New Roads Ain't What They Used to Be

It's road construction season and Belmont roads sure do need help. School, Orchard and Goden are due this August.

About eight years ago, I was quite excited when a group of roads in my neighborhood were repaved: Pine, Oak, etc. (And I was jealous, since those closer to home were quite bad.)

But just a few years later, I saw cracks opening in the seams between the paving passes. How could this be in a two-year-old road? Last year I stood in an ankle-deep hole that grew in one of those cracks.

In the past two years, Washington, Grove and School (southern half) streets, and Concord Avenue (eastbound near Cambridge, and the hill) were fully-reconstructed. Now that I'm paying more attention, I'm worried. The quality of the work is bad. After less than a year, I saw those same cracks appearing on all those. After one year, Washington had some very bad sections; not just long, straight cracks, but areas of crumbling pavement. Do this: walk from Chenery to Grove. You don't see nearly as much driving by.

Some roads done around then turned out quite a bit better. Trowbridge, while it has some defects, it not nearly as bad. Belmont is not alone. Quality of roads in other towns varies too.

On School, there are some of those same cracks, and quite a few (10-20?) "valve boxes" (those 6-8 inch round metal things for shutting off water valves) were depressed an inch or so below the rest of the road surface. Since then, you can see where they've been raised up with an obvious 18-inch circle of asphalt patch, an obvious defect in the road surface. The same goes for eastbound Concord Avenue across from Belmont High School. All these will be the first places where failures will happen.

It's not simply a case of poor construction craftsmanship. There are obvious design flaws too. For example, notice after every rain pools of water along some roads, like School at Philip even next to a storm sewer.

This is a huge frustration to town staff. Like most towns, we use outside contractors for this kind of work, and it is subject to public bidding rules where we have to pick the lowest bidder. It's the private contractors, not government employees, doing this work.

I brought the quality issue up at Town Meeting this spring and Town Engineer Glenn Clancy was visibly displeased with the quality. He said the company that did Washington Street was working with us to determine what happened. They get some points for that. No word in whether we'll be compensated for the poor work or future repairs.

Always frustrating is when roads are dug up soon after fresh paving. Isn't there a new rule on the books for standards for patches, especially to new roads? The two obvious places on School are obvious. I've given up on the School/Washington intersection; that can't go for a year without a backhoe visit.

What to do? Good question! Perhaps write tighter contracts, where we don't make final payments until we're happy – a year later? Have vigilantes spray paint day-glo circles around obviously bad work? Get Patch and the Citizen-Herald to keep tabs on bad contractors and publicize their work?

One simple thing: when you see bad workmanship, email the Selectmen at selectmen@belmont-ma.gov.