Over the next several weeks Fountain Hills residents are likely to see a strange-looking van that appears to have dropped in from another planet driving the streets of Town.

The Town Council recently approved a project to inventory the pavement condition of all roads maintained by the Town. To accomplish this, the Town retained the services of Roadway Asset Services, LLC (RAS) based out of Austin, Texas. RAS is a nationwide firm and provides professional asset management and mobile data collection services to local and state government agencies.

RAS operates a fleet of sophisticated data collection vehicles equipped with an array of precision instrumentation and data collection equipment that helps state and local transportation agencies inventory and manage transportation infrastructure, facilities and assets.

Specifically, the vans possess digital cameras that will collect imagery on all pavement and above-ground, transportation-related assets located within the right-of-way. This imagery will be used to assess the pavement conditions and update the Town’s pavement management program.

In order to collect all relevant data, the vehicles will be traveling all roads and alleys within Fountain Hills and in order to ensure the highest quality of data and imagery, the vehicles will only collect data during daylight hours.

The data will be used by the Town to develop a pavement maintenance and management plan.