Increasing awareness in sustainability has prompted many innovations in transportation infrastructure industry in the past several decades (Huang and Liu 2011; Shu et al. 2013). This special issue contains eight technical papers in this area, which cover the topics of alternative paving materials, recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) and recycled asphalt shingles (RAS), new and innovative methods for evaluating the distress of asphalt and concrete materials, as well as the latest advances in pavement base construction and railroad ballast research.