How much does it cost to resurface a block of roadway in Minot?
Sounds like an easy question, but the answer is complicated, and there are many variables that lead to the decision on how to best resurface a roadway in Minot.
The cost depends on what type of process is used, and can vary greatly depending on the approved bid and the cost of the materials used in the project.
The process of determining the best course of action for a specific roadway is complicated. It’s also what makes work interesting and challenging for Project Civil Engineer Matthew King and Project Manager Jesse Hoffart, who both work for the City of Minot’s engineering department.
As part of their job duties, both King and Hoffart are responsible for studying Minot’s network of roads and determining the best way to accomplish multiple goals, including keeping the network in good driving condition while working within a limited budget in a relatively short construction season.
“We’re looking to reduce the life cycle costs of our road network and balance that with the demands of our users,” King said. “We’re promoting stewardship of taxpayer dollars and we’re doing that with a standardized and systematic approach that can be modeled. Ultimately, we’re caretakers of the pavement management program so that the next generation can make really good decisions with it.”
Balancing those goals with the expectations of residents isn’t always easy to accomplish. As user expectations rise, so does the cost.
In recent years, the City has shifted away from a “worst first” approach to maintaining its road network. Focusing on the worst roads first can lead to bigger problems by failing to maintain roads that are in good condition.
“Getting away from ‘worst first’ is a slow-moving process,” Hoffart said. “We’re trying to help people understand what we want to do and why we want to do it that way. There is added value in shifting away from the ‘worst first’ way of doing things.”
The City’s budget for road construction has risen in recent years, from $6 million a few years ago to $8 million in 2024 to $11 million in the recently approved 2025 budget. It’s part of a concerted effort by the City and the City Council to address a hefty backlog of road maintenance and rightsize the budget to the scale of the entire road network.
“We have a long way to go to catch up on our backlog, but you have to start somewhere, and you also have to maintain what you have,” Hoffart said. “We’ve seen what happens when you don’t maintain what you have: Roads go bad and it’s more expensive to reconstruct them than it is to maintain them.”
Hoffart and King thrive on data. Every decision they make regarding Minot’s road network is driven by data of some kind. Usually multiple sets of data are used in determining how to maintain or replace a particular segment of roadway.
“We’re tracking every single road segment in our system,” King said. “We have 36 percent of our system in backlog because other segments are higher priority or we don’t have the funding yet to tackle a specific project.”
For every segment of road in the City’s network, King and Hoffart track when the last preventative maintenance or major resurfacing project took place, what process was used, what the costs were, and the road’s performance.
They use a pavement management system called PAVER, which was developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The system uses inspection data and a pavement condition index rating from zero (failed) to 100 (excellent) to help describe a pavement’s condition and to predict its maintenance and rehabilitation needs years into the future.
“All roads don’t deteriorate at the same rate. You could have a neighborhood where 95 percent of it is ready for a preventative maintenance treatment like chip seal, but the other 5 percent is beyond that and needs a major treatment like mill and overlay,” King said. “Those are decisions that have to be made every year.”
PAVER helps the engineers make those difficult choices.
“It really helps us look at different scenarios,” King said. “If we did worst first, how much would that cost? If one year we did nothing but major reconstructions, how long would those roads last and what roads would we be putting off repairing? Deferred preventative maintenance can lead to significant costs especially over time. This helps us with planning and everything we do.”
Other than a full reconstruction, the City’s arsenal of preventative maintenance and rehabilitation tools consist of crack seal, chip seal, microsurfacing, and thin lift mill and overlays. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. A chip seal is less expensive, with a life expectancy of five to seven years. A microsurfacing is more expensive, with a life expectancy of up to eight years. A mill and overlay is also expensive, but comes with a life expectancy of 12 to 16 years.
The City has used the microsurfacing treatment for only the past two years.
“We’re still evaluating the performance data from the microsurfacing projects we’ve done and using it selectively where there is a cost benefit for the purpose of the application,” King said. “It comes down to the industry best practice adage of the 3 R’s. Selecting the Right treatment for the Right road at the Right time. That’s what all of this comes down to for us.”
So, what are the costs for one stretch of roadway in Minot? There are countless variables, of course, including bid costs that change from year to year, and the overall cost of materials used in each type of process.
For this scenario, a residential block of road that is 33 feet wide and 600 feet long (which equates to 2,200 square yards of road area) was used.
Using figures from the 2024 construction season and excluding any ADA curb ramp upgrade costs, the estimated costs of preventative, rehabilitation, or reconstruction work on this one block of road:
- Crack Sealing: $1,300
- Preventative patching + crack seal + chip seal + fog seal: $14,300
- Preventative patching + one layer of microsurfacing: $18,700
- Preventative patching + two layers of microsurfacing: $33,000
- Mill and thin lift hot mix asphalt overlay: $77,000
- Reconstruction: $165,000
“Road construction is expensive, and there are always key factors we have to consider when we’re deciding which process would be the best option,” Hoffart said. “Our biggest mission, at the very base of what we do, is trying to get a dollar we put into a road to stretch as far as it possibly can. The hard part is that there are a million variables in the way to accomplishing that goal.”
These are the decisions Hoffart and King are part of when planning the next year of construction projects. To call it a balancing act would be an understatement.
“We’re trying to get ourselves out of the backlog that we have right now, and you can’t necessarily do that with ‘worst first’ thinking,” Hoffart said. “For 2025, we have areas we know we want to work in, and we’ve been talking with Public Works on where they want to go so we can coordinate where it’s possible. There are just a lot of decisions to make every year to make sure we’re getting the most out of every dollar we spend.”
Consider this scenario from King:
“Let’s say we have a road segment that’s in good shape. It’s not leaking water underneath and we’re not seeing rapid deterioration. But you’re losing a little coffee when you drive that stretch of road in the morning,” he said. “That’s the choice we see: OK, we have a road, it’s got some patches, and it’s a little bumpy, but overall it’s in good shape. What’s the most cost-effective method to treat that road for life cycle costs and to improve the rideability over its lifespan? Chip seal? Microsurfacing? Reconstruction?”
That’s where their mountains of data are necessary.
“There’s a cost to whatever choice we make, and balancing user expectations vs. how much is in our budget is a real discussion,” King said. “Our job is to inject the most life we can into that road in the most cost-efficient manner. Thankfully, we have an in-house street department to handle the safety and freeze/thaw weather damage that occurs so we can focus on the network life cycle measures as a whole.”
“When it comes to pavement management, safety and keeping a road in operational condition for the inevitable potholes and other damage that pops up is always our top priority,” King added. “The City’s street department does a great job of getting that done and keeping those roads afloat, especially knowing we have a large backlog of major roadwork.”