Pavement Maintenance
By John Boyce, Contributing Editor
January/ February 2001
Tapping AIP dollars to keep up runways, ramps, taxiways
Pilot program leads to previously prohibited use of capital investment money for operating expenses.
Maintaining
general aviation airport pavements has been something
of a headache over the years because many airports and
their state aviation departments couldn't afford to
do it. That could be changing if states decide to take
advantage of a change in Federal Aviation Administration
rules and use some of their Airport Improvement Program
(AIP) apportionment to do repair and maintenance on
GA runways, taxiways, and ramps.
Most of the nation's general
aviation or non-primary airports' airside pavement was
built in large part with federal money. That money brought
with it a requirement that the airport maintain the
pavement in good, safe condition throughout its projected
life.
However, that requirement
was not backed up with any financial assistance that
would enable small airports to take care of wear and
tear on pavement. In other words, the FAA would help
build or rebuild a runway but it wouldn't, couldn't,
help maintain it.
Consequently, GA airport
managers, many with little or no operating budgets,
tended to let their pavements deteriorate to the point
that they could not be patched and repaired - they had
to be rebuilt. As one aviation official summarized the
situation, "Any airport manager with any brains
(would tell you), the logical thing to do is not maintain
your pavements and wait until they're falling apart
and then get a huge grant to reconstruct."
The AIP, in its 50-year
history, has strictly been a capital investment program
and was never designed to be used in the operation and
maintenance of airports.
However, the FAA recognized
in the 1990s that if it allowed AIP money to be spent
on maintenance, the pavement would last longer and the
agency would save millions of dollars in the long term
that it was spending on reconstruction.
1997 Pilot Program
With that in mind, the
FAA gained authorization from Congress to implement
a pilot program in 1997 to allow the use of AIP funds
for pavement maintenance.
Over two years, nine projects
or pilot grants in six states involving 52 airports
were awarded.
The pilot program was
judged a success and led directly to a change in AIP
rules, as outlined in AIR-21 and as stated in the guidelines,
"permitting AIP funds to be used for routine work
to preserve/extend useful life of runways, taxiways,
and aprons at non-primary airports."
Mark Beisse, an FAA airport
program specialist, explains, "We felt that those
nine projects showed that there was a need out there.''
And, he adds, "before
we started this pilot we did some in-house calculations.
I mean it became obvious that this makes sense. It is
common sense. It isn't something that anybody is going
to argue too much with until you get to the threshold
of the larger airports. They can maintain the runways
themselves."
NO NEW MONEY
Although the new rules
on the use of AIP monies widens the scope of what eligible
states can do with the money, one criticism of the program
is that no new money becomes available specifically
for pavement maintenance. The criteria for an AIP apportionment
are unchanged: You get what you get regardless of maintenance
at GA airports. Only state apportionment funds were
used during the pilot program and only state apportionment
funds can now be used for pavement maintenance - and
then only if the airport sponsor is unable to fund maintenance.
The FAA guidelines letter
says "The airport sponsor must be unable to fund
maintenance under the grant assurances using its own
resources.''
In other words, says Ann
Crook, director of the Oregon Department of Aviation
in Salem, "Pavement maintenance is just outright
an eligible item now, but is that to say that pavement
maintenance can be eligible as long as you've exhausted
all of your other resources to do that? I think there
is still some question locally about what that means."
According to observers
of the industry, the key word is "locally"'
The FAA's national guideline is a hard and fast standard,
but how the regional FAA officials interpret it can
vary from region to region.
Of course, if pavement
maintenance is a high priority item, then the state
will choose to apportion AIP money to it. If, however,
capital improvements - "real work," in the
words of one aviation executive - are deemed of utmost
importance, maintenance could be put aside.
New Hampshire, one of
the states involved in the pilot program, has chosen
to continue with the program of using AIP funds to do
pavement maintenance at the eight NPIAS (National Plan
of Integrated Airport Systems) airports in the state.
"Where our state
is right now," says Tricia Schoeneck, senior aviation
planner at the New Hampshire division of aeronautics,
"is that we have gone back to those eight airports
and we're reevaluating the pavements and we're planning
to continue with the program... We're using AIP money
for that. We set aside some funds each year. We won't
be able to go back and do every surface on the airport
but we'll go back and do it on a priority basis, starting
with runways and working down.
"We've made the decision
that this is important enough to apportion money to
it. The goal is that over time we will spend less money
down the road." In the extreme climate of New Hampshire,
Schoeneck continues, the state feels that taking care
of pavements is one of the most important things it
can spend AIP money on.
STATE PROGRAMS
Many states have developed
their own programs for taking care of pavement maintenance
at their general aviation airports. Nebraska, for instance,
uses a state fuel tax to purchase its own equipment
and materials and dedicates two state employees to maintaining
GA airport pavements.
"We buy the materials
through our department of roads, which buys in vast
quantities" says Diane Hofer, airport engineer
at Nebraska's Department of Aeronautics. "If an
airport wants to do something they send us a letter,
we send our state employees out with the equipment,
and they do it for a fixed cost per linear foot. Our
costs are considerably cheaper than a contractor."
Hofer goes on to say that
Nebraska eschews the use of AIP funds because they force
the state "to pay Davis-Bacon wage rates, which
is the prevailing union wage rate, so that can add to
your cost. And if your grant is over a quarter of a
million dollars you have to have a certain amount contracted
to minority business. That can add to your costs."
Georgia is a state that
has its own limited program but is planning to use some
AIP funds to do pavement work at some of its 81 eligible
general aviation airports.
The Georgia Department
of Transportation's Aviation Programs Office (APO) in
Atlanta recently completed an FAA-grant funded study
of its GA pavements. It came to the conclusion that
in its current condition Georgia needed an annual budget
of $7 million just to do pavement maintenance. At the
time of the study, the total annual aviation budget,
exclusive of Atlanta Hartsfield Internation-al, was
$2.2 million.
Because aviation officials
used the study as a public relations tool to educate
officials around the state to the serious condition
of general aviation airports, the budget, which comes
from the state's general fund, has risen to $3.8 million,
approximately 80 percent of which will be spent on pavement
maintenance.
One State's Initiative - Oregon
The State of Oregon has its own pavement maintenance program that is funded with avgas and jet fuel taxes. However, it will be getting AIP money under the new GA entitlement program authorized under AIR-21.
aAnn
Crook, the state's aviation director, devised
a plan whereby she could apply for one grant that
would cover AIP-funded projects at 10 airports.
"With the new
(GA entitlement) program," Crook says, "there
are twice as many airports eligible to get grants
than typical and the FAA didn't know how they
were going to administer the grants. I went to
them and I said how about you issue the state
of Oregon one grant for projects at several airports
and we'll administer it from there? It's walking
a fine line because we're not a block grant state
and we're prohibited by statute from being a block
grant state, but the FAA was willing to enter
into that agreement with us.
"We are administering
one grant that covers projects at ten airports.
That wasn't specifically for maintenance, it was
for a bunch of stuff; it's whatever airports could
come up with to spend this new entitlement money."
Because of that,
she sees an opportunity for airports to band together
to get AIP money for pavement maintenance despite
the fact that she was turned down on that particular
proposal herself.
"We had asked
if we could lump several airports together to
do maintenance and were flat out told no,"
she says. "But the rules are changing with
this entitlement program. It's meaning so many
grants that people just can't keep up. So maybe
we have an opportunity that people can take advantage
of."
Mark Beisse, an
airport program specialist at FAA, says state
aviation agencies can sponsor multiple airport
pavement maintenance projects within one grant,
or a single owner of several airports can do the
same thing. He suggests that airports look to
the states for assistance.