Assessing Oklahoma Roads With Technology

Chances are somewhere on your daily commute there's a pothole or two that you know all too well. But did you know there's a company in Oklahoma that can document every pothole, every crack, every

Tuesday, May 29th 2007, 5:12 pm

By: News On 6

Chances are somewhere on your daily commute there's a pothole or two that you know all too well. But did you know there's a company in Oklahoma that can document every pothole, every crack, every single foot of pavement across a whole state if need be? The News On 6â€™s Steve Berg reports on how Pathway Services does it.

With thousands after thousands of miles of roadways, how could anyone keep up with it all? Well, in the past, they really didn't, at least not very well.

"A lot of people may not even know there are pavement management engineers in each state that go out and actually look, physically look at the roads and see what's wrong with them, how they're deteriorating," said Scott Matheson of Pathway Services. "They can't send people out each year to do 7, 10, even bigger states, 30,000 miles every year."

Scott Matheson is a computer expert with Pathway Services. They use vans packed with cameras, computers, and other hi-tech gizmos to survey roadways, giving you the same view that you would have if you had gone out and driven the road yourself.

"In real time, at 70 miles per hour, we can actually do what it would take hundreds of people to do several months. And we can do it in about a month's time," Matheson said.

Actually, it sees things you couldn't see even if you had looked at it yourself. For example, lasers provide a computer-generated graph showing the exact depth and contour of ruts.

Of course the State Highway Department is responsible for more than just roads. They have to maintain signs and bridges, and sometimes there's a lot going on in one spot, so for that, Pathway has a ring of cameras that can snap a 360-degree view, even when traveling 70 miles an hour.

"They can get to an intersection and look in any direction, even up, to see where the signs are, to see how things are marked, if they need to add signs, take away signs, signs may be broken, things like that," said Matheson.

With this, clients have a permanent record that every person in a Transportation Department can look at if need be.

"There may be one guy in each state, and most states are like this, who knows every bit of roadway like the back of his hand, but those guys generally retire, and then who's left?" Matheson said.

And yes, with the sometimes hundreds of hours of road footage, there is a fast forward.

"If you really wanted to, you could view the roads at 200 miles per hour, no tickets allowed," said Matheson.

Pathway says it's the largest of about four such companies in the U.S. Ironically, Oklahoma contracts with one of Pathway's competitors, but Pathway does a lot of its equipment testing here and says Oklahoma is about middle of the road when it comes to road quality.

Watch the video: Hi-Tech Vehicle Scans Oklahoma's Bumpy Roads

WEB EXTRA: View Oklahoma Roads From Pathway Services