City adapts how street paving prioritized
May 26—The city of Owensboro has implemented a new system for determining which streets road crews will resurface each year.
City engineer Kevin Collignon said the city has contracted with Stantec, an engineering firm with offices in Louisville and Lexington, to gauge the condition of the city's streets.
Stantec drove the streets in April, using technology to determine street conditions.
"They have mobile data equipment" capable of gathering data on road stressors and rideability, Collignon said.
The city has a Pavement Condition Index, which officials use to create their annual paving list. The index is on a 0-100 scale, with roads that score 60 or below scheduled for repaving.
"In the past, we used field personnel," Collignon said. "Sometimes we employed summer interns to gather field data, to walk the streets or drive the streets."
But people inspecting the streets would have varying opinions on their conditions. With Stantec, "we can get more consistent data," Collignon said.
The city solicited a request for quotes last fall for the service. Collignon said the cost to gauge street conditions using the firm is about $50,000. That's slightly more than the cost of having interns drive the streets, but it's not something the city will have to do annually.
"It's also getting harder to recruit summer interns," he said. "We wanted to hire four, but for the last couple of years, we were lucky to get two."
The data the firm provides should be good for a couple of years, Collignon said.
In addition to the Pavement Condition Index, the city looks at other factors when deciding what roads to pave, such as whether the road is a high-traffic area. Also, city road and sanitation crews report road conditions to engineering, Collignon said.
"Usually, we look at streets that are 60 or below," he said. "Sometimes we might look at a 70" if it's a major thoroughfare.
Collignon said the city won't go back to having people visually examine the streets, because that would confuse the data the city received from Stantec.
James Mayse, 270-691-7303, jmayse@messenger-inquirer.com, Twitter: @JamesMayse
