Five city streets will be getting smoother this summer as part
of the city’s annual street resurfacing project.

Gary Alcock, director of the Bradford City Department of Public
Works, explained the project is currently out for bid.

The streets are as follows: “Abbott Road from Interstate
(Parkway) to Bennett (Street). Venango Street from Maplewood to
South (avenues). Rockland Avenue from Lincoln to Jerome
(avenues).

“Bennett Street from School to Prospect (streets). The last one
is Neva Drive – Bolivar Drive to Schaming (Drive),” Alcock
explained.

The project is usually done at the end of the summer, he said,
adding the scheduling of the project is up to the winning
bidder.

Bids are scheduled to be open at the June 12 meeting of Bradford
City Council.

According to the advertisement for bids on the project, the
total length of the paving project will be .69 miles. Alcock said
it will entail 911 tons of Superpave – a material mandated by the
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation for use on municipal
projects.

Superpave was used for the first time last year in the city.

“It’s seems to be holding up pretty good,” Alcock said. In last
year’s project, Main Street – one of the city’s busiest streets –
was paved with the material.

“They figure the mix out by the amount of traffic,” he
explained, saying that the mix this year will be different because
none of the streets carry the traffic volume of Main Street.

The streets department does a traffic count before the project
to determine how heavily traveled the road is, and the mixture
depends on that number. Alcock explained the mixture is changed for
traffic volume by altering the ingredients, such as the amounts or
sizes of stone, asphalt and oils in the mix.

While the department has a year-long battle keeping up with the
miles of streets within the city, things have become a bit more
hectic since the construction on the Bradford Bypass of U.S. Route
219.

“The higher traffic volume is putting more stress on the
streets,” Alcock said. “You notice the volume of traffic seems to
be (increasing) the number of potholes.”

And yes, the streets department has been out addressing those as
well.

“We’ve been out patching now for two days,” he said. “We have
one more day of patching this week.

“We try to do two days of patching each week until we get caught
up,” Alcock said.