Most things like interstates are actually concrete highways with an asphalt overlay giving the best of both worlds. Concrete is noisy, insanely so. Having asphalt over concrete gives a much smoother and quieter driving surface. Also most repaving of this type of road involves a rolling lane closure these days. They'll setup and operation generally at night that reclaims the old asphalt, sweeps the highway, sprays down a new sealer and then covers with new asphalt in a single convoy.

When you have actual lane closures for any amount of time it has little or nothing to do with asphalt/concrete itself but actual infrastructure repair of the subbase.

I'm not too surprised as long as the initial cost is less than concrete.

Asphalt roads cost about half as much as concrete roads to build, and are vastly easier to maintain (you can resurface asphalt, while concrete requires slab replacement).