COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) — City officials have canceled a plan to use recycled asphalt in the repaving of Pikes Peak Avenue, between Circle Drive and Chelton Road, on the city’s east side.
In mid-June, neighbor Kirk Skabo emailed KRDO 13’s The Road Warrior, saying that he thought the long-awaited paving job was finally about to happen when equipment arrived — only to see the equipment disappear just as quickly, with no paving done.
A drive down the nine-block stretch makes it clear why drivers and neighbors have anxiously awaited a repaving job since the start of the 2C expanded paving program in 2016; the crumbling street has been pothole-filled and crack-sealed so much that only a new layer of asphalt will improve it.
Corey Farkas, the city’s operations and maintenance manager for public works, recently explained why paving hasn’t happened yet.
“As we started taking a look at the roadway — a little deeper as we got out there and they staged the equipment — in talking with the contractor, we found that with the sub-grades and the state of the roadway, it was not a good candidate for the Hot in Place recycling,” he said. “That’s a very specialized paving program, so we went ahead and switched gears.”