Better Roads Ahead: Gilroy's Pavement Improvement Program

Gilroy's Program for Safe and Accessible Roads

Our goal is to make our streets safe and accessible for all users through maintenance, rehabilitation, and reconstruction. To assist with the decision making, the City utilizes a Pavement Management Program (PMP), developed by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), to evaluate and prioritize the maintenance of our road network. These cost-effective techniques can help extend the life of the pavement and improve the condition of the overall road network.

Gilroy currently has 125 center lane miles of roads with a total net worth of approximately $220 million dollars.

We encourage you to explore this project page and learn more about the benefits of Gilroy's Program for Safe and Accessible Roads. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact our friendly staff at 408-846-0277 or via email at

Benefits of Gilroy's Program for Safe and Accessible Roads

Gilroy's Program for Safe and Accessible Roads is not a program for repaving every road in Gilroy - it is a plan to maintain and strengthen the roads in Gilroy. Preventive maintenance and rehabilitation work preserve the lifespan of the roads and are much more cost-effective than reconstruction. That's why it's so important to proactively repair roads before they require more extensive and expensive reconstruction work.

Costs of Pavement Treatments

Life Cycle of Asphalt

Well-designed and well-built asphalt roads will last about 25 years. However, no matter how good a road is constructed, the asphalt will begin to deteriorate almost immediately. Over time the materials that make up asphalt begin to break down and become affected by elements such as rain, sunlight, and chemicals that come into contact with the pavement surface. Roads that experience a high volume of vehicle traffic will deteriorate at a faster rate than roads less traveled.

How We Measure the Quality of a Road

The overall quality and condition of a road is measured using the Pavement Condition Index (PCI). PCI is a numerical index between 0 and 100, with 100 representing the best possible condition and 0 representing the worst possible condition. Pavement features such as the existence of cracking and potholes will impact the PCI classification. PCI is not a measure of drivability. Zero PCI does not necessarily mean that a road cannot be driven, but probably means it will be a very bumpy ride.

Add information here about the PCI condition for Gilroy and how often the PCI is measured. Include information about best practices for increasing the PCI level.

Street Condition over Time

PCI Chart

Types of Road Treatments

There are more than a dozen ways you can treat a road, from a simple fog seal to complete road reconstruction. But we’ve broken these down to three major categories Preventive, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction and have included some of the more common treatments within each of those categories.


The goal of Preventive maintenance is to maintain or improve the functional condition of the road, slow the rate of deterioration, and extend the life of the road by five to seven years. By slowing the rate of deterioration, we can delay, or completely eliminate, the need for major rehabilitation or reconstruction in the future. Preventive maintenance treatments can be done independently or combined with other treatments to help extend the life of the road. Some of the more common Preventive maintenance treatments used in Gilroy include crack seals, slurry seals, and thin overlays.


Rehabilitation treatments are carried out on roads that exhibit distresses and failures like block cracking, rutting, shoving and potholes that are beyond being fixed with preservation maintenance techniques, but aren’t severe enough to warrant complete reconstruction. Rehabilitation treatments used in Gilroy include Chip Seals Cape Seals, asphalt remove and replace (Dig-Outs), and overlays. The goal of Rehabilitation treatments is to help create a safer driving surface, improve the overall appearance, provide a seal to repel moisture from damaging the base and extend the useful life of the existing pavement by eight to ten years.


Reconstruction involves the complete replacement of the road with new or reused asphalt which can have a useful life upwards of 20 years. Reconstructed roads are most favorable to drivers but are also the most costly. By comparison, Preventive maintenance treatments can cost as little as $1,200 per lane mile while Reconstruction can run as much as $261,000 per lane mile. In addition, Reconstruction projects can take several months to design and construct, making it very disruptive to drivers and adjacent businesses.

Contact Us

  1. Public Works Engineering

    Ph: 408-846-0223