'Melting' U.S. Highway 2 gets new pavement
STARTUP, Wash. -- The hot start to the summer is doing a number on our roads.
Sections of U.S. Highway 2 is getting a fresh coat of asphalt after the high temperatures and heavy traffic made the pavement look like it was melting in early June.
Caitlyn Meadow’s cherry stand sits right next to heavy construction equipment, and thanks to the busy work crews, she said business is taking a hit.
“Tuesdays are usually really slow but I’m sure the construction work has a lot to do with it,” she said.
The Washington State Department of Transportation is busy repaving a 100-foot section of Highway 2 in Startup.
In June, drivers thought the roadway was melting after oil and rock, called chip seal, had failed under high temperature and pressure.
“Kind of just got smeared all over the place, making it look like it was melting,” said Justin Fujioka with WSDOT.
“It looked really sticky and it was gross and everybody was driving around it,” Meadows said.
WSDOT said chip seal is used to temporarily fix and fill cracks between pavings – but the record-breaking high temperatures and heavy weekend traffic caused it to fail.
While it may be a headache for drivers right now, WSDOT said the $25,000 price tag for new pavement should cost less than continually laying down more chip seal on the worn roadway.
“Basically, (it's) a way to stretch our maintenance dollars,” said Fujioka. “Rather than having to spend a whole lot of money to repave the surface, we can actually save money, about $12 per year per mile.”
Some drivers said this repair job is long overdue. Meadows remembers the mess it made on her car.
“It was really sticky and it was all bubbly and weird,” she said.
But she also believes other sections of Highway 2 should also be repaved before the summer sun causes more roadway headaches.
“I think it should be fixed because nobody wants that on their tires,” she said.
Road crews planned to finish paving on the Startup section by Tuesday and tackle another section in Gold Bar on Wednesday.
The rest of the stretch of highway is scheduled for a complete repaving in 2017.