Q & A - Alternatives to Rebuilding our Roads
Are there cheaper alternatives to fixing the roads?
The short answer is no. We may have had lower cost alternatives 20-25 years ago, but not any longer. Less expensive solutions often mentioned as alternatives to rebuilding our roads - filling potholes or overlaying roads instead of a full rebuild, or using tar and gravel — are just a short-term band-aid on a problem that now needs major surgery.
Can’t we continue to simply fill potholes? Or overlay another layer of asphalt?
Filling potholes and periodic overlays has been the road maintenance strategy for Village roads since the mid-1980s. In fact, the road you see today is multiple layers of overlay on top of the originally paved roads and curbs, with lots of pothole patch added over the years.
Overlays can extend the life of a road, but when the underlying road is in poor condition (like ours are), they just don’t work because they don’t address the underlying problems. Roads fail from the bottom up. “Reflective cracking” - cracks that come through the overlay above where the roads have already failed - will start quickly and the overlay will need another cover soon - maybe 4-6 years.
A significant problem with overlays is the financing.
If we wanted to do an overlay on our roads, we would still need to form an SAD and fund the cost. Bloomfield Township allows an SAD to spread project costs over 15 years and sells 15-year bonds to fund them. Unfortunately, an overlay will not last anywhere close to 15 years, and thus can’t be funded from a 15-year bond. The Road Commission also offers SAD funding, governed under a different statute in Michigan law, with 10-year repayment. An overlay won’t last that long either.
A filling-potholes strategy will not slow the deterioration of the roads.
Unfortunately, kicking the can down the road again (see what we did there?) after 60+ years is not a solution that fixes our problems.
Could we eliminate the curbs from the current plan to reduce the cost?
Curbs are an integral part of the drainage for the road, designed to keep water off of the road surface. If curbs are eliminated, there would need to be an alternative method of funneling water away from the road. Drainage ditches (also known as swales) are often used for this purpose. The ditches would be located next to the road, set several feet lower than the road surface; water gathered into the swale would be funneled into a storm drain. Swales often involve a culvert placed under each driveway. Many of the residential roads in Beverly Hills use this method of drainage.
Elimination of the curbs from Village roads would require an assessment of whether an alternate method is feasible, and if so, a redesign of the drainage to implement the new method. This would involve a significant investment of time and design dollars.
Why not convert our current roads into gravel?
Residents of the Village would have to pay for the conversion to gravel roads through the creation of a Special Assessment District.
Gravel or dirt roads are challenging to maintain with new problems like “washboard” roads, mud, and dust. Also, our roads have combined storm and sanitary sewers — gravel and soil erosion from dirt/gravel roads could create serious problems in our sewers.
Conversion of our roads to gravel would change the character of our neighborhood. Through all the years the Board and various road committees have discussed what to do with our roads, gravel roads have never been an option that residents expressed interest in pursuing.
What about using Tar & Gravel (or Tar and Chip) on our roads?
Also referred to as Chip Seal, tar-and-chip paving looks similar to asphalt but uses a different installation process. A base layer of gravel is laid, then hot liquid bitumen asphalt and more loose stone are laid over the surface and compressed. While it is more durable than gravel (and costs more than gravel but less than asphalt), this is a solution more commonly seen in rural areas, not suburban neighborhoods like ours. If you’ve driven on a rural road with caution signs for “Loose Gravel,” it may have recently had a layer of tar & chip added. That loose gravel could create real problems in our combined storm and sanitary sewers.
We asked the Road Commission to further clarify why Chip Seal/Tar and Gravel is not a viable alternative to fix the Village Roads. Mark Meszler, who runs the Subdivision Roads department at RCOC stated: “This type of construction [Chip Seal] has very little structural integrity and definitely is not a rehabilitation process. I would classify it as an extend the life of a product approach. There's no life to extend in the [Village] roads which we are potentially rehabilitating.... In a nutshell, there is nothing left to salvage in the roadways for the most part."
Tar & chip roads have a reputation of tracking messy tar into homes by children & pets (click HERE to read “Homeowners Furious over new Tar and Chip Road Project” from Lawrenceburg, IN), being easily damaged by snowplows, and making roads unsafe for cyclists (click HERE to read “Why Chip Seal Is the Worst Surface for Road Riding” by bicycling.com).
While this might seem to be an attractive solution because it is cheaper, it has real issues associated with it - most significantly that it won’t solve the problem.
Were other alternative solutions to our road problems evaluated?
When we submitted our “Expression of Interest” forms to the Road Commission in 2018, we requested them to develop a plan to fix our roads. The Road Commission did evaluate potential solutions besides a complete rebuild - and determined that a rebuild was the only solution that would fully address the issue.
Since the early 2000s, the Village Board and various volunteer road committees have worked on solutions to our roads. As far back as 2008, the Board and various road committees have been advised that a complete rebuilding of our roads and replacement of curbs and gutters would be required.
