MnROAD Lessons Learned

Project summary:

Upon MnROAD's opening over ten years ago, fourteen significant research objectives were initially developed for MnROAD-based research (see MnDOT report 90-03). Although the MnROAD facility has yielded a wealth of information related to pavement design, performance, and evaluation, some of this information lacks the documentation necessary to be accessible to potential users outside of MnROAD. Moreover, in the process of accumulating its large and varied amount of data, MnROAD has addressed only some of its initial fourteen research objectives while others have not been fully met or documented. As the end approached for the first generation of MnROAD sections, this project aimed to formally review: 1) MnROAD's accomplishments thus far, 2) MnROAD contributions to pavement research, and 3) the indirect effects of MnROAD on the pavement community in general. Researchers surveyed and summarized significant research at MnROAD while accounting for other less-known or unaccounted for research incorporating MnROAD data. The project involved over fifty interviews, three hundred published and unpublished reports, papers, and briefs, and an online survey of pavement professionals. This report presents an overview of MnROAD products of interest at the local, state, and national levels; provides extensive references for MnROAD's products to draw attention to MnROAD's underpublicized contributions to pavement engineering, assesses MnROAD's operations over the past decade relative to its initial research objectives; and briefly proposes future objectives as the MnROAD facility moves into its second decade of operation.