Street Maintenance

How the Street Rehabilitation Project is Building Better Roads for Our Community

The City of Los Banos Public Works Department is responsible for maintaining and repairing 136 miles of streets, 5 miles of alleys, 272 miles of curb and gutter, and 262 miles of sidewalks.

Maintaining this infrastructure is an ongoing investment in the safety, mobility, and quality of life of our community. Through its pavement management program, the City takes a data-informed approach to maintaining and improving local streets.

Provide quality services. Build safe streets and sidewalks. Develop a pleasing access to the city.

How Does the City Decide Which Streets to Fix?

The City uses a Pavement Condition Index (PCI) to help evaluate the condition of our streets. Think of it as a report card for roads.

Streets are inspected for cracks, potholes, and other signs of wear and given a score from 0 to 100. A higher score indicates pavement in better condition, while a lower score indicates pavement with greater deterioration.

Infographic explaining pavement conditions evaluated during a Pavement Condition Index, or PCI, assessment. Examples shown include longitudinal and transverse cracks, block cracks, alligator cracks, aggregate loss, rutting, bumpiness, crack seals, patches and potholes. The StreetSaver PCI rating scale ranges from 0 to 100: 90–100 Excellent, 80–89 Very Good, 70–79 Good, 60–69 Fair, 50–59 At Risk, 25–49 Poor and 0–24 Failed.

PCI is not a measure of drivability. A very low PCI score does not necessarily mean a street cannot be driven; rather, it indicates significant pavement deterioration.

But the PCI does more than identify streets that need attention. It also helps determine what kind of work a street needs and when that work should occur.

For example:

Streets in good condition may benefit from preventive maintenance that extends the life of the pavement and helps prevent more expensive repairs later.
Streets showing significant wear may require resurfacing or rehabilitation.
Severely deteriorated streets may require more extensive repairs or complete reconstruction.

Why Isn’t the Street With the Lowest Score Always Fixed First?

While PCI is an important tool, it isn’t the only factor used to determine which streets are selected for improvement.

The City also considers traffic and roadway use, planned utility or infrastructure work, project costs, available funding, and opportunities to preserve streets before they deteriorate to the point that much more expensive repairs are required.

This approach allows the City to balance repairing streets in poor condition with protecting streets that are still in good condition, helping available funding go further and improving the overall condition of Los Banos streets over time.

Life Cycle of Asphalt

Well-designed and well-built asphalt roads will last about 25 years. However, even a well-constructed road begins to deteriorate over time.

Over time, the materials that make up asphalt begin to break down and become affected by elements such as rain, sunlight, and chemicals that come into contact with the pavement surface. Roads that experience a high volume of vehicle traffic will deteriorate at a faster rate than roads less traveled.

Graph illustrating how pavement condition can decline as pavement ages. The vertical axis shows Pavement Condition Index, or PCI, from 0 to 100, and the horizontal axis shows pavement age from 0 to 30 years. Color bands correspond to the StreetSaver PCI condition ranges, from Excellent at 90–100 to Failed at 0–24. The graph illustrates how preservation and preventive maintenance are generally associated with higher PCI levels, while rehabilitation and reconstruction are associated with progressively lower pavement conditions.

Types of Road Treatments

There are more than a dozen ways to treat a road, but these treatments generally fall into three major categories: preventive maintenance, rehabilitation and reconstruction. Below are some of the most common treatments within each category.

Preventive Maintenance

Preserve good pavement before major repairs are needed.

The goal of preventive maintenance is to maintain or improve the functional condition of the road, slow the rate of deterioration, and extend the life of the road by five to seven years. By slowing the rate of deterioration, we can delay, or completely eliminate, the need for major rehabilitation or reconstruction in the future.

Preventive maintenance treatments can be done independently or combined with other treatments to help extend the life of the road. Some of the more common preventive maintenance treatments used in Los Banos include crack seals, slurry seals, and thin overlays.

Rehabilitation

Restore pavement that has significant deterioration.

Rehabilitation treatments are carried out on roads that exhibit distresses and failures like block cracking, rutting, shoving, and potholes that are beyond being fixed with preventive maintenance techniques, but aren’t severe enough to warrant complete reconstruction.

Rehabilitation treatments used in Los Banos include chip seals, cape seals, asphalt removal and replacement, and overlays. The goal of rehabilitation treatments is to help create a safer driving surface, improve the overall appearance, provide a seal to repel moisture from damaging the base and extend the useful life of the existing pavement by eight to ten years.

Reconstruction

Replace pavement that has reached the end of its useful life.

Reconstruction involves the complete replacement of the road with new or reused asphalt, which can have a useful life upwards of 20 years. Reconstructed roads are most favorable to drivers but are also the most costly.

By comparison, preventive maintenance treatments can cost as little as $1,200 per lane mile, while reconstruction can cost as much as $261,000 per lane mile. In addition, reconstruction projects can take several months to design and construct, making it very disruptive to drivers and adjacent businesses.

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