01-22-07 Item 2B, Five Year CIP Update

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Deferred maintenance has a negative impact for two reasons. The first is that by deferring maintenance, Arden Hills is allowing streets to deteriorate down the pavement life cycle curve. This will increase the cost to fix streets in the future. Streets that once cost an average of $3 per square yard to fix will soon cost $32 per square yard or more to repair at today's prices. The second reason is that as streets deteriorate, citizen complaints about the condition of the streets will increase and emergency (or necessary) repair costs will increase. Developing A Budget Strategy For Arden Hills The ICON pavement management program is designed to present strategies that will shift the focus of a network repair program from rehabilitation to preventive maintenance. This means moving the average network PCI higher into the upper end of the "very good" condition range. As mentioned earlier, today's estimated average PCI for the pavement network is 64, in the "fair" condition category. The logical questions are "If the average PCI is in the very good condition category, why does it cost so much to repair Arden Hills's pavements?", "Why bother improving them at all?", "How much would it cost to improve the streets to an accepted level of service?" These are questions that can be answered with the ICON Pavement Management Program. First of all, the PCI of a pavement has a lot to do with how much it costs to repair and maintain it. In the "excellent" condition category, it costs very little money to apply treatments such as crack and surface seals, which extend the life of a pavement. Treatments of this sort usually cost less than $0.11 per square foot. Pavements in the "good" to "fair" range show some form of distress or wear which require more than a life-extending treatment. By this point, a well-designed pavement will have served at least 75 percent of its life and the quality of the pavement has dropped by about 40 percent. The road surface may require a chip seal application or a thin overlay. These treatments range in cost from $0.11 to $0.33 per square foot. Pavements in the "very poor" to "failed" range of the pavement condition index. These pavements are near the end of their service life and usually exhibit major forms of distress such as potholes, extensive cracking, and others. At this stage, a roadway usually requires either a thick overlay or a reconstruction. The costs for these treatments range from $0.44 to $10 per square foot. One of the key elements of a pavement repair strategy is to slow down the deterioration of the pavements in the "very good" to "good" condition categories. This is particularly true for streets in the "good" range because they are at the point where pavement deterioration accelerates if the pavements are left untreated; whereas, the cost to repair pavements in the "fair" to "poor" range increases substantially if repair is delayed.