News flash - Salt Lake City streets are in lousy condition.
Drivers' response: Duh."Everybody knows the city streets are terrible," said City Council Chairman Bryce Jolley. "We want to get some sort of a plan in place so we can repair them in a systematic way."
To that end, Tuesday night the council is scheduled to ponder how to come up with the $81 million needed to eliminate the backlog of streets needing reconstruction and the $21 million gap between the recommended five-year maintenance schedule and the anticipated budget amounts to help eliminate that backlog.
I-15 isn't the only roadway needing a face lift. The 539 miles of city streets have been suffering for years, and maintenance is falling farther and farther behind. In 1992, 135 lane miles needed reconstruction. In 1998, that has increased to 225 lane miles (one mile of a four-lane street equals four lane miles).
"In spite of the increased emphasis on road maintenance and reconstruction during the past five years, the data indicate that the street system continues to deteriorate," wrote director of Community and Economic Development Stuart Reid in a memo. ". . . The rate of deterioration is greater than the capacity of current funding levels to staunch."
In other words, Reid wants more money.
A five-year plan to improve the city's water system was recently implemented and principals say it's working, but it has had one notable consequence: repeated water-rate increases. A similar program to improve city streets could also involve some sort of tax increase.
Fifty-one percent of the city's streets are classified as being in "good" condition, with 26 percent "fair," 10 percent "poor" and 13 percent "very poor."
But hey - don't blame the streets, which have labored lo these many years to do their jobs without a lot of help from maintenance workers. Eighty-eight percent of city streets are over 20 years old, with more than 50 percent over 60 years old and a few nearing 100.
Over time, streets harden, crack and acquire potholes, ruts, crowns and other distortions from oxidation, truck and bus traffic, moisture intrusion, freeze/thaw cycles and utility cuts.
Maintenance workers use various means of repairing and reconstructing streets. Pothole filling is an emergency-type repair. Then there is localized patching and crack sealing - you've seen the workers out there with a wand - and entire surface slurry seal and chip seal repair. More drastic repair includes pavement overlay and reconstruction.
Streets are a substantial investment for municipal governments. In today's dollars, Salt Lake's inventory of street infrastructure including pavement, curbs, gutters, sidewalks, bridges, signs and signals, amounts to more than $1 billion. The pavement alone is an estimated $643 million.
One thing the council may do: Instead of just figuring in the initial cost of a street when it's built, it may add in the estimated maintenance schedule cost right from the start.
Tax increases are always unpopular, but if it comes to that the council may go ahead anyway. Jolley repeated one description of the current street maintenance schedule: "It's like digging a hole with a backhoe and filling it back up with a teaspoon."