Each year, the City of Bend’s Street Maintenance team gets to work with roadway maintenance before wear and tear gets too severe as to require a wholesale rebuild on a section of street.
Here’s an excerpt from the press release from the Streets Department referencing the work they’ll do on street preservation this year.
“The Bend City Council has authorized about $7.04 million for street preservation work in Bend this summer to improve 125 of lane miles of Bend’s roads….
‘We’re shifting our emphasis slightly more toward our residential roads, as most of our main streets are in better shape,’ said Bend Streets and Operations Director David Abbas.”
In the past, overlays have proven to be a good time for City staffers to evaluate how the streetscape is apportioned. It’s an opportunity to add some bicycle facilities by either widening or even adding new bike lanes.
- Inlay
Old asphalt is ground out and replaced. - Overlay
A new layer of asphalt is paved on top
of existing roadway. - Slurry
A treatment for low-volume residential streets. - Chipseal
Hot oil and rock are applied to the road.
While they won’t be adding any new bike lanes this year, there are three noteworthy areas where they’ll be doing more than just overlaying or chip sealing roadways. In an email, Janet Hruby, Project Engineer for the Department, shared that, (emphasis added)
“… we do review and evaluate if we are able to restripe the existing pavement to meet or more closely meet our current travel lane and bike lane standards. For this year the proposed changes include:
- Century drive – increasing the 5 ft bike lane to 6 ft and decreasing the travel lane from 13 ft to 12 ft
- Brosterhaus Road – slight reconfiguring/upgrade asphalt edge and restriping to extend the southbound bike lane thru the Parrell Road intersection and extend it one block to Trap court.
- Eagle Road – patch the shoulder just south of Red oak so the bike lane can continue south of the red oak intersection.”
Are any of the maintenance treatments on streets you use for your bicycle commute? If so, could any of them use a wider bike lane or a new bike lane? Let us know and we’ll pass that along to City staff.
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