The former municipality of Werribee engaged a consultant to report on its street pavements constructed on basaltic clay subgrades. ARRB Transport Research was asked to review this report together with comprehensive data on locally available materials and council's current specification and construction practices for roadworks. Low volume pavements are generally subjected to higher levels of environmental loading as distinct from traffic loading, but design systems in use in Australia use traffic loading as the prime input into pavement thickness. The release of Austroads' Pavement Reference Group's (APRG) Report No. 21, A Guide to the Design of New Pavements for Light Traffic, aims at addressing this issue, although traffic loading still plays a key role in pavement composition determination. This report addresses the challenges presented by low volume pavements, where additional width and depth of pavement, commonly used in major roads cannot be economically justified. A suite of pavement designs for the full range of pavement types at the municipal level, are prepared, based on the design principles in APRG Report No. 21. A series of questions were posed by Wyndham City Council, covering a wide range of low volume pavement design, construction and specification issues for a municipality experiencing rapid urban growth. Discussion of and answers to these questions comprise a major component of this report. (Author/publisher)
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