Pacific Oaks Road in Goleta (near Costco) is one of many streets that have degraded so badly that they need to be dug out before they can even be repaved. This street gets heavy pounding from massive delivery trucks to The Plaza (Albertson’s) Shopping Center and to Camino Real Marketplace. Yet it is also the only access to our entire residential neighborhood.
Huge thanks to the Goleta City Council for approving Pacific Oaks Road to be repaired and repaved after so many years of damage. After so many years of waiting, it was surprising to see how quickly the actual work proceeded!
Here are my photos. Here are my videos.
First up was this ingenious “cold milling machine” made by the German company Wirtgen. When it goes to work, it looks as if it is neatly and effortlessly rolling up a carpet! Appearances can be deceptive. Apparently, it is actually digging into the old asphalt with very sharp points that are rotated with tremendous power and precision. The depth is so perfectly controlled that it gives the illusion that it is neatly being rolled up.
A double hopper dump truck was then maneuvered into position to catch the old asphalt as it was dug out and ejected forward by the Wirtgen cold milling machine.
My first video shows the dump truck maneuvering into position. Then the Wirtgen machine immediately begins to move forward. Digging out the old asphalt and ejecting it into the dump truck. The old asphalt will later be sold as building material for new asphalt paving! It is recycled! If you look at the equipment, you can see the logo of Pavement Recycling Systems.
This heavy duty street sweeping machine cleaned up after the Wirtgen machine.
After the surface was cleaned, this truck came along to lay down what is called a “tack coat” of thin asphalt. This layer helps the new asphalt layer to adhere to the old lower layer. Otherwise the new asphalt layer could slide during vehicle braking as if you took a running jump onto a throw rug on a wood floor! The tack coat also serves as a water barrier to prevent water from seeping through.
At this point, another double hopper dump truck was maneuvered into position ahead of the paving machine. This dump truck was loaded with fresh asphalt ready to be laid down.
The paving machine was ready and waiting to swallow up the fresh asphalt and lay it down into a firm, flat, smooth surface.
In my next video you can see a front end loader swoop in to help position the fresh asphalt for the paving machine to swallow it up. Then you can see the paving machine do its thing!
Another worker walked alongside the paving machine to push stray asphalt inwards to create a clean edge.
Finally, a steam roller was brought in to squash the freshly laid asphalt flat, smooth and even firmer than when it was freshly laid. Apparently, the current term for this machine is: Road roller, compactor roller or simply “roller”.
We are very grateful to the City of Goleta for repairing our very badly degraded and rather dangerous road. As a bicyclist I was in constant fear of getting my wheel caught in one of those cracks or hitting one of those potholes.
In the long run what is really needed: An increase in fuel taxes and/or mileage and/or user fees to fund road work. Electric cars are heaver than combustion engine cars and therefore do more damage to the pavement. But they pay no fuel taxes. Hence the need for mileage fees.
That money needs to be rationally allocated to a proper maintenance cycle to keep the roads from ever getting in such terrible condition. When you see a crack or pothole, it is just the surface sign of a very deep problem: Water seeps through tiny cracks and erodes the pavement and roadbed below the surface layer. Patching the cracks and potholes does nothing to fix the underlying serious damage.
What is needed: Regularly laying down a protective layer. A fog seal can last up to 5 years. A slurry seal can last up to 10 years. If these sealants are regularly applied, a road can last up to 20 years before a full asphalt layer is needed. This is enormously cheaper than letting a road become degraded as our Pacific Oaks Road got to.
A typical car on our poorly maintained roads incurs hundreds of dollars each year in damage and extra wear and tear. It is a lot cheaper to pay a fuel or mileage tax to maintain the road than it is to fix your car. Or prematurely have to buy a new car.
It was fun to watch this heavy duty repair process in real life. But with proper maintenance, this should be a very rare sight!
Proper funding of roadwork from those who use the roads indeed is key. And using that funding for maintenance indeed is essential. Otherwise we will never catch up and we will always be doing major repairs in a haphazard way.
You say, “In the long run what is really needed: An increase in fuel taxes and/or mileage and/or user fees to fund road work.”
We’ve done that. We citizens already voted to increase our taxes upon ourselves in order to fund road repairs. Unfortunately the politicians handle the money.
California’s Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 (SB 1) increased gas taxes and vehicle fees to generate over $5 billion annually.
https://mtc.ca.gov/funding/state-funding/sales-tax-gas-tax-funding/road-repair-and-accountability-act-sb-1
@scott14
1) It is not nearly enough money for the backlog of work
2) When there is not enough money, how do you prioritize maintenance versus salvaging essential roads that are in unusable condition?
The problem is not “the politicians”. The problem is a public that can’t grasp that it costs a lot of money to support infrastructure for motor vehicles.
And that does not begin to include the much larger costs of driving that no one is paying for. Like the Climate Crisis.