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Ellicott City Restoration Foundation

Howard County, Maryland

Our Bureau of Highways plans to repave Main Street and Columbia Pike beginning on Monday, October 17, weather permitting. The work will be done at night and parking lot behind the Fire Station will be used as a staging area.

Pavement Preservation in Howard County

The Department of Public Works regularly inspects Howard County roads for the safety of our motorists. I would like to provide some information about different types of paving used in Howard County.

The Bureau of Highways prioritize paving of roads according to the structural and paving surface condition. The Highways inspectors evaluate the road conditions through an annual road survey. Their crews may perform routine maintenance work in between road resurfacings. Tar and Chip seal is a preventive maintenance per the State Highway Administration's specifications. It has been used in western Howard County for years. The roughness of pavement is to increase skid resistance and reduce maintenance cost.

This type of surface treatment is a very cost effective in sealing surface cracks and improving skid resistance. It is most often used as a maintenance procedure between regularly scheduled "blacktop" resurfacing. The paving operation is far more convenient for motorists and helps maintain traffic flow because, depending on the weather, roads are ready to be driven on just two hours after the mixture is laid. Although it may seem temporarily inconvenient, there are good reasons why many jurisdictions in Maryland use this type of paving.

In order to properly "cure" the road, the street sweeping and repainting of the lines on the road must be delayed from 3-10 days depending upon weather. After curing, the road is swept by the contractor, and later swept 3-4 times throughout the year by the county's street sweeper contractor to assist in the clean up of loose aggregate.

"Blacktop" or bituminous concrete overlay is a significantly more expensive, time intensive process, used on highways and county roads with either severe surface deterioration or repair need due to structural base failure. This type of resurfacing can be expected to last 15 years, but is two-thirds more expensive than the cost of microsurfacing. At the end of it's lifespan, seal is used to extend it's life to almost 20 years.