The City’s 2024 street preservation plans were approved this week when City Council approved paving, chipseal and slurry seal contracts.
The City of Bend is preparing to do about $4.6 million worth of street preservation contract work this year that will improve approximately 59 lane miles in Bend. This includes about 16 miles of paving, 21 miles of chip seal, and 22 miles of slurry treatments. The attached map shows which roads will get treated this summer.
The City’s “Keep Good Roads Good” philosophy means we maintain and preserve streets with the most cost-effective treatment for the road condition — the right treatment at the right time. Maintenance treatments for the 2024 construction season include:
- Paving — Old asphalt is ground out and replaced or a new layer of asphalt is paved on top of existing roadway. Process can take a couple of days.
- Chip seals — Asphalt emulsion and rock are applied to the road. Rolling, short term closures.
- Slurry seal — A treatment typically for low-volume residential streets. One-day closures.
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.
“The street preservation contracts are part of our continued maintenance efforts to extend the life of our transportation infrastructure with the most cost-effective treatments and available resources,” said Transportation and Mobility Department Director David Abbas. “We have 900 lane miles of roads to maintain, and the cost of maintaining streets has increased considerably in recent years. In future years as the transportation fee increases our revenues, we will be able to steadily improve the pavement conditions.”
To learn more about Bend’s street preservation practices, visit bendoregon.gov/streetpreservation. To subscribe to weekly emails to plan your best route around road work and construction, visit bendoregon.gov/traffic for the weekly road and traffic report.
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To obtain this information in an alternate format such as Braille, large print, electronic formats, etc. please contact Anne Aurand at 541-388-5573 or aaurand@bendoregon.gov.
