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  • Address: 469 Xinsheng Road, Gaoxin District, Chengdu, Sichuan 610041, China
  • Tel: +86-28-84167580
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  • Email: pump@esmachinery.com
  • Contact Person:Aaron

Getting more mileage from roadwork budgets

Construction season is under way, but tight budgets have left many municipalities towing the line when it comes to road paving, leaving drivers in a rut.

This year’s roadblock, lack of funding, has caused many local public works departments to seek out new, more efficient methods of road maintenance during the road construction season that typically runs from May to October.

“We are trying to stretch our dollars and try some different things,” said Brian Scala, Oneida County Department of Public Works deputy commissioner.

With a budget of $2 million, the county DPW is planning on paving a total of 9.05 miles this season, and sealing 60 miles of road, he said. Unfortunately, the budget is about $1 million less than last year.

To help cut costs, the county will utilize a different process called micro milling, he said.

“If you have a bad road that has wheel ruts and whatever, this milling machine gives it a buzz cut,” he said.

The machine takes about an inch of pavement from the top, smoothing out the road for new layers to be put on. Instead of having to put down 3.5 inches of asphalt, the department would only have to replace 2.5 inches, Scala said.

The process saves about $40,000 per inch of asphalt, he said.

Scala said he’s still worried about not having enough funding to seal roads that were previously paved. Sealing the roads helps to protect them and prolong their lifespan.

“Normally you don’t want to go more than five years after they’ve been paved, but funding has affected that as well,” he said.

Budget stretching

The city of Utica has a different strategy.

After a particularly intense 2012-13 budget process ending with a 9.9 percent property tax increase and 50 jobs cut citywide, Utica’s paving budget remained at about $2 million, the same as last year, Deputy City Engineer Goran Smiljic said.

“What we are trying to do this year is concentrate more on repairs because we don’t have that much money to spend for complete construction,” he said.

To stretch the budget as much as possible, the city will first make repairs to the Boilermaker Road Race route, then continue with major road repairs, before seeing how much money is left over to do side streets, Smiljic said.

To ensure each road is replaced every 20 years, the city would have to replace 10 miles of street per year, Smiljic said. However, $2 million isn’t enough to do that.

“The streets are deteriorating before we can come,” he said. “The cycle itself doesn’t work because of lack of money.”

Road work is expected to start in June in the city, he said.

New tricks

Work also will begin on New Hartford roads in June, said Town Highway Superintendent Richard Sherman. With a budget of about $450,000, the department will pave and treat about 7.5 miles of road.

To save money, the municipality will use two different processes, blacktop recycling and cold paving, Sherman said.

In the recycling process, the old road is ground up and new stone and oil are added before it is laid back down. This cuts down on the amount of materials needed.

Cold paving will be a relatively new process for the town.

“It’s a little cheaper, and you get more bang for your buck,” Sherman said.

Normally hot pavement mix, which is about 300 degrees, is used, Sherman said. This costs more because it has more oil and has to be kept warm, he said.

Cold pave is about $44 per ton, and hot pave is around $70 to $75 per ton, Sherman said.

“We don’t have that kind of money to do infrastructure. We have to work with what we have,” he said.

The town has been trying to catch up because no paving was done in 2009 and only a little was completed in 2010, he said.

“We’re trying to find the cheapest way and still give the public a decent and safe road,” he said.

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