$1.2 million in Street Improvements Hit High Gear Next Week

38 STREETS MOST IN NEED TO BE RESURFACED WITH DURABLE RUBBERIZED TREATMENT

SUISUN CITY — Some of the worst pavement in Suisun City will get a $1.2 million high-tech overhaul using rubberized asphalt starting on Thursday (Sept. 4).

A total of 38 street segments across the City will be resurfaced with a liquid rubber compound manufactured with a minimum of 15% waste vehicle tires then covered with a layer of rock chips. This treatment, which is being used in Suisun City for the first time, fills surface cracks to strengthen existing asphalt and to deter water from penetrating into the road base.

Crews began applying on Friday an additional microsurface treatment on Worley Road and Pheasant Drive, two streets that needed additional repair work. (The picture above was taken Friday at Worley Road and Philip Way.)

Application of the rubberized asphalt to all the targeted street segments is scheduled to take a week. About two weeks later, crews will return to apply a slurry seal over the rubberized asphalt, which will harden and cure into a smooth finished surface.

Using rubberized asphalt in combination with traditional slurry seal adds approximately a decade of useful street life. It also is more durable than traditional asphalt overlay and costs less per square foot, which allows the Public Works Department to resurface more streets than was previously possible.

“This is a significant upgrade to any repaving process we’ve used before,” said Acting Public Works Director Dan Kasperson. “It’s been a year of hard work to get to this point, and we are excited to be seeing the product of that effort showing up in Suisun City’s streets.”

The City Council approved the $1.2 million Streets Improvement Project in March, using a combination of funding from state Prop. 1B and Prop. 42, Solano Irrigation District, a California Integrated Waste Management Board grant and City General Fund. The 2008 project, which will expend about three times more than in 2007, was designed to address the ‘worst of the worst’ pavement conditions in the City.

Rubberized asphalt is a beneficial way to recycle and reuse waste vehicle tires, which pose a major waste management challenge across California. The Suisun City project is expected to use 10,500 waste tires from California.

The project was coordinated with the Suisun-Solano Water Agency to follow the water main replacement work conducted earlier this summer. Streets excavated during the water main work were backfilled and patched, and will receive a full new rubber asphalt surface.

Notices have been sent to residents of streets to be fixed, and parking restrictions will be posted at least 72 hours before work begins. Here's a link to the specific work schedule, including a map of the streets to be worked on each day.