Pavement Projects to Begin Late Spring

The following is a report by the City of Newark originally published in the city's Spring 2012 Newsletter:

As part of the City of Newark’s ongoing effort to protect and extend the life of its streets, the Public Works Department annually inspects asphalt concrete pavement surfaces to identify areas of potential maintenance and determine the timing and type of appropriate repairs.

The types of preventative maintenance performed on our streets include crack filling, patch paving, and cape seal and slurry seal resurfacing. For those streets in a more deteriorated state, a pavement overlay or even costly reconstruction may be necessary.

Annual patch paving, cape/slurry resurfacing, and pavement overlay projects are an integral part of the City’s Pavement Management Program.

These projects will be partially funded by Measure B, the one-half cent sales tax for transportation reauthorized by voters in 2000 and administered through the Alameda County Transportation Improvement Authority (ACTIA), now part of the Alameda County Transportation Commission (Alameda CTC).

Pavement overlays typically involve partial or full grinding of the existing surface and placement of a new 2-inch to 3-inch layer of asphalt concrete. A completed pavement overlay results in a significant structural upgrade and provides the appearance of a brand new roadway.

Slurry seal is a thin coating of a cold mixture consisting of asphalt, oil, water, and rock that seals and protects the pavement from the damaging effects of the sun’s ultraviolet light and rainwater runoff. Applying a slurry seal is comparable to the repainting of a house to protect its exterior surface.

A cape seal is similar, but more extensive in that the slurry seal coating is preceded with a chip seal - a layer of small aggregate rocks (“chips”) and asphalt binder oil that are compacted by heavy equipment on the existing pavement surface.

These preventative maintenance processes are cost-effective measures to prolong the life of city streets and maximize the value of previous investments.

Patch paving consists of the removal and replacement of localized pavement failures.

The project typically includes work on streets that will be resurfaced with a slurry seal or cape seal. It also includes streets where a failure is too severe to correct with a surface patch, but the entire street does not require a structural upgrade with an asphalt overlay.

It is anticipated that the 2012 pavement maintenance projects will begin in late spring and be completed by late summer.

If you have any questions, please contact Associate Civil Engineer Trang Tran at (510) 578-4298 or by e-mail at trang.tran@newark.org. For further information on Measure B projects, please visit the Alameda CTC website at http://www.alamedactc.org.