Asphalt Pavement Alliance announces new campaign, industry unity at World of Asphalt

The Asphalt Pavement Alliance announced at the World of Asphalt (WOA) Show and Conference, held Feb. 15-19 in Cincinnati, Ohio,  the launch of its new campaign in support of asphalt pavements.

“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, in a press conference at the WOA show. Yates is the Executive Director of the Missouri Asphalt Pavement Association.

“The state associations are at the grassroots,” Yates continued. “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 Alliance campaign included a policy white paper, a comprehensive technical document, a new Web site 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,” Gaylen Ghylin said in a written statement about the launch of the new initiative. “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.” Ghylin, of Commercial Asphalt Co., Minnesota, is a co-chair of the Alliance.

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. 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,” said Mike O’Leary. “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 the new Website, www.AsphaltRoads.org.” O’Leary, who is based in Kentucky, is ambassador for MeadWestvaco.

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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 that 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.”

Christie Barbee of the Carolina Asphalt Pavement Association, co-chair of the Advocacy Team, said that the white paper “lays out the forces that will shape the asphalt market going forward. These forces include tight federal and state budgets creating a fix-it-first mentality, a litmus test for sustainability on all projects, a push toward livable communities, and an emphasis on job creation.”

She said the white paper, which is geared toward elected officials and senior DOT executives, establishes that asphalt pavement is the right choice for cost-effectiveness, sustainability, livability and job creation.