OK so now you can go out and test and tell us (1) what your CRR is on the chip seal and (2) optimal PSI for the chip seal. I'm genuinely curious.

The good news is it is at its worst when first done and then slowly improves. After a year it won't be nearly as bad, though it will still be bad. If you can turn it into a bicycle safety issue you might be able to get them to reduce the size of the aggregate a bit.

Rev 3 full at Cedar Point a couple years back. A week or two before the race about half the roads got chip sealed. What a wonderful present.

And we too had a road that they ground down and put beautiful smooth pavement down. It was a dream. For about 2 weeks. Then they chip sealed it. My engineer brother with a couple decades of road and bridge building experience tells me the reason they do this is, well, there is no reason, it doesn't do shit for the longevity of the road.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

-it takes the city of Austin about a frakkin year to repaint the road, so where once there was a bike lane, for about a year there are only some mashed-down reflector flags attempting to mark it off. Not a good solution.

Actually that is way better, because the cars will then drive on that part and pack it down and keep it clear.

I hate bike lanes and wide shoulders, since they are always covered with copious quantites of crap. Much better to take that big lane and let cars use the whole thing so the right side stays clear of debris.

Chipseal is not much cheaper than smooth aggregate....it is safer especially when wet or icy. Safety is the biggest reason for laying down chipseal according to my uncle who owns a paving company. If your lucky....the county or city you live in will chipseal the road and leave smooth aggregate on the shoulders especially for cyclists. I know my uncle pushes for this method since has a cycling past. Lobby to you county/city state officials for a wide smooth shoulder...especially on cycling routes.

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"WHEW...I really regret that workout!"..............Noone

Every fall out here the crews come out and start laying down the tar and gravel. Though they do what some people call "fog seal", where the gravel is already coated when it's laid down. Less of the gravel gets thrown to the side of the road that way, and it's not a danger to ride on for 2 weeks.

But here's why it happens, at least here:
The county gets X dollars for road maintenance annually. If they don't use it all, their budget gets cut by that amount the following year. So every fall, when "construction season" is winding down, they clean out the budget on chip seal. One year it's all the north-south roads, the next it's the east-west roads.

Sucks.

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Some are born to move the world to live their fantasies...

https://triomultisport.com/
http://www.mjolnircycles.com/

I forgot to add earlier. As bad as chip seal is it is much better than concrete with seams ever 20 feet, especially big seams like on the Racine 70.3 course. That's a beating.

Agree with you on the bike lanes. A lot of them around here are pretty much worthless. They've either got a lot of flat-causing crap or rumble strips, all of which make them next to useless for bikes.

It's hard to use multi-use trails instead of roads due to the 15mph speed limits and runners and walkers with headphones who can't hear you. I'm not a headphone basher. I even wear them sometimes but it's irritating trying to pass people with them. Sorry for the derail.

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Loud pawls save lives

Very few roads here have shoulders at all. If they do they are covered with debris and suck to ride on.

Maybe safety is the most popular *excuse* for chipseal, but I don't believe it is real. The only time people here have traction issues is when there is snow and ice on the road. This is on *top* of the road, not under it or mixed in.
And traction is a much bigger issue on steep residential streets... which oddly are never chipsealed.

A couple years ago a local triathlon was faced with the main road being chip sealed the day before (despite telling RD they would wait). It was awful. I felt like I had to ice my balls after the ride. Also felt like I was riding in loose sand. Hearing the rocks bounce off my carbon bike made me want to punch babies (Dane Cook reference).

Cars will smooth it out, but only in the tire lane. Takes a long time for it all too smooth out.

Why would they chipseal a newly paved road? That screams government stupidity.

33% increase rolling resistance. WTF

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The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

Welcome to the new normal. Not enough tax revenues to pay for decent road surface so we get chip seal. I haven't seen data on this topic but it stands to reason that chip seal increases tire wear (so you buy tires more often), decreases air quality by decreasing gas mileage (you burn more gas which you pay for) and by increasing particulate matter from tire wear, increases noise, and generally decreases happiness while driving/or riding. Thank goodness is saves a little bit on taxes!
Might be time for a return to Softride suspension beam bikes and stems? Or perhaps I could check a box that says increase my taxes by 0.01% to pay for decent roads. I would check it in a heartbeat.
Cheers,
Jim

I'm sorry for your loss. This thread makes me exceptionally appreciative of the road conditions I ride in the SF Bay Area.

Woodside, CA has smooth roads with wide shoulders, rolling hills, steep shaded climbs, and they even just repaved my favorite descent down highway 84.

The drawback is a median home price around $2mm. So I rent an an adjacent town.

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/kj

http://kjmcawesome.tumblr.com/

I hate riding on the stuff, but there is a logic to it, from the engineering/road/highway department's perspective. The folks making these calls have ride quality for bikes about as low on the priority list as it can possibly go.

Chip seal is not a pavement. As the name implies, it is a seal. It is generally applied over existing asphalt pavement to a.) seal up existing cracks and prevent water infiltration and b.) to add wearing thickness. Both of these things can extend the life of the pavement. Although 'pre-emptive' chip sealing is less common (at least where I live) it does still happen, for the same reason.

Road departments are chronically underfunded in most places and chip seal is one tactic they can use to stretch their dollars and squeeze a few more years out of what pavement they have.

I completely agree that it sucks for bikes but we aren't the target user group, especially once you are outside of city limits onto county or state controlled roads. Changing this focus to account for all users and not just 'compensating' pickup trucks is something that needs to happen on the political level.

It sounds like you know something about it. And I understand that bikes are super low priority... especially with the propaganda in many areas telling people that bike riders shouldn't even be allowed to use roads because they don't pay gas taxes!

Do you know if they even look at total cost (fuel and tire wear) in their calculations?

No one ever correctly prices negative externalities into things. If they did, gas and candy would cost a lot more.

Unless you live in a super hippy-progressive city, the answer is probably no. Even then, the answer is probably still no. I suppose you could try to make a case for social inequity (i.e. your policy decisions make it more expensive for rural people to drive vs. city dwellers) but that is an awfully hard sell.

IMO it's not that much different vs. forest service and remote rural roads being gravel instead of fancy pavement. The agency is providing a level of service appropriate for the design use. Since bikes aren't (usually) part of that design use our complaints aren't that important until there is a high level change in policy direction. That change is likely not cost effective. Until then, it's fat tires and 'endurance' road bikes for us all, yes?

One place where there is room for compromise is on streets with bike lanes - near me some agencies have had enough brains to seal the main driving surface but leave the bike lanes uncovered.

It also makes no sense, from a traction standpoint, that chipseal country is the southwest, where snow and ice are non-issues.

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The point is, ladies and gentleman, that speed, for lack of a better word, is good. Speed is right, Speed works. Speed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

There is a big difference between this and having lower quality roads in low-use areas. They do this to *all* the roads outside of the town limits. The busiest road (4-lane) that they resurfaced with asphalt a couple years ago, was *immediately* covered with chipseal as soon as they were done.

From what I've been able to gather the life cycle cost is close to a toss up if the road gets significant traffic... maintaining the asphalt vs chipseal every few years. If you include the cost of fuel consumption and tire wear, it is probably in favor of asphalt by a good margin.

I've been riding chip and seal roads for a long time. Its great when they get it right but it does take a hard rain to pack it and get rid of the chip dust. Other issue that pop up is too much seal and it gets al over everything. Or too much chip, I've see riders go down, they need some mtg skills, from sliding on loose chip. Then sometimes they use the boulder size chip and the road sucks for a year or more. Where I live they usually get it right but even then it sucks to ride freshly chipped and sealed roads.

Luxury! When I were a lad we 'ad rocks an' tar pits.

All chip seal where I live, except for a couple of hundred meters through a small town. I went to the city the other day (about 5 hours away by car), I was salivating at the lovely smooth roads. But do I want to trade cleaner air and fewer enraged drivers for smoother roads?..... well yes, so I'm glad I can't be bothered moving.

I'd take chip seal to crap pothole/cracked roads here in DC. I rode 50 miles on chip seal when I was visiting Oregon over the 4th holiday and felt like I was in heaven. Oregon is big on chip seal for lots of roads. I'd take it over mangled roads in the DC area and I ride 120psi all the time chip seal or not.

Of course, the smooth roads of Eastern Maryland/Delaware are the absolute ideal since they're all smooth and have wide clean shoulders.

In Montgomery county, if they repave a road half the time its full of small bumps and imperfections that still make it worse than a chip-sealed road. I'm sure there are other out there that would love chip seal over the stuff they currently have to ride on.

Steve is on the money here! I have been using Panaracer's from Excell and they are more durable than anything I have ridden.

Yep in Michigan I think every major road gets it every 2 years. Even my little side road I live on gets it every 3 years. Lately they have been sweeping the curb a week or so after they lay it down and that helps a some. But when you ride on it you feel like you are towing a trailer or something. Slows me way down.

I recently got new tires, switched to GP4000s II, went from 23 to 25, this seems to help some. Also helps with the general "bombed" condition of the roads around here.

Yes, it is the same in Michigan. It also seems that the county hits the roads that are the best to bike on. Really? There are worse roads and you pick my favorite?? I was hoping with the winter we had and the fact the county was out of money there would be no stoning of roads this summer. But oh no, what road do they hit? Steelhead 70.3 for over 5 miles!! So dangerous!

Time to start looking at gravel bikes?