City worker Javier Reyes applies slurry seal on 1st Avenue.
By Geoff Page
If you are going to the polls today and are thinking of voting for Kevin Faulconer because he has “repaired” 300 miles of roads, as he is telling everyone, he has been successful in fooling you.
This doesn’t mean you are not smart, it just means that paving is not something you know much about and you think this is true because of all the new black streets and new stripes. I’ve been in the construction business for 43 years. I know paving and the mayor is not being honest.
The vast majority of what has been done is called slurry seal. This is not a “repair,” slurry seal is a maintenance operation designed to prolong the life of good asphalt. It is something the city should have been doing all along.
According to the newest city budget, it only costs about $0.50 a square foot, and that includes sealing cracks, while an actual overlay costs three times as much. Slurry looks great but it has no structural value at all. And if the potholes and cracks are not fixed first, the street will continue to fail. Slurry seal does not seal cracks or fill potholes.
And the measurement of 300 miles is also suspect. There are two ways to measure the work, in linear feet and what is called “lane miles.” Lane miles means a four lane road for one mile is counted as four miles. That 300 mile figure is an exaggeration.
Faulconer has taken a page from Susan Golding, probably one of San Diego’s most corrupt mayors, and that is saying a lot with our past cast of characters. Just before the Republican National Convention in San Diego during her term, when she had eyes on a higher office, she had all the city streets within a few miles of the convention center “painted” with a seal coat to make it look like the city was doing a great job on its streets.
It made a great impression.
But, when you seal over potholes and cracks, you accomplish nothing.
Faulconer’s effort to “repair” streets coincided neatly with the coming mayoral campaign. The one commercial running most often has the mayor sitting at a desk, touting accomplishments and saying something like “Most importantly, we have repaired 300 miles of streets.”
It ain’t so.
If you like Faulconer for something else, then fine.
But if you like him because of the pretty black pavement you see around town, look away and do not be mesmerized by that, the man behind the curtain is manipulating you San Diego.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I take slurry seal over nothing, which is what we have had in years.
Well, that’s fine 3cents, but that was not the point of the rant, the misrepresentation was the point. Slurry seal being touted as road repair to a public that has no experience with construction was the misrepresentation.
Well, they really screwed up Voltaire. It had to be re-done, because the company let people drive on it too soon, leaving the surface bumpy. Now, there’s hardly any curbs left. And the new striping, shoves all the traffic to one side, making it EXTREMELY DANGEROUS for people who have to park on the street–exiting and entering their cars. Several have been hit by truck mirrors, in the past, when there were no stupid bike lanes.
In an effort to accommodate some biking activists, the city did what they did on Voltaire. I have not measured it yet, but I am sure that the car travel lanes are now narrower than the city standards require. According to the City’s Street Design Manual, a two lane collector with a speed limit of 30 mph needs to have 11-foot-wide travel lanes. I have a pretty good eye for measurements and I’m betting the lanes on Voltaire are less than 11 feet wide.
I voted for him because of his revolutionary and forward thinking programs for the city. His Reading at the Library Program and Playing at the Park Program are two shining examples.
Good one Seamus, you got me, I actually looked these up. Doh.
honestly haven’t seen much in the way of the black slurry around the city but it’ll take more that slurry to get the darn streets repaired. I saw the wacky work on Voltaire… that was a darn thing. Faulconer, not unlike others that came before, is a pitchman.
Faucolner’s mayoral policies are reminiscent of slurry that is spread wide and an eighth of an inch deep.