Gravel Roads Construction and Maintenance
This online engineering PDH course provides clear and practical information on the construction and maintenance of gravel roads. It includes many photographs of existing roads that show examples of both good and poor practices in maintenance and design. Given the importance of gravel roads to the economy, especially of rural areas, engineers must understand maintenance and design issues associated with gravel roads.
The United States has over 1.6 million miles of gravel roads, amounting to about 53% of the country’s total road mileage. Gravel roads are usually considered greatly inferior to paved roads, but in many rural regions the volume of traffic is so low that paving and maintaining a paved road is not economically feasible.
Yet gravel roads serve important functions: providing a means of getting agricultural products in and out of farm fields, timber out of forests, or providing access to remote areas such as campgrounds and lakes. Many gravel roads serve rural residents as well.
This 8 PDH online course is intended for local agency officials, managers, civil, and transportation engineers concerned with the construction and maintenance of gravel roads.
This PE continuing education course is intended to provide you with the following specific knowledge and skills:
- Proper road cross section shape: crown, shoulder and foreslope
- Rehabilitation of deteriorated road
- Principles of drainage: ditches, culverts, and underdrains
- Areas of concern: corrugation (washboarding), intersections, superelevation in curves, rail crossings, soft and weak subgrade
- Selection of gravel
- Avoiding segregation
- Need for testing aggregates
- Handling gravel
- Dust control/stabilizers: types, benefits, and application tips
- Design methods for determining road thickness
- Quantity calculations
- Deciding when to pave a gravel road
Once you complete your course review, you need to take a multiple-choice quiz consisting of forty (40) questions to earn 8 PDH credits. The quiz will be based on this FHWA & SDLTAP publication.
Upon successful completion of the quiz, print your Certificate of Completion instantly. (Note: if you are paying by check or money order, you will be able to print it after we receive your payment.) For your convenience, we will also email it to you. Please note that you can log in to your account at any time to access and print your Certificate of Completion.