Seattle’s streets are broken, they’re not getting better, and I can find no evidence that the Seattle City Council or the Mayor’s Office are able to deal with the scope of the problem. I know it’s fashionable to sneer at do-nothing politicians, but neither can I see reason for officials to duck this problem, unless they find it unsolvable. What’s a better advertisement for effective city government than good roads?
This is all heavily rutted ground that I have covered before. In the best of times, Seattle finds itself playing catch-up on deferred road maintenance: Thus, in 2006, the Bridging the Gap levy was born. It is a nine-year plan that, two-thirds done, has left us further behind than when we started. Part of the reason is that, since the onset of the Great Recession and its throttling of tax revenues, Seattle has found itself unable to pay for all necessary road repairs, let alone deferable projects.
As the magnitude of the problem has increased, the city’s response has grown more anemic. Using potholes an indicator species for overall road health, it’s troubling to note that in 2009 Seattle’s Department of Transportation filled 6,500 potholes; in 2010, 10,100 potholes; in 2011, over 25,000.
Pothole-filling is the equivalent of bailing a leaky boat, of course. Patches aren’t supposed to last more than a year, perhaps 18 months. Patches applied in bad weather can fail again in just days. At some point, you need to resurface the roads, and that is just where SDOT’s resources are weakest.
“With the NE Ravenna Boulevard project now in construction, the city is on schedule to rebuild 15 lane-miles of road in 2012,” goes a recent City of Seattle press release, which describes the city as humbly “focusing on the basics.” Besides resurfacing arterials, SDOT plans to “enhance” seven lane-miles by repaving small chunks of road with new concrete or asphalt.
The release contains a lot of numbers–“4,362 potholes have been repaired in just the first two months of 2012”–but for context, the city repaved 24 arterial lane-miles in 2011, while enhancing about sixteen lane-miles. In 2010, it repaved 31 lane-miles. You see which direction these numbers are heading, yes? Now–let me emphasize this point–this dwindling repair is just for arterials. Seattle has 1,524 lane-miles of arterials. There are 2,706 lane-miles of residential streets that have just been left to crumble.
This is not SDOT’s fault; it is not this Mayor’s fault; it is not this Council’s fault. Road maintenance is expensive, and the city’s coffers are depleted after a multi-year recessionary winter. But it is their responsibility. At some point, our crumbling infrastructure will reach a tipping point at which it could drag the city down. SDOT has valued the city’s transportation assets at $13 billion, but that asset is becoming an equally huge liability as more and more streets reach failure.
Olympia’s help is likely to be limited. The State of Washington is still rummaging around in its moth-eaten budgetary pockets for unfunded billions for the new 520 bridge, though WSDOT is aware of the significance of the road maintenance backlog statewide: “Recently compiled data indicate that sixteen percent of city roadway pavements are in poor or very poor condition with indications that, at current funding levels, this number will grow.”
We cannot keep this up. The pace of road degradation is spiking. We need to restore our infrastructure, and now.
Last year it was 15th Ave NE, this year Ravenna Blvd. Are these projects more expensive per lane-mile than the ones undertaken in 2010? Or are they actually decreasing the amount of $ spent on repaving?
I don’t know about per-lane-mile costs, year-over-year, Tom, that’s a good question. My understanding is that while labor costs are down, asphalt keeps going up, up, up (in line with oil). Here’s CDOT’s price guide: http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/esc/oe/asphalt_index/astable.html
Not that it really matters. The points stands that what we’re doing obviously isn’t working. I wonder what potential tax initiatives that could get the city fully on-track would look like. Probably terrifying to the average Seattle resident…
If only the vehicle excise tax were an option. It obviously makes the most sense.
Two factors are behind paving fewer lane-miles this year. We are spending less because the city frontloaded the paving plan to do more work early in the nine-year BTG levy. Also, this year’s N/NW 85th St and Greenwood Ave N project is a full rebuild, which is more expensive than a resurfacing project.
Thanks, Rick.
The SunBreak is correct – the City of Seattle’s ability to pave more streets is about financial resources. SDOT is doing the best it can to address old pavement but the needs, accumulated over decades, are greater than our limited paving dollars.
Bridging the Gap (BTG) has helped stabilize our arterial roadways’ condition. It allowed us to rehabilitate important streets such as Second Ave, Fourth Ave and Stewart St in downtown, Elliot Ave W and 15th Ave W through Interbay, First Ave S in SODO, and 15th Ave NE in the University District. Without BTG, SDOT would not be able to fund approximately $20 million a year in paving through 2015. So while BTG alone cannot provide enough resources to address $578 million in deferred arterial maintenance, it has been critical for funding major roadway paving.
Of course, we know the real problem. You get what you pay for, and we’re cheap as hell.
The state needs to expand our taxing authority, or better yet implement an income tax. And stop wasting gas tax money on useless megaprojects.
There’s a penny-wise, pound-foolish element, yeah. I am always a little horrified to see a newly asphalted street that a) has a hill and b) carries articulated buses. Concrete has a much better chance at lasting given the extra load, but it seems too expensive for SDOT as a lump sum. That’s a structural financing problem, and it doesn’t seem to be addressed ever.
A major contributing factor seems to be the fact that even where roads are resurfaced, there appears to be no coordination with property owners or builders regarding the scheduling of work which calls for cutting into the street.
By way of example both Admiral Way and California Ave SW had recent resurfacing work and within weeks of completion new holes were cut for utilities access and then indifferently patched by the contractors doing the work. These patches fail and our brand new road surface is destroyed.
Put another way, our expensive public good – smooth roadways – are appropriated and ruined, without compensation for the private gain of property developers for want of a little forethought or code enforcement.