Travis County Commissioners Court

April 3, 2012 - Item 12
Agenda

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Item 12, consider and take appropriate action on the Tnr Road Maintenance Fiscal Year 2012 Work Plan.

>> good afternoon, judge, Commissioners, don ward and david grier here to answer any questions that you may have.
we will go ahead and explain the work plan for the road maintenance crews.

>> if you would generally do that for us.
the reason that I thought we should call this item up is that we do have posted in executive session a -- a discussion of the formula 1 circuit of the americas item.
number 25ment and we mentioned three roads in that item and there are -- these three roads are included this the work plan.

>> they are.

>> so that our residents would know that in fact these three are in the work plan, I thought we all to call it up and discuss them briefly.
can you just tell us what the plan is for them?

>> sure.

>> thank you, judge, don ward, director of road maintenance and fleet services, t.n.r.
these three roads that you are asking about, mcangus, kellum and elroy, we've had some work planned on elroy for several years, it's been delayed because of some water line projects with the city.
so it's -- we've intended to get to this road for -- for quite a while.
unfortunately the drought has made things worse out there.
we have quite a few of these areas, prime example cameron road on a couple of weeks ago.
what we plan on elroy is reconstruction and some overlay.
same thing with mcangus right now.
we're going to be doing recycling, reconstruction work on it.
same kind of scenario.
it's unfortunate that we couldn't get to them when we had earlier plans.
we purchased a recycler last year, a big roto mixer is what it's called.
we're going to be using that extensively on these projects.
right now we are trying out a new process that we haven't ever tried before, cement stabilization.
what that involves in it is basically recycling the -- the hot mix in place there, adding cement to it, stabilize it, and it saves us quite a bit of money, it's a green process.
and we hope that it will really save us some time, money and allow us to -- in saving the time and money to do additional miles and reconstruction every year.
as you know, we come with the work plan every year with so many miles of surface treatment, so many miles of hot majors overlay and so many miles of reconstruction.
this process should allow us to maybe at least 50% additional mileage in that reconstruction process which in the eastern part of the county we really had struggles based on the drought.
we're going to have more roads to go through a reconstruction process because they're in poor shape, just to level up an overlay won't fix what the problem is.

>> so are they in worse than usual shape because of the composition of the soil.

>> composition of the soil, the extended drought that we have, but the soil condition out there it's a heavy clay soil.
which in laymen's term, it basically shrinks and swells.
this drought has given us scenarios that we haven't seen in -- in this part of the county in probably decades.
so what you have is a very -- very large movement of the soil that -- that these roads sit on, so you have large cracks, you have undulations, makes it unsafe to drive on.
what you typically have to do is go through and recycle some of these sections of roadways.
just so happens these had been planned to do previously.
like I say, we had a utility project on most of the length of elroy last couple of years that we didn't want to go ahead and work on the road and then have to tear it up and do it again.
so that's where that one stood.

>> so for those watching, we have talked about expanding elroy from a two-lane road to a four-lane road.

>> right.

>> what's in the work plan, though, is us improving it as a two-lane road.

>> correct.

>> so at some point we'll have to address the issue of doubling the size to accommodate expected traffic at formula 1.

>> that's right.

>> so -- so that issue doesn't go away.
but we are -- we are sort of accelerating what we had planned to do on these three roads anyway.

>> that's true for elroy and mcangus.
kellam, he didn't talk about, but the extension of kellam depends on whether or not cota intends it over.
we would resurface it as exists today as part of that project.
we haven't committed to it yet.
it's in there if we need it, we'll deal with it.
but elroy and mcangus, they were projects, elroy was in the 2008 I believe work plan and mcangus was in the 2009 or '10 work plan, and they were delayed for various reasons, we're not necessarily accelerating those but we are catching up with them now as opposed to other roads.

>> these have been county roads for decades.

>> ever.

>> forever.
I just thought we ought to publicly discuss those two roads.

>> one thing that I would like to add, also, judge, is this work plan is a dynamic tool.
it is constantly changing.
we see our needs all the time challenging from one priority to the other.
like I explained cameron wasn't even on this year's work plan, it was in such bad shape we had to jump ahead and do this.
it not a thing you can only do this, not do anything else.
we are constantly evaluating these roadways.
if we have conditions that we deem in the best interest of the traveling public, we're going to go out there and make those a priority.

>> so there's flexibility in the plan to deal with those needs as they arise.

>> I did just want to get one more hit on the equipment they're using.
the public probably doesn't really grasp the importance of it.
but in the past what we would do is reconstruct the road is remove all of that bad material, haul it off somewhere and then replace it with new material.
what they are doing, this piece of equipment, it scrapes up everything that's out there, remixes it, puts it back down.
so you don't have a lot of trucks hauling stuff away or bringing material in.
it's truly a green method of getting the pavement reconstruction done.
so apologies, guys, for trying these types of systems.

>> this new method has worked in other places.

>> it has.

>> it has.

>> that's why we think it will work here.

>> absolutely.

>> keep the court posted.

>> we will do that.

>> now, by the way, there are a lot of other projects in the work plan.

>> there are.

>> so --

>> and various kinds of improvements and treatments basically.

>> yes, sir.

>> so if residents want to copy this, we would be happy to make it available.

>> be happy.
we typically posted on our website, also, but we can certainly get them a copy.
not a problem.

>> any other questions or comments?

>> nope.

>> move approval.

>> second.

>> discussion on the motion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
thank you all very much, thank you for your patience, also.

>> thank you.

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