City Council Amends Street Cut Ordinance to Improve Quality of Repairs Share

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The Mar­i­on Com­mon Coun­cil approved an amend­ment to Gen­er­al Ordi­nance #14 – 1991 (Street Cut Ordi­nance) at their reg­u­lar meet­ing on April 16^th.

Com­mu­ni­ty invest­ment in streets and roads is a major com­po­nent of com­mu­ni­ty assets. As cus­to­di­ans of these facil­i­ties, the City of Mar­i­on Engi­neer­ing Dept. has the oblig­a­tion and respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect the pub­lic inter­est. The amend­ment will pro­vide var­i­ous approach­es to achieve qual­i­ty repairs of Right of Way Street Cuts that will sat­is­fy pub­lic motorists and achieve lev­els of ser­vice meet­ing the expec­ta­tions of the City of Marion.

The Amend­ed Ordi­nance effec­tive­ly helps in defin­ing how the City of Mar­i­on going for­ward will instruct any­one work­ing in the Right of Way, pri­mar­i­ly with­in the street, guide­lines on how to prop­er­ly repair the sur­face of the street for the fol­low­ing but not lim­it­ed to:

SMOOTH­NESS:

Cuts that are repaired under the exist­ing ordi­nance do not give enough guide­lines on how to keep the exist­ing dri­ving lanes smooth for local traf­fic. The amend­ment offers guide­lines and exam­ples to help con­trac­tors under­stand what the City of Mar­i­on is requir­ing of them.

CON­SIS­TANT SIZE:

Cuts that are repaired under the exist­ing ordi­nance do not give enough guide­lines on how to have the cuts remain sym­met­ri­cal with the road­way with­out irreg­u­lar shapes and sizes. The amend­ment offers guide­lines and exam­ples to help con­trac­tors under­stand what the City of Mar­i­on is requir­ing of them.

COM­PACTION OF STREET CUT:

Cuts that are repaired under the exist­ing ordi­nance do not give enough guide­lines on how to prop­er­ly com­pact the asphalt once it is placed. This lack of com­paction is caus­ing the edges of the cuts to dete­ri­o­rate pre­ma­ture­ly. The amend­ment offers guide­lines and exam­ples to help con­trac­tors under­stand what the City of Mar­i­on is requir­ing of them.

ADDI­TION­AL FAC­TORS NOT LIM­IT­ED TO THE FOLLOWING:

Fac­tors influ­enc­ing the per­for­mance of a patch include the pave­ment mate­r­i­al, soil con­di­tions, cli­mate, traf­fic and repair tech­niques. These rough­ly cor­re­late with the same fac­tors influ­enc­ing the life of new pavement.

Poor con­struc­tion tech­niques, such as rock­ing the jack­ham­mer while cut­ting the bound­ary of the patch, can dam­age the area adja­cent to the cut and fur­ther degrade the patch and sur­round­ing pavement.

Pave­ment cut repairs made using qual­i­ty mate­ri­als and sound engi­neer­ing and con­struc­tion tech­niques tend to per­form as well as the sur­round­ing pave­ment. Poor per­for­mance of the patch tends to be a result of inad­e­quate com­paction of the mate­ri­als, insuf­fi­cient thick­ness of mate­ri­als, poor qual­i­ty of mate­ri­als, and dam­age to the side of the cut.

Exca­va­tions and street repairs…even well-con­struct­ed street repairs…shorten a pave­men­t’s life. Sev­er­al types of street dis­tress, set­tle­ment, alli­ga­tor crack­ing, and pot­holes, often show up around patch­es. Qual­i­ty street repairs should attempt to reduce the occur­rence of these types of distress.

The esti­mat­ed reduc­tion in pave­ment life due to a util­i­ty cut was found to be from 20% to 56% of the orig­i­nal life of the pavement.

APPEAR­ANCE OF RIGHT OF WAY STREET CUT REPAIRS:

The final appear­ance of the street after repairs are made should be accept­able with an engi­neered appear­ance. Street repairs that are sat­is­fac­to­ry from a func­tion­al point of view may pro­duce a neg­a­tive reac­tion from the pub­lic if they give the appear­ance of being poor­ly planned or exe­cut­ed. The pub­lic’s per­cep­tion of street repairs is based pri­mar­i­ly on shape, size, and ori­en­ta­tion or the geom­e­try of a patch.

The new amend­ment does not affect how the repairs under the sur­face asphalt are to be done. For clar­i­fi­ca­tion on these repairs please refer to GO# 14 – 1991 and GO # 5 – 2004 and the City of Mar­i­on Stan­dard Specs.

Sin­cere­ly,

Mike Graft, Head of Engi­neer­ing Department