The Carbon Footprint of a Road: How Paving Sustainability Has Shifted
Highway engineering was traditionally evaluated through a narrow lens of standard structural performance. In the mid-2000s, success for a paving project meant satisfying target load-bearing capacities, resisting moisture damage, avoiding rutting, and staying within budget constraints. As long as the asphalt mixture hit its density specs and durability metrics, the environmental cost was largely treated as an unmeasured externality. Sustainability in asphalt paving was a niche conversation centered around early [...]
