Bellevue Street Repaving: Get Ready for Part Two

by Charles McGuigan 11.2022

Last month a team of contractors tackled the enormous job of repaving the streets of Bellevue which were as pocked with potholes as the cratered Moon—some of them small and inconsequential, others large enough to qualify as sinkholes that could chomp out your car’s undercarriage or snap an axle like a twig.

So for homeowners in this Northside neighborhood it was a relief that the job was finally getting done. 

It began with the repetitive thunder of jackhammers removing mounds of ill-placed asphalt that surrounded manhole covers, and smoothing it out to street level with asphalt gravel. 

And then for long days that drifted into the evening, a convoy of trucks, dragging long flatbeds, crept through the neighborhood, moving at a snails pace, and creating an almost perpetual cacophony of grunts, groans and high-pitched squeals.  

The first in line was what is known as a preheating unit and you could see flames shooting out from under the flatbed, and readily inhale the noxious, tarry fumes produced by this process. Next in line was the heating and scarification unit. This flatbed was armed with steel teeth that clawed at the asphalt while flames, again jutting out from beneath the rig, further heated the asphalt. And then came the steamroller which ironed it all out, and successfully removed a number of the strange peaks running down the center of many of the streets in Bellevue, the result of a previous, botched street repaving project from some years back.

This scarification process is somewhat eco-friendly as it effectively recycles the old asphalt. In the past, when a street was to be repaved, the first step was the removal of the existing asphalt, and those chunks of petroleum-based asphalt ended up in a landfill.

Side note: a day or two after the convoy completed its work, virtually all leaves on all trees facing the streets were browned and crisped as pita chips. The heat of the scarification units burnt them before the season had a chance to color them; in the blink of an eye they changed from green to brown. And though this seems to have little effect on mature trees, it could be deadly to saplings and young trees. Which begs the questions: why haven’t they come up with heat shields that would protect the trees?

When the work appeared to be finished in Bellevue, when the convoy of trucks and steamrollers left the neighborhood, some residents reacted to what they considered a sloppy job. Which appeared to be the case. The new asphalt was uneven and pitted, and a thin crust of it had spilled over onto the concrete gutters, a brittle crust that you could snap off with a well-planted heel.

But not to worry. This was simply the first phase of the project.

“This paving process is a two-step process,” says Bobby Vincent, Jr., Richmond’s director of public works. “You have experienced the first step, heat scarification.”

The second step in this process is called the slurry seal application, and should begin within the next month.

After that step of the process is completed Bellevue streets should look brand new. But no one will know until the spring if any permanent damage has been done to the trees.