Yellowbank Road Sidewalk Repairs Under Way As Part of Repaving Project

Recent repairs that have been taking place on Yellowbank Road, just off Indian Hill Road, are part of a repaving project requiring sidewalks in that location to be ADA-compliant, according to township Engineer Robert Chankalian.

For those sidewalks to meet compliance with ADA (the Americans with Disabilities Act), they require ramps. Chankalian said that this year, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued new guidance on the matter.

“If a township mills or paves a road and disturbs the crosswalk, they have to upgrade that sidewalk to ADA standards,” the engineer said. “So, before we pave every road, we will install a proper ADA-compliant ramp to those areas with sidewalks.”

“It is part of the paving program, a township-wide project which started on March 12. The concrete work commenced first, and the paving crew started on Tuesday,” said Chankalian. “This project we are working on was awarded for $2.3 million, and we’re currently focusing on roads east of Fischer Boulevard and north of Bay Avenue.”

A complete list of roads scheduled to be repaved as part of the approved contract from 2010 can be found here, shown in pink.

Chankalian noted, however, that not all of the specified roads in the project will end up being paved this year.

“We pave until we run out of money, and the two main variables are the monthly NJDOT (New Jersey Department of Transportation) asphalt price index and required concrete work,” the engineer explained.

Chankalian said that the NJDOT issues a monthly price rating of asphalt, and one has to go by the price for the month prior to the bid being issued. Since the bid was approved in November 2011, the asphalt price from October 2011 was the benchmark used — which was $590 per ton at that time.

Since then, according to Chankalian, the price of asphalt has risen to $625 per ton.

“Put into perspective, that cost us around a road and half (from our planned work),” the engineer said.

Chankalian said the department had notified homeowners in the areas where road repairs were being conducted that the work was going to be done, and asked if they could keep their cars parked out of the street during daytime work hours.

The engineer also said that a system was set up for residents to call in with requests for road work — requests found to be in the same or similar geographic areas will be consolidated to save on time and cost related to the machinery, according to Chankalian.

“Ideally, we would do the work by neighborhood, but there’s so many requests,” he said.

The engineer estimated that sometime in 2013, a resident who calls in with a request for road work will get it completed within a year.