Travis County Commssioners Court
November 12, 2003
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Item 10
10. Consider and take appropriate action on request to use rigid (concrete) pavement under section 82.302(d)(4), standards for construction of streets and drainage in subdivisions of the Travis County code.
>> good morning. T.n.r. We -- this item was on your agenda two weeks ago, around you asked us to -- to attempt to provide a -- provide a comparative cost if you will, a life sickle cost between rigid and concrete pavement, excuse me rigid and flexible pavement. We did that, what we discovered is that there might very well be too much data on that subject. We found costs ranging from $32 a square yard to $133 a square yard for life cycle costs of concrete. We are pretty confident in our life cycle costs for flexibility pavement being around $115 a square yard. That's a very local number that we have generated, it's been working for a number of years, with road and bridge, we are happy with that. You can see from the material in your backup that the -- that the locally the concrete, the life cycle concrete and for -- comparable. $16 a square yard -- it may be that concrete is slightly higher than that, but it's hard to measure the small increments like that. Basically, the data that we researched in trying to answer that question really doesn't support a definitive conclusion on my part as to which is better from a total life cycle cost analysis standpoint. Going back to the original proposal that the developers, developers and engineers of presidential meadows brought to us, I kind of want to remind you, when we set this thing up reimparted requirements to this of an experimental nature that are pretty far in excess of what we require for ordinary development. If you are going out there today going to be a buildible ahac pavement road, you get to do the same thing that everybody else does. If you are going to go out there and build a concrete road, what we have added is items that the geotechnical consultant has to stay on the job throughout the project providing -- providing technical advice, we are requiring the use of -- of in some cases dual use of dry utility trenches as well as trenches constructed specifically to drain water out of the subgrade adjacent to either side of the pavement. We are requiring that sidewalks be located meamd behind the curb. Except where they can't be for -- for a.d.a. Purposes to keep the water from intruding into the subgrade. And the developers have agreed to put an additional one inch of concrete pavement throughout this subdivision than is required by the design. Now, that -- those standards were set up, I think, to produce an experiment that had a very high likelihood of success. In other words, the concrete pavement that they would have constructed would have been about as good as you can do given all of the constraints and problems that there are with conducting any kind of construction in that material out there. What we did, we thought about another way to get to the same place. I propose to the developer that -- that we look at stepping the maintenance guarantee. Right now on the completion of construction there's a one-year maintenance guarantee. I proposed that we extend that to five. In conjunction with that we suggest that the developer and county come to a set of agreements, what is pavement distress, what items constitute maintenance that needs to be, regular maintenance. And given those two things, that as time goes on, this is a very large subdivision, 1600 lots, probably if you figure around 100 lots per year, that might be as many as 16 years for this development. Given performance of the initial sections and criteria for how -- what is distress and what is maintenance, we could consider lowering that extended maintenance period incrementally over time as more and more of their product comes online and more and more of it is successful to what our standards requirement is of one year. The developer has, I have spoken to the developer's engineer as late as Monday. And I haven't heard directly from the developer, but I don't think the developer supports that idea. The additional cost are inherenn the criteria that I mentioned before about the geotechnical consultant and the subsurface drains and things are difficult to put in a pro forma and make everything work out.
>> what was the agreeable on -- [indiscernible]
>> I'm sorry, commission erwin center.
>> residential -- I'm sorry, Commissioner.
>> residential, the developer, what was he agreeable upon doing if the criterion that you had set up, what you are suggesting, is outside of what -- have the answer to the question there.
>> yes. He has agreed to all of those things that I mentioned that we initially developed, the geotechnical engineer, the subsurface drain, the sidewalks and the one inch of additional pavement. When we could not answer the question for the court about what -- which type of pavement has the higher life cycle cost, our answer, t.n.r.'s answer to dealing with that issue was to go to an extended maintenance period to protect the taxpayers against -- if it occurred -- that it was a higher maintenance item to help protect the taxpayers against that. He has not agreed to that as of yet. And I don't see them in here. So ... But what we would like to do, even if -- even if this experiment doesn't come to pass, we would like the court to -- to look at what we have done so far and approve of this concept. In other words, if somebody else comes along to do the same thing, these are the kind of things that we believe we need to have in place in order to -- tom recommend an experiment like this to place. It could -- this could be a better mouse trap. We have -- we experienced extreme, significant pavement distress in flexible payments that we build that developers build in these soils out in east Austin in less than a year. Sometimes before the one-year maintenance period is up.
>> I'm glad that you said that. Please finish, Commissioner.
>> go ahead.
>> that's the thing that is like how I would love that the life cycle of hmac in eastern Travis County is nine years because the experience that we've had, we were just adding seal on Friday and kelly lane, wise lane, cameron road, seal, flunger individual east, these are all major roads, major arterials out there, and when I drove down kelly, I almost wanted to cry. I can't tell you how many times we have rebuilt kelly lane and if it lasted nine years I would be thrilled. But I have been here nine years and I think we are on the third or fourth time of trying to fix that road. Pflugerville east is ruined. Cameron is ruined. Wise is horrible. And it's -- we keep going out there and spending huge amounts of money on this stuff, so if the premise is that it gets it for nine years that gets you the 115, I can guarantee you that the one that's we have done out in precinct 2 are not lasting nine years, therefore if you put in the true life cycle which as you aptly put it can be a year, then, you know, you have got to multiply it out. There is a reason that the state went to concrete for s.h. 130. And I think that we need to like embrace an experiment and deal with it in this subdivision, I think that we need to look at it on some of our c.i.p. Projects quite frankly. I know that joe is just going ooohh when I say things like that but it just doesn't make any sense. Pflugerville east we are doing the preliminary engineering on that one right now. It -- I'm convinced, all that tough do is ride on out there, and the road is just -- it's -- it's a six flags ride. And it just gets ruined every single year and Pflugerville has got the same situation with their section of kelly as well. I'm just -- I'm at the point of saying, hey, joe, of saying -- let's move with these folks [multiple voices]
>> I'm pretty well convinced --
>> first batch of [indiscernible] we improved upon is the second time -- [multiple voices]
>> what's the recommendation today.
>> I think it's worth the experiment.
>> I continue and t.n.r. Continues to recommend that we proceed on this experiment with these conditions that we have talked about here. For the reason that's Commissioner Sonleitner is stating.
>> how long do you think that it will take us to see whether or not the pilot is successful?
>> I would suspect in all honesty, judge, that we will probably know within a year after construction. We typically know with flexible pavement within that time frame.
>> when will we consider a second request of this nature --
>> I think that we could have more than one experiment at a time going on, yes, sir. In other words, if somebody came in next week with another proposal to build concrete streets, as long as we could use these type of constraints and -- on that, I would recommend that we continue to do that.
>> let me ask this -- judge, are you --
>> well, I guess I'm -- I'm not opposed to pilots, but I am opposed to second pilots before you know the effects or failure of the first. So I guess that I would be inclined to be supportive this time, but to weight and see the youth come, like f mix, we looked at it a while before we started doing multiple projects. And as it turned out, first one or two were successful and then I guess we've done many more since then.
>> it part of our program.
>> I think waiting a year is reasonable.
>> I have no problem with it. And I have -- as we discussed this a couple of weeks ago, I think that we did united to look at some type of [indiscernible] [papers shuffling - audio interference] since the project appears to me that we should look at it just as a pilot project.
>> yes, sir.
>> I can move approval.
>> second.
>> of item 10 and let me ask this question -- well, you seconded it.
>> uh-huh.
>> let me ask this question. Has there been any other type pilot project similar to what we are doing here on a pilot basis and if so what -- what have been the results? I guess looking at similar situation, as far as eastern Travis County, because it -- of course precinct 2 enters into that, also precinct 4 [multiple voices]
>> and 1 and of course that -- that the soil over there is could you give me an example maybe of another area similar to the soil conditions as I just described?
>> we have not done any pilot study on concrete. The only other pilot study that we have done is with f mix in the western portions of the county.
>> right.
>> and we did several pilot studies there. We took about 30 years to analyze that process before we were convinced that it was a good process. So -- so we have not done any experimentation on concrete.
>> I was wondering if anybody else was basically doing -- [indiscernible] to Travis County. That have some of the same soil conditions as they do in this area because this stretch is -- that type of soil not only impacts Travis County, but it goes pretty much up -- out of the county and other areas. [inaudible - no mic] rigid concrete pavement.
>> well, certainly texdot has -- has a whole area of research and development.
>> okay.
>> so they would [indiscernible] this model --
>> okay.
>> or the Texas transportation institute.
>> judge, did we not have some subdivisions in western Travis County that originally were put in as concrete? Because I remember them being less than happy with us when -- when they did get repaved out there, we were having to do it with seal coat, they were not happy.
>> yeah. The very, very few miles of concrete road --
>> I thought there was some out there.
>> when we came with that f mix scenario, of course came before this court, of course we did approve that. So I see no problem with this one on a pilot basis.
>> assuming this passes, joe, we need the conditions in a form that's -- that's distributable, right?
>> yes.
>> so the idea would be to -- to put those in like policy language?
>> yes.
>> there's a motion and second. Any more discussion? All in favor of the motion? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you.
>> thank you all very much.
>> thank you.
Last Modified: Tuesday, November 12, 2003 5:52 PM