Hinsdale Pavement Management Plan

Challenge: In 2008, the Village of Hinsdale, Illinois, embarked upon a 15-year Master Infrastructure Plan (MIP) to address all their anticipated infrastructure needs to repair or replace failing roads. With the original MIP ending in 2024, HR Green was retained by the Village to re-establish the roads program, develop a new 15-year plan for its street program, modernize the program using industry-standard software, and develop Hinsdale’s Pavement Management Plan.

Roads Program Goals

• Develop a comprehensive inventory of the Village’s street system.
• Review the Village’s standards for street pavement design and construction/maintenance practices.
• Evaluate the system’s current roadway conditions using data collected.
• Determine major rehabilitation and reconstruction alternatives and trigger threshold for data analysis and projections.
• Create a pavement management model using the condition data.
• Develop 15-year maintenance/replacement schedules with annualized costs for various funding levels and scenarios.

Solution: HR Green partnered with Applied Research Associates (ARA) to collect pavement condition data using a truck-mounted semi-automated system. Using the condition data, existing Village resources, and input from Village staff, a pavement management model was created using the StreetSaver™ software. This model was then used to analyze various funding and performance-based scenarios for the Hinsdale Capital Improvement Program (CIP).

The investigation findings determined that the preferred annual construction budget would be approximately $2.5 million for long-term sustainability and cost-effectiveness.

By utilizing StreetSaver, HR Green was able to demonstrate that there are only marginal benefits to budgets over $4 million per year, as any expenditures over that level are done just to use up the budget, not out of need. Budgets under $2 million per year revealed a noticeable decline in pavement condition, suggesting an annual budget between $2 million and $4 million was ideal for the Village.

The selected $2.5 million budget helped lower the cost of the new MIP by 20% as compared to the previous MIP. This helped the Village get closer to a sustainable pavement management program that focused on being proactive with preventive planning and treatment rather than reactive work.

Benefit: The development of the Hinsdale Pavement Management Plan helped the Village develop an objective, data-driven, and sustainable approach to managing its roadway assets, as well as to budget appropriately for future pavement needs. Consisting of 491 projects, the recommended program contained 40 miles of roads or approximately 40% of the Village.