment programs completed in 2019,” says ACPA CEO Gerald Voigt.
“Overlays remain a strong and growing component of the concrete paving market,” he adds. “In the five-year period from 2010 to 2014, overlays were 11.3 percent of the overall concrete paving market. In the last five years, that figure has grown to 12.4 percent, and we anticipate projections to be in line with that figure in 2020.”
Concrete overlay technology development, implementation and education by ACPA, Chapters and the National Concrete Pavement Technology Center at Iowa State University have been instrumental in developing this market, Voigt notes. Overlay market support and development activities have progressed in partnership with the Federal Highway Administration. The agency has funded technology transfer efforts through the ACPA-crafted Accelerated Implementation and Deployment of Pavement Technology program included in the FAST Act of 2015 and MAP-21 Act of 2012.
“In addition to steady and respectable market growth, our current level of 214 contractor members is the highest in our almost 56-year history,” notes Voigt. “We believe this record number reflects the health of the concrete pavement industry, as well as the value of the services the ACPA network is providing to the industry, agencies and overall transportation-construction community.”