How Spartanburg County, SC Saves Millions with Pavement Preservation

Unless you live there, you might never have heard of Spartanburg County. It is one of the largest counties in the state in both road miles managed (1,800 centerline miles) and population (roughly 369,000). In the world of pavement preservation, Spartanburg County is becoming known for innovation. They’ve developed unique funding mechanisms to futureproof the county against aging infrastructure. And they’ve put those dollars into innovative pavement preservation programs that will pay off for years to come. More importantly, Spartanburg County’s approach will save residents millions of dollars while keeping their streets in better condition than a reactive program ever could.

To understand how, we sat down with John Wade, the county’s transportation engineer in public works.

“We maintain 1,800 centerline miles of road,” Wade said. “Our challenge is to get about $30 million a year of repaving done, and part of this is about a $5 million a year worth of preservation work.”

Rather than pouring every dollar into expensive repaving cycles, Spartanburg County has built a dedicated preservation budget designed to keep good roads in good condition. It is a textbook example of the best-first philosophy that pavement preservation experts have championed for years.

Many counties and cities across the country still operate on a worst-first philosophy, waiting until roads start showing visual signs of deterioration before stepping in. The math rarely works out. Once asphalt begins to crack and ravel, the most cost-effective preservation window is already closing, and the cost of bringing pavement condition scores back up jumps dramatically.

Spartanburg County took a different path. By treating roads while they are still in good to moderate condition, the county extends asphalt life significantly, delaying the need for and the cost of full reconstruction.

“We typically see that 23 years is a good life cycle for pavement if you don’t touch it after you’ve placed it,” Wade said. “Given the different intervals at which we can do preservation, we see that we can extend a pavement’s life to 40 plus years pretty easily and pretty cheaply.”

That extension is not theoretical. Wade pointed specifically to the performance of HA5 High Density Mineral Bond.

“With HA5, we’re getting an 8 to 10 year extension in life,” he said.

Across a network this size, that kind of life extension translates into millions of dollars in deferred repaving costs.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution in pavement preservation. Different roads in different conditions have different needs. Spartanburg County’s program reflects that reality. They don’t rely on a non-existent silver bullet. Instead they’ve built a program that’s a layered toolbox, with each treatment chosen for the specific road and condition it serves.

“Our typical preservation tools are a crack and depth patch, which typically precedes all of our preservation treatments,” Wade said. “Currently, we’re following a lot of that up with HA5 in neighborhoods specifically, but we’re also doing some other treatments like cape seals on higher ADT roads. We’re doing some microsurfacing here and there.”

This kind of intentional sequencing is at the heart of effective pavement preservation. Crack seal and depth patch address localized issues before a surface treatment goes down. HA5 then locks in the work by shielding the asphalt from UV exposure and moisture intrusion, the two leading causes of oxidative damage on residential roadways. On higher-volume roads, cape seals and microsurfacing offer the right balance of durability and skid resistance.

The payoff is a road network where treatments are intentionally matched to conditions to maximize every dollar spent.

Beyond the dollars and cents, there is a quality-of-life argument for preservation that often gets overlooked. Major rehabilitation projects in established subdivisions can drag on for weeks or even months, and residents feel every day of it.

“We’ve had to do some reclamation projects inside of subdivisions because they were 2 to 4 inches of asphalt basically on dirt or on very little stone,” Wade said. “When we’ve done those kind of projects, they’ve been tremendously disruptive to the folks that live in that subdivision. We get a lot of calls about concerns about being able to get in and out of their house during the course of the project.”

By comparison, HA5 projects are quick and minimally invasive.

“When we’re doing something like an HA5, we typically see that we’re done with that project so much quicker. It’s so much less invasive,” Wade said.

Residents notice. Wade described regular feedback from homeowners who are simply grateful the county is investing in their streets and doing it in a way that does not bring their daily lives to a halt.

For Wade and his team, the conversation always comes back to taxpayer dollars.

“We’re trying to use cost-effective measures to extend the life of these pavements as long as we can,” Wade said. “Obviously, it costs significantly more to completely mill out a road and repave it. So when we can, we prefer to do preservation in order to save tax dollars, in order to extend the life of our roads.”

That mindset is what separates leading agencies from the ones still stuck in a reactive cycle. Spartanburg County treats its road network the way any responsible owner would treat a major asset: with regular, planned maintenance designed to extend useful life and defer major capital expense.

“It’s a tremendous benefit from a financial perspective for us,” Wade said. “Not only are we extending the life of our road, but we’re also being fiscally responsible.”

Wade had a clear message for other counties, cities, and DOTs considering a pavement preservation program of their own.

“Advice that I would give any county or any other municipality that’s looking at starting a preservation program would be to find somewhere to try it,” he said. “We’ve done projects where we’ve tried multiple different types of preservation. And here today, I can say that we’ve settled in pretty consistently using crack seal, depth patch, and HA5 specifically in our subdivisions. I can’t recommend these treatments highly enough. They will extend the life of your road, especially whenever they’re used in the correct treatment windows.”

“This is a fiscally responsible product,” Wade said. “I would absolutely recommend HA5 to any municipality, any county, any state DOT.”

Spartanburg County’s story is a reminder that the cheapest road is the one you never have to rebuild. By investing in preservation while pavements are still in good condition, agencies can stretch budgets, improve service to residents, and protect infrastructure for decades to come.

If you are looking to bring the same kind of results to your community, contact Holbrook Asphalt to learn more about HA5 High Density Mineral Bond and how it fits into a complete pavement preservation toolbox. Check out our additional case studies to see how other counties, cities, and communities are getting more out of every dollar they spend on their roads.