Memorandum

City of Lawrence

Public Works

TO:	Chuck Soules
FROM:	Mark Thiel
CC:	David Cronin, Steve Lashley, Mike Perkins
Date:	12/12/13
RE:	Brick Street Maintenance and Reconstruction Guidelines

Background

In late October, 2005, the first cycle of the street pavement condition inventory for the (PMS) was completed, which involved a physical inventory and analysis of every street segment within the City of Lawrence. The PMS provides Public Works with a management tool to maintain an inventory of street pavement, their respective condition and maintenance work history, and the ability to identify budget needs and impacts associated with pavement preservation strategies in developing an effective Pavement Preservation Program (P3) as part of our Street Maintenance Program. The PCI (pavement condition index) rating is a number assigned to a pavement segment based on its condition, and range from 0-100. A lower number reflects a street with higher severity and more frequently occurring pavement distresses. Examples of factors affecting the PCI rating include: type and severity of cracking (traverse, longitudinal, fatigue), surface defects (spalling, raveling, and pot-holes), rutting, settlements, and pavement base failure.

The program originally was set up to perform crack sealing, microsurfacing, asphalt mill and overlay, and curb & gutter maintenance. In 2009, concrete street rehabilitation program was added to the program.

In July 2011 the City Auditor recommended that “the City should establish guidance on maintaining streets that are brick and asphalt over brick. Guidance would help the City better maintain those streets. Currently the City does not have a plan for brick street maintenance. While these brick streets represent a small part of the City’s street system (24 miles), they are concentrated in one part of town and are in relatively poor condition.” To date, the selection of brick streets for maintenance or reconstruction has been based on availability of transportation enhancement funds or minor repairs utilizing the street maintenance operational budgets. The community has not had a real plan and/or strategy for moving forward with the addition of brick streets to our maintenance program for any number of reasons. The City Auditor has reviewed the attached guidelines and has reported that they address the intent of the audit.

Public Comment

As part of the process to establish selection guidelines we have broken the process into two parts; maintenance and restoration. Over the past year Public Works Department staff has been collecting data and researching to determine a strategy and starting point for the draft guidelines. On April 18, 2013 we started the process for public comment with a presentation to the Historical Resource Commission (HRC) they would like to revisit this item once the full City Commission and public meeting presentations are complete. We will get this item on a future HRC agenda in early 2014. On November 11, 2013, we presented to the affected neighborhood associations. The overall feedback received was encouraging. The general feeling was that brick streets need to have maintenance. We will continue to meet with community groups in an attempt to educate and get feedback. Currently we are scheduled to present these guidelines to the East Lawrence Neighborhood Association on February 3, 2014.

After the final HRC discussion we will present to a future City Commission.

Guidelines

The guidelines are broken out into two categories; maintenance and reconstruction. Maintenance of brick streets will be determined utilizing the same strategies we currently use for other type streets, pavement condition index or PCI being one of the factors in the selection process. The basic idea is to maintain brick streets to a PCI level consistent with the overall PCI goals for all street categories; arterials, collectors and residential. The type of maintenance will be determined by this established guideline. Restoration candidates will be determined using the selection guideline(s) outlined in the attached guideline document. The basic concept is that arterials and collectors will be improved to modern paving technology such as asphalt or concrete. Residentials will be selected based location, typically north / south streets that have frontages along them will have properties and east / west streets would not. With every guideline there will be exceptions. We anticipate, as with all of our maintenance and reconstruction plans, that they will have further review at a time in the future when they are selected.

Summary

Completing this next step in the street maintenance program will give us a comprehensive program that includes a plan for all street types.

Action

Provide feedback and direction to staff.