The City’s 2025 street preservation plans were approved this month when City Council approved paving, chipseal and slurry seal contracts.
The City of Bend is preparing to do about $4.85 million worth of street preservation contract work this year that will improve approximately 67 lane miles in Bend. This includes about 16 miles of paving, 28 miles of chipseal, and 23 miles of slurry treatments. The attached map shows which roads will get treated this summer.
This work is supported by the Transportation Fee.
The City’s “Keep Good Roads Good” philosophy means we maintain and preserve streets with the most cost-effective treatment for the road condition — the right treatment at the right time. Maintenance treatments for the 2025 construction season include:
- Paving – Old asphalt is ground out and replaced or a new layer of asphalt is paved on top of existing roadway. This process can take a couple of days.
- Chip seals – Asphalt emulsion and rock are applied to the road. Rolling, short-term closures.
- Slurry seal – A treatment typically for low-volume residential streets. One-day closures.
The City of Bend monitors the condition of roads to determine maintenance plans. This allows for the right treatment to be applied at the right to save costs and extend the life of a road. The worst roads need full reconstruction, which is exponentially more expensive than regular maintenance. Full roadway reconstruction is not an efficient use of maintenance funds and is more likely to be paid for as part of a larger transportation construction project.
“The street preservation contracts are part of our continued maintenance efforts to extend the life of our transportation infrastructure with the most cost-effective treatments and available resources,” said Transportation and Mobility Department Director David Abbas. “We have more than 900 lane miles of roads to maintain, and the cost of maintaining streets has increased considerably in recent years. Our operations and maintenance revenues, such as Transportation Fees, will need to keep pace with cost and inflation increases in the future to improve our pavement conditions.”
To learn more about Bend’s street preservation practices, visit bendoregon.gov/streetpreservation.
To subscribe to weekly emails to plan your best route around road work and construction, visit bendoregon.gov/traffic for the weekly road and traffic report.
