County opts for low-cost repairs

Minor delays are anticipated when crews start working on the most traveled county road in eastern Bartholomew County.

Short-term traffic control measures are expected as workers seal cracks along East 25th Street, from the Columbus city limits to State Road 9, for the first time in five years, Bartholomew County Highway engineer Danny Hollander said.

Work could begin within days, Hollander said.

The scope of road repair along the 4.46-mile stretch is not as extensive as local officials would prefer, Bartholomew County commissioner Larry Kleinhenz said Monday.

“We’d love to chip and seal, but it would be ugly for a lot of people,” Kleinhenz said.

Chip-and-seal road repairs, which blend asphalt with gravel, are substantially less expensive than a new blacktop and can extend the life of a road by about five years, commissioner Carl Lienhoop said.

But some residents have complained that loose gravel has caused cracked windshields, loss-of-control crashes and foreign material clogging drainage areas, Hollander said.

Residents have also said blotches from the mixture end up on the body of their vehicles, damaging the paint.

While it’s been nine years since East 25th Street received a new blacktop, Hollander said the county is trying to postpone a complete overlay for as long as possible.

“A 30-foot-wide road is pretty expensive,” Hollander said. “It’s about like doing two roads.”

East 25th Street had been part of State Road 46, but the state in 1993 revealed a plan to eventually reroute the highway along State Roads 7 and 9.

While the Indiana Department of Transportation said the rerouting was approved to reduce dangerous truck traffic through the city, county officials at the time said they suspected INDOT was shifting some of its costs onto local governments.

After six years of negotiations and upgrades, Bartholomew County government assumed maintenance and responsibility for East 25th Street, from Talley Road to State Road 9, in June 1999.

Lienhoop estimated the cost of a new asphalt surface would be more than $500,000. That’s two-and-a-half times more than what the county spent last year to expand and improve Lowell Road west of Interstate 65.

That estimate does not include repairs needed on the concrete surface of the bridge that spans Clifty Creek east of Petersville. Earlier this month, Lienhoop estimated that cost at about $200,000.

“(The bridge) has so much deterioration right now,” said Hollander, who anticipates a rise in both asphalt and construction prices may drive up overall construction costs even further.

So instead of spending more than $700,000 for a complete overhaul of East 25th Street this year, the commissioners decided to spend $21,250 to seal the larger, visible cracks.

Besides being substantially less expense in the short term, that decision will result in fewer delays and restrictions on a major road.

However, crack sealing doesn’t waterproof tiny gaps in the blacktop as more expensive solutions do, the county highway engineer said.

Going the cheaper route increases the probability of severe road damage developing, which has been known to cost taxpayers more money in the long run, he said.