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NORWALK, Conn. It's frustrating: The city comes in and tears a road up. Then it sits there, a mess. "Frankly, I'd be happy if they'd just commit to paving a street within a reasonable amount of time after they mill it," Randy Heller said on The Daily Norwalk's Facebook page. "There's a stretch of France Street that was milled over a month ago still sitting unpaved, killing my tires every time I go over 'the lip.'"
France Street is one of several roads that have vexed drivers this summer during a massive paving campaign. These roads are milled and then seemingly ignored. Hal Alvord, director of the Department of Public Works, says that's usually because utility companies need to do work on the road. Sometimes it's another type of logistical problem.
"You know what destroys more roads in a city that anything else?" Alvord asked. "Utility companies and contractors. Water is a distant No. 2. What destroys more roads in any city, not just Norwalk, but any city, is utility companies doing gas lines, water lines, all that kind of stuff, and contractors that are doing hookups."
By ordinance, there is a two-year moratorium on digging up a road after it has been paved. But Alvord says that's not good enough. The city would like to have a newly paved road last five to 10 years. His department is working to synchronize its paving program with efforts of the utility companies. He said it's difficult: Three companies are doing the paving, and in some parts of the city Connecticut Light & Power and AT&T have underground infrastructure as well as that owned by Yankee Gas and the various water companies. "It's not the easiest thing in the world trying to coordinate all of that stuff," Alvord said.
A glitch occurred on France Street. Workers for Yankee Gas tried to get the money to do work under the street, but the deadline came and went without an answer from above. The city milled the street, but gas leaks were discovered. "I'm not going knock Yankee Gas because they have done a yeoman's job of changing their capital program to synchronize with what we're doing in our paving program," Alvord said. "They have a budget they have to live with. ... If they've got a gas leak in a road, we're not going to tell them they can't dig it up to repair it."
France Street should be paved in August.
Hendricks Avenue also sat for weeks in a milled but unpaved state. Deering Construction asked to mill other roads before paving it to maximize equipment efficiency. "While they were there the milling machine broke down," Alvord said. "Then the paving machine broke down. That's why Hendricks sat there longer than we would want it to sit there."
Alvord said that ideally, the DPW would like a road paved within a few days of being milled. But besides the $6.7 million in paving, there's the West Avenue work, the storm drainage project in the Buckingham/Lockwood area, a flood control project on the Norwalk River and a $4 million traffic signal upgrade project. "We actually have bid packages that are ready that we're not putting out there because I don't have anybody to supervise the work," Alvord said. "That's how much we've got going on."
Are you impressed by the amount of roadwork going on?
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