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REDUCES LONG RANGE COSTS
Manteca planning on using street pavers
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Manteca’s first concrete street pavers could be put in place in the Springtime Estates neighborhood sometime in 2019.

Such use in residential neighborhoods is nothing new in Ripon. There was a period before the Great Recession hit in 2008 that the City of Ripon required builders of new neighborhoods to use pavers instead of traditional asphalt to reduce long-term maintenance costs to city taxpayers.

Street maintenance is a major financial issue as almost every city in California is experiencing major backlog of work that needs to be done to address deteriorating pavement.

While asphalt or concrete is less expensive to install — $45 per square yard as opposed to concrete pavers at $68 per yard — over an equal life cycle the asphalt approach Manteca currently uses is significantly higher. The long-term maintenance costs for asphalt or concrete is $66 a square yard as opposed to $12 for concrete pavers.

That means over the same time period, it costs a city $80 a square yard to install and maintain interlocking concrete pavers as opposed to $111 for asphalt or traditional concrete pavement. The $31 per square yard savings is significant given Manteca currently has 461 lane miles of streets that it is struggling to find adequate funding to maintain.

The cost savings was the driving force for elected leaders in Ripon adopting interlocking concrete pavement as a roadway standard for1.3 million square feet of new residential streets constructed between 2005 and 2008. The higher cost of the pavers was transferred to buyers of new homes.

Ripon also employed pavers downtown to not just reduce long-term costs but to promote aesthetics. The visual advantage goes beyond the installation. Should utility lines have to be accessed pavers can be taken out and put back in place without creating non-matching asphalt or uneven surfaces. If for some reason a pothole develops, the impacted pavers are removed and replaced with new ones avoiding a patchwork look.

With 5,555 square yards of pavers on downtown Ripon streets, that city will avoid $172,222 in maintenance costs over the life cycle of the streets.

Pavers also have the potential of reducing non-street maintenance costs by helping reduce storm runoff. The permeable design allows some water to percolate into the ground. That provides additional benefits in less storm water that can add to flooding concerns as well as avoiding some of the costly solutions the federal government is requiring for storm water run-off in the coming years.

The city earlier this year identified Springtime Estates bordered by Louise Avenue, Main Street and Highway 99 as well as the Mayors’ Park neighborhood bounded by Louise Avenue, Union Road, and the railroad tracks as concrete paver pilot projects in Manteca.

The city hasn’t indicated whether they make move toward requiring pavers on new residential streets.

 

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com