Drivers' gripes lead to stickier tar-gravel recipe

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In Greenville County, the tar and gravel paving of Jordan Road last year left loose stone that dented cars, residents said. The paving also didn't patch potholes and left dips in the road, posing safety problems, they said.

Those concerns will be addressed with the new system, officials said. A stickier substance will be added to the mix to keep the stones from coming loose, and lighter stone will be used that will pose less problems. However, the new process also will cost more, officials said, meaning fewer roads will be paved.

"If it will stay down and it will work, that will be great," said Kathey Bailey, a resident of Jordan Road. "But they've got to prove it to me."

State Sen. Gerald Malloy, a Hartsville lawyer who sits on the Senate Transportation Committee, also is skeptical. He said even an improved system doesn't solve the problem of deteriorating secondary roads in the state.

"I think at some point in time the leadership in South Carolina has to confront the road problem and have some real debate over it," he said.

"Do we have roads that are safe to travel on, particularly these secondary roads, or are we engaging in simple patchwork therapy?"

South Carolina has used the tar and gravel process — what engineers call chip seal — for decades because it offered a less-expensive method to pave the state's 25,000 miles of secondary roads.

The process mixes crushed stone with spray asphalt at one-third the cost of normal paving.

Since the state's rural roads don't qualify for federal transportation dollars, and budget cuts have kept the state from repaving secondary roads for four years, the tar-and-gravel process has allowed some road maintenance to continue.

But problems in the way the paving was done and the lack of monitoring by the state generated complaints during the last year of broken windshields, dented cars and unrepaired holes in roads.

Officials said one lawsuit against the state Department of Transportation blames the death of a motorist on loose stone from a tar and gravel project.

In January, officials told contractors that they were suspending the program and were considering stopping it if no solution to problems with the loose stone was found.

The suspension surprised contractors, some of whom complained to Department of Transportation commissioners that they would be ruined if their contracts were ended.

The program was mentioned in a letter last month by Department of Transportation Commission Chairman Tee Hooper to agency Executive Director Elizabeth Mabry complaining of the way the agency was being managed.

Danny Shealy, director of construction for the agency, said the new process will use a stickier tar to hold the stone better. He said lighter stone from North Carolina also will be used in some areas of the state, helping to address a shortage of the normal stone used in the process.

"North Carolina uses it extensively," he said of the lighter stone. "We've done a couple of test projects in South Carolina and they're performing well."

Projects in Cherokee and York counties will use the lighter stone in other parts of the state, he said, but not in Greenville County or other parts of the Upstate.

Shealy said contractors will be required now to do a test strip to show state inspectors before paving any road.

"We'll make sure everything is working properly before we start back on those contracts," he said.

That includes patching potholes and other road defects before paving, something that wasn't done before, he said.

The repairs and new paving process will be more expensive, Shealy said, and may increase costs by as much as 30 percent.

As a result, he said, the state will not be able to reach as many roads. The state last year paved about 2,500 miles using the tar and gravel process, he said.

Bud Howard, who owns the Jordan Processing Plant on Jordan Road, said the state should pave the roads with regular asphalt.

"Why don't they just asphalt it like they do everywhere else and get it over with?" he asked.

Malloy said politicians are reluctant to discuss the possibility of paying for roadwork with a gas-tax increase because of rising gas prices.

"I'm not a super advocate for a tax increase if there is some other alternative, but right now we haven't seen a better alternative," he said. "I think we should have a full debate and get to the root of the problem."

Malloy said he worries about how much of a factor road conditions are in rural road accidents.

The fatality rate for South Carolina's secondary roads between 1999 and 2003 was six times the fatality rate for other types of roads in the state and higher than the rates of all states but Arizona and Florida, TRIP, a national nonprofit transportation research group, reported last week.