Residents welcome smooth roads, though much is shorter term coating
By Matt Clark
Friday, August 10, 2012
San Diego paved 300 miles of its pockmarked streets in the fiscal year that ended in June, nearly double what was paved in 2010 and 2011 combined.
The pace is nearly three times faster than the average miles paved per month in the last 12 years.
The majority of the surge is slurry-sealing, a top-level maintenance layer of asphalt-like material expected to last five years — not the more expensive process of ripping up the road and asphalt-overlaying it, which can last 20 years.
Of the 300 miles paved this year, 235 were the shallow coating and 65 were the deeper repaving.
Mayor Jerry Sanders says the effort is a vast improvement over prior administrations and showcases his commitment to better roads.
“The city of San Diego has made an unprecedented public investment to resurface our city’s streets,” Sanders said in a statement. “We still have more work to do, but the … miles we’ve resurfaced over the past two years is a far cry from the 8 miles that were redone in the year before I took office.”
Though the paving uptick is steep, the overall condition of the city’s 2,800-mile road network is still estimated to be slightly worse off five years from now than it was before the surge began.
At that time, 42 percent of city roads were in good condition. That is estimated to decline to 39 percent by 2017. Without the paving push, it would have fallen to 26 percent.
The paving efforts have not been focused on one area, but are spread throughout the city. In the last six months, a lot of work has occurred in Bay Terraces, Paradise Hills, Ocean Crest, Otay Mesa West, North Park, South Park and Hillcrest.
“Certain areas really needed it bad, and they got it done and they did a good job,” said Skyline resident Linda Pope.
Standing on 31st Street in South Park outside a home that has been in his family for 40 years, Greg Brown said he couldn’t remember the last time it had been paved.
“I’m amazed at how much they got done in such a short time all over the city,” Brown said, adding that slurry-seal is “a good idea, rather than doing nothing. The traffic is so much better when it’s smooth.”
Former Assistant City Manager John Fowler, who retired in 1988, was quite pleased when the city gave some attention in June to his street, Nottingham Place in La Jolla.
“I think they did a slurry seal for the street about 30 years ago,” Fowler said. “So, it was high time, and this time of course they ground it and probably put in a two-inch layer.”
The financial challenges the city faced in picking up the paving pace date back to 2004, when its budget was strapped and its credit rating had been suspended due to delays in audits and missing financial statements. The city didn’t return to the bond market until five years later.
To deal with its massive collection of dilapidated streets, sidewalks, stormwater pipes and buildings, the city issued its first of several planned maintenance bonds, but money wasn’t the only obstacle. City Council members, City Auditor Eduardo Luna and the San Diego County Grand Jury raised issues with the paving plans, some of which took months to work out.
The city didn’t have a plan for which roads to pave, because it didn’t know the condition of all its roads. It also had a nine-month purchasing process for turning bond money into pavement that included two different votes of the council. Even though the city had the money to spend, crews paved only 51 miles in 2011, a five-year low.
Councilman Kevin Faulconer said the administration worked well with the council to overcome the obstacles, developing improvements that led to today’s heavy paving pace. By fiscal 2012, the purchasing process was reduced to two or three months.
“As every San Diegan knows who drives over our streets, they are in bad shape and need attention,” Faulconer said. “It is great to see all the work that is being done on our streets in every single neighborhood, and there is much more to be done.”
The city is using all its previously assigned road-repair money for slurry seal, which costs about $100,000 a mile. The bond funding is being devoted to the longer-term asphalt overlays, which cost five times that much per mile.
Because the top coating is cheaper, more of it is done. But it can only be applied to roads that are in somewhat decent shape, to prevent deeper deterioration. So some residents are left wondering when they see roads in better condition get a fresh coat of slurry seal, while roads in worse condition wait for a more expensive asphalt overlay.
University City resident Bob Brobst said the city has been slurry-sealing stretches of road in his area that are in much better condition than roads nearby.
“Somebody is not paying attention, they’re too overloaded, or they don’t understand,” Brobst said.
Hasan Yousef, deputy director of the Transportation and Storm Water Department, said a street’s condition, traffic, location, pothole history, resurfacing history and community input are all used in determining whether it will be paved first.
“A significant consideration in selecting streets for slurry-sealing or overlay is coordination with planned utility projects such as water/sewer main replacement projects, and other private utility projects to ensure streets are not trenched shortly after resurfacing,” Yousef said. “This is usually the reason you would see streets in poor condition, but not selected for resurfacing.”
The department is working on a detailed, five-year road resurfacing plan that will be complete in December.
That plan will help address another paving problem cited by auditors, the fact that the city and private contractors have done storm drain and other excavation work on roads that had been paved weeks or months before. An ordinance aimed at stopping newly-paved streets from being dug up is working its way to the council.
In the meantime, some residents are just enjoying the smoother streets.
“It makes me want to get a skateboard,” said Arianne Sclerandi of South Park, “so I can skateboard down to my neighborhood grocery store.”
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