County of San Diego’s “Road to 70” Road Resurfacing Program
Location
San Diego County Unincorporated Area
City or County Responsible for Project
County of San Diego
Category
Roads: Efficient and Sustainable Road Maintenance, Construction and Reconstruction Projects.
Author
Mark Perrett
County of San Diego Department of Public Works
5500 Overland Avenue, Suite 320, San Diego, CA 92123
858-694-2693
Project Description
The County of San Diego’s (County) Department of Public Works is responsible for maintaining nearly 2,000 centerline miles in the unincorporated county. Maintaining this extensive system of roads is complicated by the large variations in geographical settings, climate conditions, road uses, traffic volumes, soil conditions, and pavement types and ages. The County’s average Pavement Condition Index (PCI), dropped from 70 in 2012 to 60 in 2017. In April 2017, California Senate Bill 1 was approved, known as the Road Repair & Accountability Act of 2017, which provided new revenues so that cities and counties could address the shortfall of funding needed to adequately maintain the existing network of local streets and roads. With these additional funds, the County’s Road Resurfacing program was increased fourfold, from $13 million in 2016 to $56 million annually in 2017. This increase translates to about 150 centerline miles, or 7.5% of the road network being resurfaced each year. Nicknamed the “Road to 70”, the County’s goal is to reach a PCI of 70 with its annual $56 million program. The County uses a pavement management software program, combined with input from DPW road maintenance staff and stakeholders, to identify priority roads to resurface within each of the County Board of Supervisor’s Districts. The County uses a combination of traditional resurfacing treatments that are cost effective and perform well for pavement rehabilitation and preservation. As part of the annual road resurfacing program, the County also replaces and rehabilitates deficient road culverts, pedestrian ramps, and curb and gutter and utilizes the opportunity to stripe new bike lanes where appropriate. The County has used 15% recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) in both Conventional Asphalt Concrete in the last 3 years which projects to an estimated use of 104,000 scrap tires and 58,000 tons of RAP. The County also continues to share and collect information about best performing and most cost effective treatments as part of joint meetings with other jurisdictions to incorporate lessons learned into our own program to make it better including. The Building Better Roads (BBR) Working Group was formed in late 2018, with representatives from the County of San Diego, other San Diego Region public agencies and private industry and several potential program enhancements have already been identified. Funding is limited for road maintenance and pavement preservation and it is more important than ever that we implement pavement preservation strategies that optimize our existing funding to improve our current road network conditions. Well maintained road surfaces can provide many years of useful service if properly maintained. The County of San Diego will continue to look to implement innovative, cost effective and sustainable pavement preservation techniques on its way to the “Road to 70”.
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