Maintenance on Carson streets begin Monday

Carson City's yearly program to improve the condition of its streets starts Monday with work on Mountain Street.

Crews from Granite Construction will begin an overlay project of the streets from Fleischmann Way to Nye Lane.

Traffic will be moving with controls, said John Platt, city street engineering technician.

Construction has slowed traffic on the west side of town as construction crews started preliminary work for the project, which also includes slurry sealing and chip sealing. Both processes protect the surface and extend the life of the roadway.

In all, the projects include work on 21 miles of Carson City streets and is costing the city $924,000, said John Flansberg, street operations manager.

"The majority of the roads are in good shape," Flansberg said. "We're just trying to take them to the next level."

The goal of the work is to keep water from getting under street surfaces.

The city did work on 40 miles of streets last year and plans to fix 50 miles this year. Slurry seal will be applied to 18 miles of road starting Friday. Slurry is a mix of oil, sand and small rocks that is spread about one-half inch think on top of asphalt. When it is cured it keeps water out of the asphalt. Roads will be closed up to four hours with during slurry seal work.

About four miles of streets are scheduled to get new asphalt. Carson City crews will apply a fog seal, a thin oil seal coat with a shorter life than slurry seal, to the other 29 miles.

Carson City residents in 1986 approved a 1 cent levy on fuel taxes and one-fourth of a cent sales tax to be used for street maintenance. Since then, city crews have scheduled yearly maintenance on streets including reconstructing roads where needed, sealing cracks, overlaying them with new asphalt and slurry sealing.