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FAIRFIELD, Conn. Scott Bartlett knows hes not going to win any popularity contests. As Fairfields Superintendent of Public Works, hes responsible for keeping track of the towns road paving program. That means hes the one fielding angry phone calls from residents.
Especially this time of year. Everybody gets their tax bill, the first thing they say is, Why arent you paving my street? My neighbor got paved, Bartlett says. But its not that simple.
Fairfield will spend $3.75 million to fix or repave about 30 of its 275 miles of road this year. Public Works crews walk around town to gather data about potholes, cracks and other damage. All the information is entered into a computer system, which spits out a grade that Bartlett uses to determine which roads need work.
For some, Bartlett schedules a quick seal a topcoat of asphalt or stone on top of existing pavement as he did with Round Hill Road and Villa Avenue this summer. Roads with the lower grades, including Brookside Drive and Duck Farm Road, need complete overhauls.
Bartlett has also been receiving calls from neighbors upset about the type of paving done on Fairfields roads, not just on the schedule. Bartlett began phasing in a new paving method last year that he believes will work better in the long run, but it has not been popular with residents.
Bartlett calls the traditional method mill-and-fill. In this style, Public Works crews tear up a few inches of pavement and replace it with new black asphalt.
But last summer, Bartlett began using Cold In-Place Recycling, or CIPR. With this method, crews still tear up the old road. But they then put the old concrete right back down on the same street, mixed with a glue of oil and other liquids. The result is a street that still looks faded and grey but without the cracks and potholes.
This method has many advantages over mill-and-fill, he says. For one, its cheaper currently about $155,000 per mile, compared with just less $206,000. Cold In-Place Recycling also lasts longer because it goes deeper into the ground, preventing cracks in lower layers from breaking through the surface.
A stretch of Barlow Road below Fairfield University was repaved this way last summer. It shows no signs of wear a year later. Just around the corner, on Mill Plain Road, Bartlett went with mill-and-fill at around the same time. Cracks are already beginning to appear in the roads surface.
I know the public loves the new black asphalt, Bartlett says. But if Im not getting the longevity out of that asphalt because I havent solved what caused the asphalt to crack in the first place, Im not doing my job.
What do you think about Fairfields paving methods? Do you like the new asphalt? Or does the new method seem like a good idea? Leave a comment below.
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