WisDOT MAPSS - Preservation - Airport Pavement Condition - Protecting, maintaining and operating Wisconsin's transportation system efficiently by making sound investments that preserve and extend the life of our infrastructure, while protecting our natural environment.
Airport Pavement Condition - Protecting, maintaining and operating Wisconsin's transportation system efficiently by making sound investments that preserve and extend the life of our infrastructure, while protecting our natural environment.Wisconsin has 97 publicly owned airports, and their safe and efficient operation depends on preserving and maintaining the quality of runway, taxiway and apron pavement. Our goal is for 90% of primary runways, 85% of priority taxiways and 80% of main terminal apron of Airport pavement to be rated in fair condition or better.
Pavement condition ratings are a primary indicator of the long-term structural health of the state’s airport system. The department evaluates the pavement condition on three pavement types (primary runways, taxiways and aircraft parking aprons) at each of the 97 publicly owned airports identified in the State’s Airport System Plan (SASP).
Airports are locally owned and decisions regarding improvements are handled at the local level. Airports developing improvement programs are faced with many challenges ranging from competing priorities to funding constraints. During the last several years, federal funding opportunities have favored safety and planning initiatives over other priorities such as pavement rehabilitation projects. While these initiatives have helped to increase safety across Wisconsin’s airports, they can have the unintended consequence of limiting an airport’s ability to fully fund pavement preservation and rehabilitation projects. In addition to this, the larger commercial service airports in particular MKE, which is due for a major rehabilitation/reconstruction of one of its runways, have more impact on these scores due to larger amounts of total pavements being analyzed. MKE is planning a phased reconstruction of this runway in the next 10 years.
WisDOT conducts annual meetings with airports to discuss their six-year capital improvement program and identify opportunities for future projects. Historically, not all airports have attended these meeting and maintained a solid six-year plan. WisDOT is focused on engaging these airports and helping them establish their plan while also emphasizing with all airports the importance of sticking with the plan that is set. WisDOT stresses the importance of strong asset management principles that emphasize safety and preservation of critical pavements. To maintain long-term infrastructure health, pavement needs must be incorporated into the six-year plan in a way that balances them with high priority safety needs and other activities such as airport operational needs. The ongoing emphasis on planning efforts will allow WisDOT to move forward with paving projects more efficiently in the coming years as masterplans that have been started in the last five years are now reaching completion.