City of Pendleton - How the City of Pendleton Decides Which Streets to Repave
by
City of Pendleton
| Jul 29, 2021
Source: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a255f9aeb0d44edcb0fcb2770012b90d
In the City of Pendleton, roads have been a hot-button issue for many years. The deteriorating state of some streets has been a subject of scrutiny both within the city government as well as in private groups. We have created this informational site in order to be more transparent and to help inform the public of how decisions are made on which roads to repave, as well as how much money it takes to repair and maintain roads.
There has been some confusion as to how the city chooses which roads to re-surface or reconstruct.
The Pavement Condition Index (PCI)
Pavement Condition Index (PCI) is a system created by the US Army Corp of Engineers that creates a single value assigned to pavement condition from 0 to 100 based upon:
Low ride quality
Alligator cracking
Bleeding
Block cracking
Bumps and sags
Corrugations
Depressions
Edge cracking
Joint reflections
Lane/shoulder drop-off
Longitudinal and transverse cracking
Patching and utility cut patching
Polished aggregate
Potholes
Rutting
Shoving
Slippage cracking
Swelling
Weathering and raveling
The City of Pendleton has a third-party consultant survey the streets. They provide the data in multiple forms, including spatially located data.
Street Saver
We run our PCI values and available budget through a program filter, via a program called StreetSaver (click to link), to determine which streets and treatments would be best for money spent, or most efficient based on budget. This software is commonly used by public agencies.
Cost of Pavement Repair and Maintenance
Pendleton has about 87 miles of paved streets, which is more than 1,500 city blocks. The cost of maintaining/repairing these streets falls into one of three categories based on the state of the pavement relative cost of road treatments:
$3,000 per city block to apply a seal coat (a preservative measure)
$15,000 per city block to overlay the street with 2-inches of pavement (a means of restoration)
$80,000 per city block to reconstruct the street (when it can no longer be repaired)
It is far more cost effective to preserve streets that are in good condition than to restore or reconstruct residential streets that are in poor condition.
In 2018, the City had a report compiled by an independent contractor to do a cost estimate and report for all of the city owned roads. It was estimated that $4.1 million per year would be required for the next ten years to bring all of the roads up to a "Good" condition. This is an investment of $41 million in ten years. Though some roads may begin to decay over that 10 year period, at the end of the process, 98.1 percent of roads would still be in "Good" condition.
Our street funding for preserving streets was $1.2 million in 2019. This is through a combination of federal and state gas tax share, the street utility maintenance fee, and some general fund dollars.