Patchwork quilts aren’t limited to sewing bees in Woolwich: they also apply to some of the township’s roads. See, for instance, recent paving work done on Whippoorwill Drive in Elmira, where new asphalt is mixed with some of the old tarmac for a two-tone effect.
While the work looks unfinished, it isn’t, as contractors simply ripped up the worst portions of the roadway and repaved them.
“We had some significant rutting on Whippoorwill,” said engineering manager Richard Sigurdson, noting the work is part of a newly-implemented maintenance paving program that looks to extend the life of some roads before a full reconstruction or resurfacing has to be done.
He said the work may look a little untidy, but it’s a cost-effective way to get another five or 10 years out of some roads before the much larger expense of full reconstruction.
“The question is, where do you start and stop?” Sigurdson said of the “quilting” effect created by the approach, noting the goal is to replace only as much asphalt as is necessary to extend the life of the road.
The practice is more common in other municipalities, including the region, and is fairly new to Woolwich, he added.
The paving is, in effect, a stopgap measure. The township doesn’t have a timeline for a full resurfacing of the road, but there’s currently a 2016 placeholder date for engineering design work in his department’s five-year capital forecast.
Both Whippoorwill and Barnswallow Drive, another collector road, are slated for extensive work. Both have also been the subject of traffic-calming measures due to concerns raised by the public.
Parts of Barnswallow, particularly in the stretch between First and Church streets, are in bad shape. But the timing of maintenance paving and, eventually, full reconstruction will depend on more than just budgeting. There are longstanding contingencies for extending the road south to Listowel Road, creating another route in and out of town to keep traffic out of the core and off of Arthur Street. That function will be even more important as the Lunor subdivision adds some 1,700 new homes to the northwest section of town. In the meantime, the township needs to take into consideration factors such as construction traffic, including heavy trucks, in choosing when to repave the road, Sigurdson suggested.
The patching done on Whippoorwill is in keeping with Woolwich’s shift in priorities, doing routine work to keep roads from deteriorating and requiring much more expensive reconstruction work – essentially keeping the good roads good.
Where roads are still in good repair, but on the cusp, resurfacing them within a year or two could mean getting another 15 or 20 years of service out of them, for example.
