When the city repaves your street: what it means for the driveway

How the city picks a street

The City of Fort Collins describes its Street Maintenance Program as a proactive approach to keeping streets, sidewalks, signs and signals in good working order. Streets are chosen from detailed inspections and pavement condition scores, and the program aims to apply what it calls the right treatment at the right time. Its list runs from crack seal and preventive treatments such as slurry seal, chip seal and overlays to asphalt resurfacing and patching, with sidewalk, curb, gutter and accessible-ramp repairs alongside the paving.

The money comes from a quarter-cent street maintenance tax that the city calls a long-standing community investment. In November 2024 voters extended it for 20 years, through 2045, which gives the program a long planning horizon. For a homeowner, the useful consequence is that street work is predictable. The city publishes an interactive project map of planned work, and a street on this year's list can be planned around months before the crews arrive.

The notice and the working day

The first visible sign is usually the parking signs. The program posts No Parking signs at least 24 hours in advance, and most of its maintenance happens Monday through Friday between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. A car left on the street after the signs go up is in the crew's way, so on work days the simple plan is to park in the driveway, in a garage or on a nearby street that is not being treated.

What the day means for the driveway depends on the treatment. An overlay brings paving equipment and rollers past the end of the drive. A slurry seal is a thin liquid coat that has to set before cars cross it. A chip seal spreads stone that traffic presses in and sweepers later pick up. Asking the crew or the city how long the stretch in front of the house will be closed tells an owner whether to move the car out the night before.

• Check the city's interactive project map in spring for the street's name
• Watch for No Parking signs, which go up at least 24 hours ahead
• Ask which treatment is planned and how long the curb lane will be closed
• Hold private sealing until the street work and its cleanup are finished

Where the city's work stops and the driveway begins

The line between public and private pavement is the right-of-way line. Under the Larimer County Urban Area Street Standards, which Fort Collins uses, the strip from the edge of the street to the edge of the right-of-way is concrete, so on streets built or rebuilt to that standard the owner's asphalt starts where the concrete approach ends. The program's concrete work, which covers sidewalks, curbs, gutters and ramps, stays on the public side of that line, and so does its paving.

An owner who wants the approach itself changed, widened or rebuilt needs a Sidewalk and Drive Approach Permit, and the work has to be done by a contractor holding the city's Right-of-Way Contractor License. The standards set residential approaches at 12 to 24 feet wide, or up to 30 feet for a three-car garage, and cap the grade at 8 percent within 20 feet of the gutter flowline. A dumpster or a pile of material left in the street for a private project needs an encroachment permit of its own.

Timing driveway sealing around the street work

When the street in front of the house is on the year's list, private sealing is usually better scheduled after the city has finished. Equipment turning at the curb, stone from a chip seal and dust from milling all collect at the foot of the driveway, and a fresh coat is easier to protect once that has passed. A driveway sealing visit booked a few weeks after the street work also gives the crew a clean, finished joint at the concrete approach to mask.

The weather sets the rest of the calendar. Sealer wants 50 degrees and rising for 24 hours with no rain, and on the CSU campus normals, nights stay mostly above 50 only from June through August; September still averages 19 nights at or below 50. If the street work runs into the fall, the driveway is often better left until the next June, with open cracks filled before winter in the meantime. The overview of sealcoating in Fort Collins sets out the timing and price ranges for each step.

Potholes, sweeping and what to report

Between treatments, the Streets Department handles potholes on public streets through its Pothole Patrol and the Access Fort Collins reporting system, and it sweeps residential streets four times a year and major streets such as College and Prospect every two weeks. Sweeping works better on a clear street: the city asks residents to move cars and other obstacles so the full width can be swept, and it notes that raking or blowing leaves, branches, grass or trash into the street is against city code.

A pothole at the foot of a driveway can sit on either side of the line. In the street, it belongs to the city. In the owner's asphalt, it is a driveway repair job, and the right fix depends on whether the base under it has failed. Reporting the street side and fixing the private side at about the same time avoids a patch that ends neatly at the property line while the hole carries on past it.

Where the old pavement goes

Material from street work does not all go to a landfill. The city's crushing operation accepts concrete, asphalt and clean dirt from construction and sells recycled asphalt and recycled concrete in a 1 1/4 inch size by the ton, for uses that include road and parking lot resurfacing, driveways and sub-base for foundations. For an owner planning a new or rebuilt drive, it is one local source of base material to ask a contractor about, and the paving page covers base depth and the permits a new drive needs.

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