Santa Rosa delays Fulton Road repaving, won’t get into details

Santa Rosa has put off a roughly $4 million project to repave a stretch of Fulton Road with a special type of concrete, leaving it unclear when - and how - one of the city’s costliest road repair projects of 2019 will be completed.

The city decided to use a construction technique known as roller-compacted concrete to rebuild Fulton Road in both north and south directions between Occidental Road and West Third Street. The special concrete, touted by city officials as a durable and cost-effective alternative to pricey asphalt, has been used elsewhere to build dams and airport runways, but using it to repave a city road is fairly novel.

City officials and the project’s contractor now say problems with equipment and material have caused indefinite delays, potentially pushing back the road reconstruction as far as spring.

The repaving was set to close multiple lanes of Fulton Road for more than a month starting last Tuesday.

Paving jobs at nearby intersections are still set to be completed later this year, but there’s not yet a timetable for the work on Fulton Road, according to Jaime Smedes, a spokeswoman for the city’s Transportation and Public Works Department.

“The city is postponing the planned paving of Fulton Road until issues with the roller-compacted concrete pavement technology are resolved or an alternative paving system is selected,” Smedes wrote in an email.

The city announced the delay in late August with scant explanation, and public works staffers have been tight-lipped about the matter when asked for more information.

They would not provide additional details about problems with the concrete technology, nor say when those issues were discovered and what alternatives the city is considering.

“We don’t have answers for those” questions, said Jason Nutt, the assistant city manager who oversees transportation and public works, on Friday.

Project superintendent Tom Hyland of Ghilotti Bros. said it was his understanding that attempts to mix the roller-compacted concrete - which must be produced near construction sites where it’s used - had resulted in material that was too weak for the city’s standards.

“They’re uncertain that we’re going to be able to meet the strength requirements, and we’re starting to get into the rainy season,” Hyland said.

Alternatives that could lead to construction before next spring include eight inches of regular concrete or a leaner concrete base with an asphalt top, Hyland said.

The sudden delay has cut into his workload, he said.

“I went from 100 mph to 2 mph,” Hyland said. “I’m working on a homeowner’s driveway instead of tearing up a major road in Santa Rosa.”

The city initially asked for bids for the project in July 2018 and accepted submissions for both asphalt and roller-compacted concrete paving, according to records.

The City Council last October rejected all six bids for the project as being too costly, as the lowest was still about 70% higher than the city’s initial estimate of about $2.3 million.

City staffers noted that bids involving asphalt paving came in about $1 million higher than those for roller-compacted concrete.

The city put the project out to bid again this past winter, hoping the rainy season might dampen prices.

This time, it wasn’t interested in asphalt.

The roller-compacted concrete bids came back at about the same cost as in the city’s first round, and the City Council approved a deal with Ghilotti Bros. this spring.

Staffers touted the project at the time as the first local road in the Bay Area to use roller-compacted concrete.

City officials said they hoped the project would save taxpayer dollars by creating a road surface that lasts longer than traditional asphalt streets.

“Everybody’s looking at us right now to see if it goes well,” Greg Dwyer, an associate civil engineer with the city, said in March.

Hyland noted that Ghilotti Bros had never used roller-compacted concrete and that the company and the city were hoping that a Southern California subcontractor, Pavement Recycling Systems, Inc., could come up with a new plan in the next few weeks.

“We’re at their mercy, so to speak,” Hyland said.

The project manager for Pavement Recycling Systems did not return a phone call Friday.

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com.