Saturday, March 7, 2015

Pot holes pot holes - what to do?


Pot holes seem to be every where and there are many reasons for them and those reasons can be found with a little time and work along with how to deal with them. One of the most common ways is to patch them with cold patch. I have looked at some resources in an effort to find thoughts, opinions, current practices and some facts in an attempt to perhaps get someone to at least think or look at things in a different way. Once again I will probably demonstrate to myself I am better off talking to my dog as he at least wags his tail as if to say he gets it when in fact he is just looking for another biscuit.


The original construction of roads are usually planned and scheduled for the right time of year when it is the temperature is warm and the threat from climatic change is less. When it comes to repairing roads, say from potholes, in an effort to keep traffic moving and the public quiet, especially around election time, is a little more challenging. Temporary cold patch is used for pothole patching in cold months. It is made so municipal road crews can go from pothole to pothole with little concern for the viscosity of the mix as the day wears on. A hot mix would harden up before the days end. Cold patch is not durable and is considered a temporary fix, intended to last until the warmer months when a more permanent hot mix can be used.


A U.S. government study on pothole repair, conducted by the strategic highway research program recommends the best materials available should be used to reduce the need for repeatedly patching the same potholes, because of poor quality materials, which quickly offsets the savings from purchasing a less expensive mix. The study went on to show in most cases, the poorer performance of cheap materials resulted in greater overall costs for labor, equipment, traffic control and user delay. I take from this that the use of cheap materials, either cold patch or sand in winter actually ends up costing more in the long run. What a concept, use quality rather than quantity and save money over time!


Since quality of material and production of quality material is pretty much out of a municipalities control, (what is the benefit to a local hot top producer to make a quality material that would end up in less sales?) produce a cheap cold patch which everyone will buy because, well it is cheap, up front and you get the (what I call, the Walmart effect, you buy cheap, you buy a lot and spend more) explanation: I bought a paring knife for $6.00 and it lasted a year, so next time in the store I went to buy another one except now it costs $7.00. As I grabbed for it, I stopped and thought if this one lasts a year and next year it goes to $8.00, I will have spent $21.00 in three years and that number will just keep growing. I put the knife back and stopped in a specialty shop for kitchen stuff, pots, pans, gadgets and knives. After some back and forth time, I bought a paring knife for $50.00 (damn!) which I still have and use today, 17 years later. Turns out that was money well spent. Back to potholes, so when warm weather gets here, what to do?


A suggestion would be to fix the potholes buy cutting out the bad asphalt area that is damaged and add base material if needed which is then compacted and then apply traditional heated hot top of proper depth and compact it with a heavy roller so when cooled, you end up with a piece of new road. This would end the need to keep going out over periods of time to reapply cold patch to existing potholes, which seems to be the way it is done in Templeton now. These fixes appear to show that no more time, material or fuel would be needed to keep putting cold patch on top of cold patch. If the tools and equipment needed to do this work is not in the hands of the highway department then it would seem prudent to use road monies, from the state and other sources, if any, to hire this done, thus freeing up the current highway employees to do other tasks that would come from the planning and direction of the highway superintendent. Once done, an analysis could be done on what was spent on cold patch (total costs to include man hours) vs. the costs of the more permanent fix.


It surely has to be worth the effort because of the possible long term savings that if demonstrated would demonstrate to the taxpayers that their money is indeed being spent wisely and then there could possibly be more support for more investment in town services to include equipment purchase/upgrades.


There is another suggestion, so how far will it go?


Jeff Bennett


PS: I heard the $28.00 per ton wood chips may now be in the $34.00 to $40.00 per ton neighborhood now. Hopefully in budget season, the district or the selectmen can produce a contract for chips for the next winter season with a definite price so then we can all do some math.

1 comment:

  1. Jeff if you start to mark all the section of pot hole road areas with the amount of area to be marked you would need to start up a paint factory. Start with the good roads like barre and see if you can mark out a good section for it to be skipped over. odds are you won't. After that lesson go over to the royalston road and do the same. Grinding seem the way to go like in Tenn. like i saw when we went to visit. You sound like the answers are in the way to go about this but in fact catchup only works on food and not the roads in town. My guess would be about 20-40 million to do what you think will put the roads in good shape. Go through Gardner now not when it warms up and you will learn the problems you write about fixing have the same results when done with hot top. They purchased a hot top repair unit and fit to a 6 wheeler that uses grindings and pelets to fix the way you write about. So to do this your way " the right way" it would take a very long time to complete and what do people do in the time we don't do pot holes and only do repais per your way? Close half the roads due to pot holes?
    I like your thinking don't get me wrong BUT we've waited to long to expand the road repair program and the budget to do it.
    The people don't want to spend the money they voted no for the 250K over ride and also voted no for a over ride for the new loader. The purchse need didn't go away and 2 out of the 3 loaders are still in ill shape with a limited life left. For the town to just ignore the need for equipment is not good practice. It also is not safe to count on the old loaders to be ready to load and then crap out when needed the most.It's a good thing we bought the new one its use was the only way we would keep the roads treated and safe. Key word AGAIN SAFE. Do you get that JEFF? One way or another the highway dept will keep the roads as safe as we can. We just have to do the best with what we have to do it with.If not for the screen plant the new loader getting the chunks out before we go out to sand Templeton would be a much worse place to travel through. Even the salt needs to be screened and rescreened before the sanders wil operate correctly. Not sure if you knew but the storage we have is different from what you see at other highway barns and causes the issues we run into when the cold sets in deep like this year has. Maybe we could use the old stewart building and get rail cars in with salt and regionalize that too. We would make out with a lower salt cost and have a place to call a real highway dept. state of art vented exhaust and all the bells and whistles. Well back to reality,This town can"t get a loan. Won't pass over rides for highway so end of story. Thanks for the dreams Jeff "realy" thanks. Like i said and i know we will keep doing the best we can with what we have to do it with to keep our roads as safe as we can. I guess we all are allowed the dreaming part in life but we are all bound to wake up sometime. Ask yourself is it about the money?

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