STARKVILLE — A new paving preservation process is about to give city streets a new lease on life, or at least, a few more years of glory.
City Engineer Cody Burnett told The Dispatch in an email that work will begin Tuesday on the city’s pavement preservation project. The work is expected to be completed by Sept. 6.
Some road treatments will mean traffic lanes close for up to an hour after work is complete, he said, but they could also extend the life of the roads up to 10 years.
“The preservation work is primarily geared toward preserving roads that are already in pretty decent condition,” Burnett said. “Historically, we’ve let roads go way too far, and then the only option is to overlay those with asphalt, which is very expensive for the life that it returns. And so the preservation is a vision that essentially catches those streets earlier in time, and it makes them last longer.”
Roads were selected for the project based on the city’s Maintenance Improvement Plan, which was created in 2022. It ranks the needs of roads between 1-10 based on their condition, recommended treatments, and cost for treatments.
The entire improvement plan comes to a total of about $3.5 million, with about two-thirds of that dedicated to traditional asphalt overlay. But the last $1.1 million is committed to a new preservation process of the city’s roads, including single microsurfacing, double microsurfacing, ultra-thin overlay, crack seal and fog seal.
These treatments are often cheaper than applying a traditional asphalt overlay, Burnett said, and they will help the city economically by extending the roads’ life.
Ward 2 Alderwoman Sandra Sistrunk, who is also the board’s budget chair, said funding for the road preservation project is coming from bonds, which are being serviced by the city sales tax and internet use tax.
“It hasn’t impacted anybody’s tax bill yet,” Sistrunk said. “We hope to not do that. So far, we’ve been able to work within the parameters of the money we received there.”
By following the example of other cities and counties in the state and servicing the roads before they need a more expensive overlay, Sistrunk said, the city may be able to save money long-term by trying out these new techniques.
“The bottom line is, traditionally, the only thing we’ve done has been patch a pothole, or fix a larger pothole, and at some point the road gets to be so bad that we mill and overlay it,” she said. “But what we’ve found is that there are other techniques that will allow you to extend the useful life of the road so that it can last longer between those expensive overlays.”
While some roads will have crews on them temporarily for smaller crack and fog sealing treatments, extending road life between three to seven years, others need microsurfacing.
Microsurfacing involves pouring a mix of rock, asphalt emulsion, mineral filler and another polymer on top of the asphalt about three-eighths of an inch thick, to extend a road’s life by about eight to 10 years, Burnett said during a March board of aldermen work session.
But there is a drawback to microsurfacing – curing time.
While the traditional asphalt overlay work hasn’t caused any significant traffic delays, as asphalt can be driven on almost immediately once it is poured, microsurfacing needs about 45 minutes to an hour to cure after it hits the road, Burnett said, and cars will need to stay out of the affected lanes until curing is complete.
According to Burnett’s email, TL Wallace, the project’s contractor, will generally only treat one lane of each road at a time. Vehicles will need to park and drive on the opposite lane while construction is ongoing. The contractor will also be working with affected residents to provide access to driveways and other property as needed.
While the delays caused by the work may be inconvenient, Mayor Lynn Spruill said an extra hour of waiting is an “incredibly small price to pay” for the value the citizens will get from it.
“It is a new process for us,” Spruill said. “This is a road we have not yet traveled. The effort is to save (on) costs, extend the life of the road, which is in and of itself saving costs, and allow us to have a better product at the end because we have kept the roads from deteriorating by having infiltration of water.”
Updated work locations and schedules will be available online throughout the project at cityofstarkville.org/pavementpreservation.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 39 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
