Bend outlines 2020 street preservation projects

(Update: Details on change in circumstances)

The city of Bend is about to kick off a season of street preservation work all over town. Some paving will start this month, earlier than planned, due to changing circumstances around the state.

The Bend City Council authorized about $3.2 million for street preservation work in Bend this summer to improve about 77 lane miles of Bend’s roads. That includes inlay/overlay, chip seal, and slurry seal treatments.

The city’s “Keep Good Roads Good” philosophy means they maintain and preserve streets with the most cost-effective treatment for the road condition — the right treatment at the right time. Maintenance treatments include:

• Inlays and Overlays – Old asphalt is ground out and replaced or a new layer of asphalt is paved on top of existing roadway. The process can take a couple of days.
• Slurry – A treatment for low-volume residential streets. One-day closures typically expected.
• Chip seals – Hot oil and rock are applied to the road. Rolling, short term closures expected.

Bend Transportation and Mobility Director David Abbas said the successful low bidder, Knife River Corp.-Northwest, had a change in scheduled planned work elsewhere in the state, opening up a window of time to work on the Bend project earlier than originally planned.

A road’s condition helps the city determine maintenance plans. The worst roads need full reconstruction. Reconstruction is exponentially more expensive than maintenance, which is not an efficient use of maintenance funds and more likely to be paid for as part of a larger Capital Improvement Program.

“In recent years, the city has been steadily improving our pavement conditions through increased efforts with our maintenance and preservation work. We want to continue this improving trend on the conditions of our transportation system,” Abbas said.

To learn more about Bend’s street preservation practices, visit www.bendoregon.gov/streetpreservation, which includes an interactive map about this summer’s plans.

To get emailed directly about road and lane closures, sign up for the city’s Weekly Road and Traffic Report at www.bendoregon.gov/enews.