Street Maintenance

It is the mission of the Street Maintenance Division to maintain the City street infrastructure and assure they are safe within the City by providing periodic maintenance on streets, sidewalks, signs, and traffic control.

There are 252 miles of roadways within the City limits. Each street has two or more lanes. When all lanes are figured in, it adds up to over 614 lane miles. (This number doesn’t include turn lanes, parking spaces/lanes, bike lanes and alleys) That means if every traffic lane was linked in a straight line, a person could drive to Los Angles and back without covering all the lane miles in Salinas. This equates out to over 56 million square feet of asphalt and concrete.

City streets typically need maintenance on a yearly basis. Usually, pothole repair will suffice but eventually more extensive repairs are needed. The first level of these repairs is rejuvination of the street surface. Streets develop cracks which must be sealed using a hot pour crack seal material that once poured and squeegeed into the cracks sets up within 20 minutes. This will then be followed up with an emulsion agent which is a flexible polymer, a rejuvenating agent and an asphalt which, when combined, will penetrate, maintain and restore the lost oils in the existing asphalt.

When streets deteriorate beyond what can be fixed with a crack seal, they must be scrubbed and slurry sealed. The streets selected for this phase of the project are generally older than the ones selected in the first phase for rejuvenation. It is necessary to do more removals and replacement of asphalt along with crack sealing. City forces utilize a milling machine for the removal of asphalt and a paving box for replacing the asphalt as needed. The scrub an slurry seal are an aggregate and a asphalt emulsion mix that will seal the street and supply a wearing surface.

The Street Maintenance Division also has the responsibilities of all other citizens' service requests dealing with street signs and striping and requests concerning streets and sidewalk repairs.