Road repairs on the way

by KELLY FRIESEN

Journal editor

Driving around Humboldt is about to become noticeably smoother.

The City approved a $100,000 expenditure for extra slurry seal and road micro-surfacing work and a $50,000 expenditure for asphalt patching in 2014 at its latest council meeting on June 9. Both expenditures were recommended by the public works & utlities department.

Micro-surfacing is a cost-effective preventative maintenance. It is applied to heavy traffic roads that are in fairly good shape to reduce deterioration by sealing, correcting raveling and providing a high degree of skid resistance.

"It (the $150,000) will not necessarily go to the roughest roads," said Peter Bergquist, planning and engineering director of the City of Humboldt. "This is more to maintain roads so they don't go beyond the point of no return. We are looking at fixing roads that are five to 15 years old."

The asphalt patching is needed to repair notable damage before going ahead with the micro-surfacing work on the some roads.

"This is for fixing up some spots before we do slurry seal," said Bergquist. "It's for pre-patching before the big fix."

The total amount of $150,000 appears to be an unprecedented sum of money that the City has put towards road repairs in a single project.

"This is the highest (amount of money) I've seen put into road conditions," said Bergquist. "I think the City knows how important it is to keep our roads in good condition and how big of an asset they are."

Despite the significant amount of money approved for the road repair, the approval for the project happened quite quickly.

"(Ensuring the money for this project) happened fairly rapidly when we found out we were under budget," said Bergquist. "We took it to the committee and it passed a vote and now it's about to go underway."

According to Bergquist, the repairs are undoubtedly needed, but Humboldt's roads as a whole are in good shape compared to other various cities around the same size.

"It's pretty subjective on where Humboldt stands (among comparable cities for road conditions)," said Bergquist. "We have many good roads and some that are in bad shape. But I think comparing (Humboldt) to a lot of other places I've lived, we are in pretty good shape."

In addition to the road repairs, the city approved a $25,000 expenditure to do various sidewalk repairs and to provide an analysis of the City's sidewalk network, as well as a $9,000 expenditure to replace the deteriorating sidewalk in front of City Hall.

See the June 18 edition of Journal for a map of the roads to be repaired.