Streets still deteriorating, report to Abilene City Council reveals

The Abilene City Council hit the pavement Thursday morning with some grim news from the company doing a survey of the quality of Abilene's streets.

Things are worse, and likely will continue to get worse unless the city can secure a substantial influx of cash.

In 2016, when the council was told it would take $377 million to fix streets, the city's overall pavement condition index (PCI) was 50, a figure considered to be poor.

This year, that number fell to 46, despite efforts to focus on street repair that have included money from a 2015 bond election, a street maintenance fee for commercial and residential customers and additional funds taken from the budget of the Development Corporation of Abilene.

The solutions are limited, said Sirous Alavi, Fugro Pavement Engineering manager, representing the company that did both the 2016 and the current evaluation.

Spend nothing more — an estimated $6.6 million a year — and see streets decline to an estimated score of 36 by 2031, or spend more money, likely in the form of a bond election, to see greater returns.

No scenario puts the city in the green zone of a PCI of 70 or above.

Broken down, the three classes of streets examined, arterial, collector and local currently have PCIs of 57, 52 and 43, respectively.

Bond amounts of $50 million to $100 million were examined, along with another scenario by which the city increases the amount it takes in for maintenance by 30%, around $2 million, and also floats a $100 million bond to voters.

No votes on such action were taken by the council, which plans to come back and look at its options.

In the most expensive scenario – increasing what's taken in plus a $100 million bond – the overall street index would top out around 55 in 2029, then begin to dip again by 2031.

Catching up?

Mayor Anthony Williams said $6.6 million was far more than the $500,000 that was common for years for street maintenance.

But he said the study showed that amount still was not enough, adding the council's target has been $10 million.

"Maintenance wasn't occurring," he said. "We operated in a system for 30 years where every (few) years we'd have a bond, and that bond was to catch up."

Councilman Kyle McAlister asked if the findings meant the city was still in a "catch-up" stage, given the previous lack of maintenance.

"You will be in a catch-up stage if right decisions or additional funding becomes available," Alavi responded. "Otherwise, as shown here, the deterioration phase will continue and it becomes more and more expensive to repair the roads later."

Alavi told the council that every $1 of investment in pavement preservation now staves off $12-$20 in concrete reconstruction "a few years from now."

He said the scenarios show that once that investment is made to get the pavement condition index to a higher rating,

"it doesn't take that heavy of an investment to keep the roads in that condition or better. The reason why is that a lot of the surface treatments and maintenance costs are much lower than the cost of tearing the street out and replacing it," he said.

The core recommendations from the study are that the council consider increasing the street maintenance fee and seek a bond to strengthen its ability to tackle the problem.

More: Alley maintenance a year-round activity for Abilene's streets division

The road ahead

A complete chart of conditions in comparable cities was not finished, but Avali said "there are many cities in the same boat."

Even in the scenario of 30% more money, plus a $100 million bond, the PCI of arterial and collector streets is projected to decline from 56 to 49 by 2039.

A $50 million bond sees them decline to 41, while $75 million and $100 million, respectively, sees them drop to 46 or 48 in that span.

Local streets, however, could see significant gains, bumping up to a PCI high around 57 in 2029 and dropping slightly thereafter, compared to 44 now.

Various bond scenarios would affect those numbers.

Brian Bethel covers city and county government and general news for the Abilene Reporter-News. If you appreciate locally driven news, you can support local journalists with a digital subscription to ReporterNews.com.

This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: Streets still deteriorating, according to Fugro report to Abilene City Council