Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
One of the challenges is prioritizing services
Up next we'll take a look one service that all of us use just about every
day - the City streets. The condition of the roads
in the City of Bend are determined by a
condition rating system which is nationally recognized
for the streets of Bend about a 74 which the low range
of good. If it goes below that to what we call the 60
percent range then we have significant wear
on the roads is about 5 to 7 times
more costly. The condition of the roads is dictated by
weather conditions and the high traffic volumes and the weight
that the traffic puts upon the road. And over time with
a lot of volume of traffic on our major streets all roads deteriorate.
All roads need repair. Some of the rutting in the roads is caused
by studded tires to some degree but largely is just the heavy weight
and the heavy loads on the roads not designed for kind of trucks.
If we can overlay streets on a very constant basis of
every 5 to 10 years, then the costs
under $2, let's say. If we defer that maintenance
we get those heavy creases and water gets in the roads we find that we can't
overlay it anymore - doesn't make any difference - those costs of $1 to $2
goes up to 7 times that amount and in fact it gets so high
in some cities, they do not have the budget to repair city streets.
Right now the City does have a $13 million
deferred that does need to be done on those streets and roadways.
As time goes, at the rate we are currently going, we'll probably
get $20 million in the next 5 years.
So we know we've got this problem. We're trying to look at different ways
that we can pull this together. Traditionally, we've received
federal gas taxes and state gas taxes and that's what
funded our streets system. For the last few years, those
receipts or payments to the City are less and less. There's a number of
reasons for this. We have more fuel efficient cars. People during the
high prices last year started driving quite a bit less so they're buying less gas
and getting less revenue that would go toward road maintenance.
Gas tax money has remained pretty constand and the cost to do repairs is
gone thru the roof. So for the same amount of $ we can do far less than we used
to be able to do. What's happened in the state of Oregon is that the
state gives the cities gas tax $
and that gas tax hasn't been increased since about 1992
was the last time was the last time the state legislature action increased Oregon's state gas tax.
The Federal stimulus, we've been notified that Bend
will receive $2.4 million total for roads and transportation
$1.4 million is going to be earmarked for
to take care of street maint and ADA curb ramps
and we've been told that that should pave or overlay about 18 miles
of roadway in the City of Bend and that work will start within the next 90 days
The transportation engineering division is working real close
with the street maint. division and we look for efficiencies in our designs
to we're looking at materials. We're looking at can we make stronger sidewalks
at our roundabouts so they don't so easily if they're hit by cars
can we look at different
standards so we can have a thicker street type of preservation
project rather than maybe a traditional one. One of the factors
in street maintenance is to keep the street clean of debris
for all the driving public and pedestrians and bicyclists
and part of that is picking up the cinders that we put down during the snow
event. It can take us about 10 times as long to pickup what we put down.
We put it down in a week and it takes us 10 weeks to pick it up.
Here on 27th St is a major arterial street in the City of Bend.
It carries an enormous traffic for us and over time we've seen
a significant increase in traffic because there's been population increases
in the City of Bend with 80,000 people now
A lot of those people drive on these major roads like 27th and so the
wear and tear on those roads has increased significantly over the last 4 -5 years
With our limited budget we are still trying to everything we can to
maintain the streets in the best possibly way. We're doing
crack pouring and crack sealing which keeps the water out of the sub base
doing chip seals which is a less costly way to
preserve the streets and of course overlays
which is one of our best tools to restore the travelling surface to the streets.