Sealed Pavement Rehabilitation - Alma and Havelock Roads
About this project
Each year, we undertake a number of sealed road maintenance and improvement programs, including:
- Major Patching
- Sealed Pavement Rehabilitation
- Annual Resurfacing
Our Sealed Pavement Rehabilitation program targets roads that have numerous failures and significant roughness and require full-width reconstructions.
Roads identified for this level of works have generally reached a condition where our other sealed road renewal programs are not sufficient to bring the road back to an acceptable standard.
Why was this project undertaken?
The ‘pavement’ of a sealed road refers to the various layers of crushed rock, gravels and natural material which exist under the black sealed surface. This sandwich of compacted materials provides the structural base of the road that supports the traffic while the thin bitumen surface acts as the waterproofing layer to prevent the pavement from getting excessively wet and falling apart.
Over a road's life, traffic slowly breaks down the pavement materials until they can no longer support the traffic loads, which causes them to deform and ultimately fail.
What is happening and when?
These sections of road have been subject to numerous pavement failures and been ‘patched’ over many years using a combination of asphalt and stabilising treatments. Unfortunately, they have continued to fail which prompted this larger scale rehabilitation treatment proposal rather than more patching.
The works will involve the incorporation of new road base materials into a strengthened blend of the existing road gravels, before the application of a new seal surface. This will include the shoulders of the road and some clearing of roadside drains as necessary. A small number of driveways along Alma Road will need to be adjusted to smoothly accommodate the slight increase (approximately 100mm) in road surface level following the new material additions. Affected property owners will be contacted directly to discuss these works if applicable.
We do not yet have a firm start date for the works, but we are envisaging they will be later in February or early March, subject to contractor availability and weather conditions. Council will aim to install a message board on the road providing more advanced warning closer to the time.
The Contract for these works was awarded early in January 2026.
What is the impact of these works?
Access to properties will be maintained throughout the works although short delays due to single lane closures or minor detours will be unavoidable at different times and we appreciate the communities understanding whilst we complete these works.
We are hopeful that the main body of the works would be completed within a week, all going well, with some other preliminary works such as underground service locations and driveway modifications occurring ahead of these.
