North Main Street Reconstruction

This project will grind and overlay North Main Street from the Umatilla River bridge to just past the intersection with NW Furnish Avenue.

Discussion, April 2026:

The section of North Main Street, including the Main Street Bridge and up past NW Furnish Avenue, is classified as a collector. The section of North Main Street has become very rough over recent years due to numerous asphalt cuts for utility replacements, and then these old patches made with what is referred to as “Jellum rock asphalt,” where the surface rapidly deteriorates due to the aggregate material having higher than allowed clays, making the asphalt oil not adhere to the aggregate when exposed to the weather elements. This street is very old, with historic pictures showing that much of this street was constructed in the early 1900’s, with probably minimal routine maintenance since then.

However, much of this roadway section sits directly on bedrock, so there is not a lot of subgrade failure or settlement. Staff believe that when the road was built, it was basically graded on top of the bedrock, because the equipment in those days was not capable of the type of rock excavation the equipment these days can perform. Over the years as crews have replaced underground utilities, much effort was required to hammer through these areas of bedrock under the road base. Because of the proximity of the bedrock, there has been little settlement or subgrade failure. For this reason, and the fact that digging up and replacing this 66-foot-wide roadway cross section would very expensive, we have chosen to do a grind and overlay for this street section rather than rebuilding it entirely.

Also, just the fact that very little routine maintenance, such as crack and slurry sealing, has been done with this section of roadway over the decades, this has attributed to the surface degradation. Our slurry/crack sealing maintenance program began well after the street surface began to deteriorate past where these types of treatments would have been a good value to prolong its life. These treatments would have still resulted in a rough driving surface that may continue to deteriorate rapidly.

This 4+ block section is not planned to have any major configuration changes. Even though the curbs are old, they are surprisingly in decent condition. Plus, there are tons of parking spots along the center of this wide roadway for the neighborhood and the nearby art center, and along the edges as you go further up the hill. Again, party due to cost, there will be minimal work on the curbs, with only the corners being reconstructed to meet the minimum Federal requirements for ADA access ramps. There are no flat areas where drainage needs improved, nor are there areas where major curb modifications are needed. Therefore, staff feels the most economical method to maintain this street is to simply grind the street surface down along the edges so the curbs have adequate heights, do some minimal “pre-leveling” paving in the middle of the road where we can improve the radical cross slopes some, and then repave the entire width of the roadway after the curb ramps are built.

Since this is a heavily traveled collector roadway, it is important that this roadway be repaired to provide adequate and safe travel up the north side of town.  The repaved roadway will have a minimum of 2” of new asphalt across the entire width of the street, and in some areas as much as 4” of new asphalt thickness.

After advertising the bid online and in the local newspaper, as well as in the State-wide construction trade journal (DJC), and sending bid invitations to various contractors in the area that can perform this type of work, there were 5 bids received, with all of them being competitive and responsive. There was only a 12% difference between the high and low bids, with the low bid also being the nearest contractor, probably meaning that haul distance had an impact on the bid amount. The contract is based on the unit costs within their bids, and the contractor will be paid based on the actual measured amount of the infrastructure or material installed, such as square footage of grinded area, area of concrete ADA ramps constructed, and tonnage of asphalt placed. The low responsive bidder is Interstate Concrete & Asphalt Company, of Pendleton, Oregon. All the bids came in below our initial engineer’s estimate, mainly due to our uncertainty about the cost of asphalt oil, and the cost to bring a large grinding machine to the area.

Historic information toward planning this project:

1. We realize we have a significant problem with the pavement condition on North Main Street and have identified it as one of our priorities to make repairs soon, however,
2. When we do work on North Main (north of Despain) is subject to budget and the completion of Despain and improvements on Franklin Grade Road,
3. If we do a project on that section of the road, we anticipate we will not have enough money to do anything except repave the travels lanes.
4. If there was going to be anything other than repaving the travel lanes we would have a neighborhood meeting to discuss concepts. If we design anything that will be a change form the current configuration we will have a neighborhood meeting to inform the residents.

N Main is shown on the tax lot maps with a 80-foot ROW from NW Bailey to NW Furnish (vacated).

N Main is classified as a collector.  Existing street configuration varies, but basically is 67-foot curb-to-curb, two travel lanes, two parking lanes, and bi-directional parking in the middle.  Per our standard for 80-foot ROW, it should have two travel lanes, two bike lanes, and two parking lanes for a 52-foot curb-to-curb width.

Due to funding and the width involved, staff is recommending, if budget allows, to reconstruct the travel lanes and place a leveling course of asphalt on the rest as budget may allow.

Funding

The City continues to collect the Street Utility fee for overlays and reconstruction of streets in town.  The City also continues to receive State dollars for surface preservation, which come from the State Surface Transportation Program (STP) funds, and are mandated to be used specifically for street surface preservation type projects, which include reconstructions and overlays.  The city has used these dollars in the past to perform slurry seals, asphalt overlays, and street reconstructions on collector and arterial streets.  All these funds are in the Street Maintenance Fund.

The funds for this work will be from the Street Maintenance Fund.  These Street Fund dollars have been earmarked specifically for street preservation and reconstruction projects. This project has been planned for a couple of years now. After we award this project, we will go back and reanalyze our updated street’s pavement condition index (PCI), existing funding, and the remaining dollars to determine what other preservation projects can be performed soon around town.