Pierce CO, Washington, Cancels 48 Miles Of Chipsealing - Supplier Out Of Asphalt

[hatrack]

Blame cokers. Or light crude. Or the rising price of oil. Either way, Pierce County has run out of asphalt. The county announced Tuesday that it was canceling preventative chipsealing maintenance of 48 lane miles of roads because of a shortage of liquid asphalt.
Its supplier, Albina Asphalt Products of Vancouver, Wash., ran out of the product earlier this month after a halt in manufacturing at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes. The county had planned to apply the product to 70 lane miles throughout the unincorporated areas as well as Lakewood, University Place and Edgewood. Chipsealing is designed to provide a protective coating to a road by applying asphalt and then an aggregate rock cover.

The county said no other regional sources are available, and almost all of its 3,100 lane miles are made of asphalt, making most alternative methods unfeasible. Of the county’s four road districts, only the Purdy district completed the maintenance. “That leaves districts 1, 2 and 3 without getting a surface treatment,” said Paul Marsh, a superintendent in the road operations division of the public works and utilities department. “That’s everything west of the (Narrows) Bridge.”

The problem isn’t just limited to Pierce County: Clallam, Jefferson and Lewis counties all count Albina as their provider of asphalt. Thurston County also is drastically reducing the number of miles it will cover. The City of Tacoma gets its asphalt from a different supplier, and doesn’t have much chipseal work planned anyway.

The shortage is part of a bigger national concern. The price of asphalt – a byproduct of oil – is skyrocketing. Two years ago, the county paid about $270 per ton for both hot-mix and liquid asphalt. When the supply ran dry earlier this month, the price had jumped to $660 per ton.

EDIT

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/427959.html

[Betsy Ross]

1. Maybe paving material from used tires can be reformulated

to use as a patch. Tires do make nice quiet roads.

[tularetom]

2. You think rural roads suck now? Wait until they can't chipseal them

Chip sealing is the main form of road maintenance for most of the locally maintained farm roads in the USA. Most local governments can't afford reconstruction or even hot mix overlays, so they have to be content with pothole patching, crack sealing and surface treatment by chip seal.

Road maintenance is getting squoze out of the budget in many local agencies. Gas tax receipts are down (due in part to the cost of oil) and cost of asphalt products is up (same reason). Many counties here in CA are already contemplating turning their county roads back to gravel because they can't afford to maintain the surface roads any onger.

And if you think commodities are expensive now, wait until the cost of transportation skyrockets because the infrastructure has failed.

[NickB79]

3. Many rural roads where I grew up are still gravel

The roadgrader comes through a few times a year to level everything out, but the ruts that develop following heavy rains and spring snowmelt make some roads unpassable at times.