Challenges

• Used outdated and informal manual pavement assessments
• Lack of historical knowledge and data

Solution

• Michelin Better Roads: Fast, objective, affordable road assessment

Results

• Received a full network assessment to determine their prioritization plan to start road maintenance.
• Update and communicate to South Bend citizens their 2018 and 2019 Road Program.
• Annual pavement evaluations to ensure their prioritization plan is on track.

Like many cities and towns in Indiana, public works officials at the City of South Bend historically deployed a windshield data collection process and a tablet-based application to capture Pavement Surface Evaluation Rating (PASER) ratings of its 550 mile road network. South Bend’s key challenges included:

Time Consuming & Labor Intensive Data Collection Method
Public Works employees’ time is valuable. South Bend employees would spend 3 months driving the City’s roads for the visual inspection, which meant that City employees’ time would be consumed by this effort for an entire spring or summer.

Cumbersome Data Collection System
While out on the road City employees would at times experience bugs with the tablet-based app used to mark the PASER ratings or they would have to slow their speed to ensure that the ratings for each road segment could be captured. Missed ratings meant incomplete data and slowed driving further delayed data collection.

Overall Slow Process
Meticulously driving the City’s roads and diligently collecting PASER ratings for 550 miles of roadway took 3 months. This slow process ultimately delayed the critical work of crafting the pavement plan and sending out the paving crew to conduct maintenance and construction on the roads.

Recognizing their challenges, in 2017 South Bend public works officials adopted Michelin Better Roads’ pavement assessment and management software. Through their Michelin Better Roads subscription, South Bend tackled their key challenges in the following ways:

Decreased Staffing Time Spent
Using windshield-mounted smartphones and Michelin Better Roads data collection apps, City staff now expedite the entire process of data collection. Since data collection only requires one person driving the car, South Bend can triple their speed of collection by sending out all three employees in separate vehicles.

Seamless Collection Experience
City employees no longer have to worry about simultaneously driving and rating the pavement condition. Michelin Better Roads data collection apps enable City employees to effortlessly capture high definition imagery (30 fps) and GPS
information while driving their roads. After driving, the collected data is then uploaded by wifi to the cloud for analysis by Michelin Better Roads.

Accelerated Process
Michelin Better Roads data collection software includes a navigation app that now guides City employees on optimized driving routes to capture 100% of the data for their road network. This routing speeds up the collection process and Michelin Better Roads’ 30-day guarantee ensures that the City receives its pavement assessment in an accelerated timeline.

By adopting Michelin Better Roads, South Bend’s public works team received accurate and reliable pavement condition data at a fraction of the labor and time. These efficiencies enabled City employees to spend more time on the critical responsibilities of pavement planning and construction. Michelin Better Roads also supported South Bend’s important planning functions in the following ways:

Teamwide Online Access to Pavement Condition Data
As Michelin Better Roads subscribers, South Bend employees can access their pavement assessment data, including imagery of their entire road network on RoadWay – an online, cloud-based pavement management tool. Now any South Bend team member with a secure login account to RoadWay can access the City’s pavement condition data.

Visual-Based Communication Tools
RoadWay is designed to communicate with engineers and non-engineers alike. Using the RoadWay’s data visualization tools and overall pavement condition ratings, City employees can communicate with staff and the public to quickly and easily show where and why paving resources are being allocated across the City’s 550 mile road network.

Seamless Integration with GIS Systems
In addition to using RoadWay to make pavement management decisions, City employees can import the data into other GIS platforms (e.g. ArcGIS). As a Michelin Better Roads subscriber, the City of South Bend has unlimited access to the RoadBotics by Michelin customer experience team who can help with these kinds of imports at no extra cost.

South Bend, IN

“Michelin Better Roads enables all of our internal staff to view the current conditions of all our road segments, including high definition photographs and corresponding numerical ratings. RoadWay also displays an average rating of our overall road network, which quickly and accurately gives us the tools to portray the City’s need for additional paving.”

Scott Kreeger Project Engineer, City of South Bend

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