Preventative Maintenance (PM)

Preventative Maintenance includes the techniques used for preservation of the structural integrity of the pavement cross-section. The basic theory behind pavement preservation is to apply relatively inexpensive PM to pavements at regular intervals to avoid much more expensive repairs later (much like you do PM’s on cars to keep them running reliably). These include:

Seal Coating – leveling uneven areas, applying an asphalt emulsion and covering with aggregate rock providing for weather tight seal and a wear surface.

Overlaying - applying a minimum of 1.5 inches of asphalt to the street’s surface after repairing distressed areas (presently not funded).

NOTE: Street Services is a maintenance operation  and is not funded or equipped to perform major reconstruction or overlays of streets such as Staples Street (between Gollihar and Williams), Alameda and Annaville.  These type of projects are funded and handled through the City's Engineering Department and the Capital Improvement and Bond programs.

Pavement Management

For long term planning, the Streets division utilizes a computer software program called Micro-PAVER (PAVER for short) as part of our pavement management tools to help develop work strategies and plans on a network level, and assess the over all condition of the street network.  The PAVER program was developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers.  It is distributed and technically supported by APWA and is widely used throughout the country. Street Services has used this program for over 15 years.

The City’s street inventory network is set up in PAVER defining pavement sections for every street.  As a statistical program, pavement sample sections are defined through PAVER on a random basis.  The department street inventory inspectors then go through and inspect the sample sections for the various defined pavement distresses.  PAVER defines 20 distresses and three severity levels, which are documented for each sample section.  The inspection information is then entered into PAVER for analysis.  PAVER provides a quantitative street condition assessments based on inspection results on a scale between 0-100, which we call PCI or pavement condition index.  The higher the PCI number, the better condition of the street.  Based on the PCI, a work strategy for that pavement section is developed and the overall condition/needs of the street network is determined. Using this process, the street conditions are continuously being updated through inspections and maintenance work being performed.  Although this is a continuous process, it should be realized that inspecting the entire street network takes approximately three years to complete and while the data is as accurate as possible, some pavement sections have not been inspected for three years.