My dad spent his entire working life as an asphalt paving contractor. The engineering school I went to had a dedicated bituminous asphalt lab. Improvements in paving nowadays are only incremental, even using advanced modern materials. There's only so much you can do against thermal expansion & contraction along with massive uneven pressures from heavy loads.

But I suppose if you allowed a long enough time horizon, you could convince the powers that be to invest enough in roads today to avoid needing to replace them for a decade or maybe two. As you know, the incentives aren't aligned for that, though.