Rialto Street is the fifth-steepest in the city, but since it bottoms out on Route 28, you take it seriously if you're riding a 16¹/₂-ton paver.

	Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette Gene Magill, of Norwin Construction, smooths out the blacktop at the top of Rialto Street, which is being repaved. The street runs from Route 28 to Ley Street on the North Side with a 25 percent grade. Click photo for larger image. Chart: The five steepest streets in Pittsburgh

Paul Orgovan has watched two rollers (the machines that smash down the hot asphalt) let loose and donut down a hill in Morningside, so he plans carefully when his crew is paving one of Pittsburgh's steep streets.

Orgovan, Pittsburgh foreman for the Bridgeville contractor that paves most of the city's streets, made sure the best trucks and equipment were pulled for the Rialto job yesterday.

Rialto, with a grade of 25 percent, runs from Route 28 at the 31st Street Bridge up to Troy Hill. It was scheduled for resurfacing later this year, but when the pavement cracked and peeled away from the Belgian block beneath during a May 21 storm, the street had to be closed and the city decided to move up the project.

Orgovan used a track paver -- one with treads like a bulldozer instead of wheels -- and ordered that the trucks that carry the paving material be loaded with 10 tons at a time, instead of the normal 20-plus tons.

"If they lose it, we all get killed," he said.

The contingency plan if a piece of a equipment does break loose and start sliding downhill?

"Run like hell," said Orgovan.

"Pray," said Jerome Garrett, a finish roller operator.

"Basically try to ride it out," said Frank Shafran, the breakdown roller operator who spun down a dew-slicked Greenwood Street in Morningside. "I've slid down some steep streets. If it starts going, you open it up a little to get control, then try slowing it down." It's pretty much like driving on icy pavement, he said, and for him it ended with the big machine up against a curb.

Yesterday the paver started its morning on River Road, along with the breakdown roller, which is the first to tamp down the hot asphalt that the paver lays down, and the finisher roller, which follows the breakdown roller. They crossed Route 28 with the lights, and the crew from Russell Standard Corp. started paving from the bottom of the hill around 6:30 a.m.

A milling crew had ground off what was left of the old asphalt, exposing the blocks beneath. A broom truck cleaned the street in preparation for paving.

The paver, a behemoth that can be adjusted to pave a swath from 10 feet up to 18 feet, has a front hopper for the 300-degree mixture of stone and binding material that's dumped from the back of a truck. The asphalt flows from the hopper into the paver mechanism, which lays out an even swath on the road surface.

Riding on the back of the paver are two screwmen, who control the width of the swath with large screw cranks on the sides and make sure the first layer is about 2 inches thick; a second 1-inch layer of finer material is laid on top after the first one is tamped down by the rollers and cools off to 120-150 degrees.

Walking behind the paver are workers with shovels, flattening devices called lutes and hand tampers.

They do what the big machines can't -- tamp the asphalt as it curves up at the edge of a manhole, or curves down into an opening for runoff water at the curb. They check the asphalt levels with steel probes and adjust the flow of the asphalt if it's too thick or too thin.

The paver and roller operators have to have a good touch to handle the hills.

"The preparation and workmanship are as big a factor as the material you're putting down," said John Puskarich, a city inspector who was on Rialto Street yesterday watching the crew's progress. "I have to say, this is a very good crew. They make it look easy."

Russell Standard has been working with the city for several years, but it became the primary paver of city streets last year, after the layoffs made in the wake of Pittsburgh's financial crisis. City crews still do patching and pave a few alleys and smaller streets, but the rest is done by Russell Standard, said Rob Kaczorowski, assistant director of public works. The milling work is done by a separate contractor.

"Our cost is $11.71 per square yard, milled and paved," he said. The stretch of Rialto paved is about 1,200 square yards. The city will spend about $5 million to pave 31 miles of streets this year, at a cost of about $156,000 per mile, said Kaczorowski.

There's no premium paid for steep streets. Orgovan got an introduction to the challenges of paving Pittsburgh seven years ago, when he came from working in the New Kensington area to his first job in the city: Sterling Street on the South Side Slopes.

"I told my boss, you've got to come and look at this." He ended up hauling a roller up the hill with a tow truck.

Rialto has been in danger of being cut altogether from the list of streets to be paved in recent years.

In some of the various plans for widening Route 28, access to Rialto would be lost. There is only one occupied house still on the street, but many people in Troy Hill and other communities use it as a short cut. The neighborhood fought vigorously for the street.

The latest Route 28 plans keep Rialto open, and by late day yesterday, its 25 percent rise had been transformed from a washed-out mess to a smooth black expanse.

"The biggest thing for a steep street is the right equipment and the right people," said Orgovan.