Hi-tech repaving of 1.5-mile stretch of Woodmen Road begins in Colorado Springs
Scott Harrison
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) — For many drivers, the recent stripping of old, rubbery pavement on Woodmen Road was a major accomplishment.
However, the best may be yet to come.
On Sunday night, crews began repaving Woodmen from just east of the Academy Boulevard interchange, west across the Woodmen/Academy overpass, under the bridge above Interstate 25, to the Woodmen/Rockrimmon Boulevard intersection.
So far, workers are paving westbound lanes from the Sam’s Club to slightly east of Academy.
Rain on Monday and Tuesday nights slowed paving progress.
As first reported by KRDO 13’s The Road Warrior in early August, crews are replacing traditional asphalt with an experimental material called stone matrix asphalt (SMA).
“This is a specialized asphalt that is typically utilized on highways and interstates,” said Corey Farkas, the city’s manager of public works operations and maintenance. “It gives a lot more durability, and it is rut-resistant to a lot of vehicles. So, we’re going to give that a shot here on Woodmen. It’s very sticky and not as easy for the contractors to work with.”
The SMA appears to have larger particles that bind to create a thicker pavement.
“CDOT (the Colorado Department of Transportation) uses it quite a bit on highways,” Farkas explained. “There have been some other municipalities up in Denver that have used it on highly-traveled roadways. We’ve gone up there and seen the product, and it looks really good from what we know. It performs really well.”
One crew member told The Road Warrior that SMA was previously used on a stretch of Academy, north of Woodmen, that was repaved last summer.
Because SMA is more expensive than traditional asphalt, the city won’t use it to replace asphalt entirely, but may use it on selected projects if it works well enough to reduce maintenance costs.
Meanwhile, repairs to the Woodmen bridge over Academy — which started last month — continue.
“We’re going to be replacing the joints and updating the concrete that’s been damaged,” said Gayle Sturdivant, the city’s deputy public works director. One of the major things we’re doing is changing the wearing surface over the bridge. It has just degraded quicker than expected, similar to the asphalt that’s been put down. We’re working with products that have demonstrated, in other locations around the state, to be better performing.”
Most of the work on both projects is happening at night, and the city expects to complete both before the end of the year.
The $2.7 million cost of the bridge project is financed by sales tax revenue from the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority.
The overpass was built in 2011, and a casualty of it was the closing of a Boston Market restaurant in an adjacent shopping center.
A manager at the time said that the restaurant closed because the height of the bridge blocked the view of the eatery to passing drivers.
“Our business dried up after that,” the manager said.
The repaving is financed by revenue from the city’s 2C expanded paving program, through a voter-approved sales tax increase.
Farkas said that last year, crews applied a skim (thin) layer of asphalt on Woodmen to stabilize the pavement until the current work could begin.