Village: New machines speeding up road repairs

A few new pieces of heavy machinery are making an impact on road repairs in Valley Stream, and another on its way promises to improve spot patching during the winter.

“We’re doing more tonnage than we’ve ever done,” said Deputy Highway Supervisor Christopher Vela.

The village bought a new CAT vehicle and milling head — an attachment with a spiked roller that tears up asphalt — that workers started using on Sept. 23. It replaced a similar machine that was 10 years old and “too tired of a machine,” according to Casey Forthofer, the village’s road repair crew chief. The new miller is six inches wider than the old one, and Vela estimated that it has made the milling process two to three times faster.

“It’s allowing us to do more jobs, bigger jobs,” Forthofer added.

After the miller strips the road down about two inches, the surface is paved with new asphalt. That comes from a plant in Lawrence, which will close for the season in about three weeks, Vela said, bringing the Department of Public Works’ repaving to an end until spring.

This will be the first winter that the village has a machine that recycles torn-up asphalt into a fresh hot material that will replace the cold patch used to fill potholes. That equipment is expected to arrive within two weeks. The gooey hot patch hardens into a more durable surface that won’t break up under vehicle tires the way cold patch does, Vela said, though he noted that extreme weather can still take a toll. The addition of a trailer for organizing and transporting tools is also improving the crew’s efficiency, said DPW Labor Supervisor John Barbarino.

The recycling machine cost $80,000 and the “hot box” used to transport the recycled asphalt cost $25,000, according to Vela. The milling vehicle cost $86,000.

Road repaving costs about $1 million per mile in materials and labor, according to Mayor Ed Fare. He said that the current Board of Trustees has the “most aggressive” road improvement program in the last 20 years, spending about $2 million per year for the last five years. The village’s annual budget is $36 million, so repairs have been partly funded by the millions in reserves that the village built up — which was to the detriment of its roadways, said Fare.