A few weeks ago, Susan Marcell returned from vacation to find that her neighborhood roads had been re-surfaced. “It’s uneven, it’s got ridges all over it, it’s still kicking up pieces of tar under cars,” says Marcell. “There are whole sections that have been missed or that are miscolored. I can’t believe this is always what happens—but if it is, we’ve got a problem.”
Marcell, a board member of the Four Seasons Patio Homeowners Association, has received numerous complaints from area residents about the VDOT re-surfacing, which was done to several roads in the neighborhood between Route 29 and West Rio Road.
“I know that VDOT is pressed for funds,” says Marcell. “And I understand they wanted to undertake a budget process rather than a real repaving job. But to spend any money at all and have it end up worse than it started with is pretty foolish.”
“This was done just like we do every other slurry seal project,” says Lou Hatter, VDOT public representative for the district that includes Albemarle. According to Hatter, the roads were covered with a slurry seal in order to prevent cracks from worsening, as well as to limit the moisture damage that leads to potholes. “It’s a way of extending the life of the pavement surface.”
Hatter had a maintenance manager check the streets last Thursday morning. “The person who went out there said that the surface was smooth and there were no humps or bumps that he could tell, so from that perspective it seems like it was a good job. Sometimes when that’s first applied you get a wavy appearance to it. Over the next several months as traffic continues to drive over it, it’ll weather down and look more like the former pavement did.”
However, Marcell says that Four Seasons residents got a different story. “Some of the people in the neighborhood have talked to someone from VDOT who was driving around and looking at it, and he said we know people object to this and we just steel ourselves for lots of complaints after we do this kind of a job.”—Will Goldsmith
