Question: What is going on at Round Top Drive? Construction on the road every day is causing congestion. City workers are leaving a mess as they work on the road. On Veterans Day I got really upset because they put a half-inch to one inch of gravel on the street and then put tar all over it. It was ridiculous—the equivalent of putting Scotch tape on an oily surface. In two months it will come up again because it has nothing to hold onto. I went to talk to the supervisor about it, but he shrugged me off. Also, this work is constantly happening on weekends, so every Saturday, Sunday and holiday, they're working. Why is this being done only on the weekends? Isn't that costing more? (Two complaints, combined)

Answer: It turns out the resurfacing work was “;substantially completed”; from the top of Round Top Drive to near 2254 Round Top Drive on Veterans Day.

Officials with the city Department of Facility Maintenance's Road Maintenance Division inspected the area near your home in the 2300 block of Round Top “;and were unable to identify problems”; related to the recent resurfacing, said Director Craig Nishimura.

“;The work on Round Top was performed to address numerous complaints for areas where the old asphalt had peeled off,”; he said. There also had been recurring problems with potholes.

Nishimura said city design engineers had requested that cracks in the road be sealed to prevent water from seeping through the damaged asphalt, which was causing the road base to deteriorate.

The work involved overlaying the existing pavement with a layer of asphalt—averaging one inch to 1 1/2 inches thick, he said.

“;We accomplished this using our standard procedure of laying an oil tack coat onto the existing road surface and using a paving machine with hot mix asphalt to distribute the asphalt evenly,”; he said. Then rollers were used to compact the hot asphalt.

Although the city was unable to reconstruct the roadway this time, the resurfacing “;is expected to provide seven to 10 years of useful life,”; Nishimura said.

Regarding weekend work, he said the city decided to supplement the paving crew with other Honolulu District crew during the weekends to expedite completion of the project.

During the normal workweek, the city's paving crew is resurfacing roads in the Kaneohe District while other Facility Maintenance crews in the district perform other tasks, such as storm drain maintenance, stream cleaning, and clearing/hauling debris, Nishimura said.

“;Also, the city was able to obtain asphalt quicker from the privately owned asphalt plants, therefore resulting in a more productive day,”; he said.

Under the Round Top project, the city's paving crew completed nearly 9.7 lane miles of paving work, Nishimura said.

Figuring in manpower and materials, the cost of the project was approximately $630,000, or about $65,000 per lane-mile.

The roadwork was not related to the landslide and erosion mitigation work that was completed last December, which entailed closing Round Top Drive for 20 months.