Unequal streets: Some get repaired, some don't
Karrie Heckman tried to steer her car around the ruts and water-filled potholes on Covell Avenue near 33rdStreet one recent evening, but it was impossible to avoid them all.
"I drive on the wrong side of the road so I don't hit the bumps," she said.
As she talked about her street, which hasn't been repaired in recent memory, another car hit one of the potholes, sending a plume of dirty water into the air.
"I don't park my car on the street because then it just gets splashed all the time," Heckman observed.
That's not a problem for residents of one upscale neighborhood in southeastern Sioux Falls that is less than 20 years old. Their road, which was already in good shape compared to many others in the city, was redone with new asphalt and gutters this summer.
The neighborhood — known as Crown Pointe — exudes upper class. Many homes along St. Charles and St. Francis Lanes are owned by trusts. Others by doctors and executives. The neighborhood, which overlooks Pasley Park and part of the city's bike trail system, includes two former city councilors, a current member of the South Dakota Board of Regents and Mayor Mike Huether.
Each year, the city sends out up to 20 people to assess street quality. Typically each street segment is evaluated every two or three years. Each segment is assigned a score denoting its quality and the scores are compiled in an obscure, annual report.
But an Argus Leader analysis of multiple years of reports and tens of thousands of records casts doubt on the integrity of the city's scoring system. Some roads that are clearly falling apart earn better scores than roads that are seemingly in good shape. The analysis shows that roads in some residential neighborhoods get more attention while others, like Covell Avenue, languish in disrepair.
Nowhere is the inequity of road repair and the arbitrary grading system more evident than in the way the roads of Crowne Point were scored and then repaved this summer.
The issue is even more important now because the city's commitment to street and highway spending has decreased. In 2011, 69 percent of the city's capital budget was devoted to highways and streets. That five-year plan, adopted in 2010, envisioned that 72 percent of the capital budget would go to streets by 2015. But that hasn't come to pass: Just 58 percent of this year's capital funding is for streets.
City officials acknowledge that the method they use to assess the quality of roads is subjective, and they are taking steps to change that. For the first time, the city plans to contract with a company that uses a van loaded with censors to grade the roads rather than relying on human assessments. Huether lauded the new grading system last month while unveiling next year's capital improvement plan.
"It's a vehicle with a laser scanner that goes around and it evaluates the streets, the quality of the streets," he said. "What does it see? Our potholes, are there thermal cracks, are there things like that. This technology will allow us to do that. And then what we can do is spend these tax dollars in such a more prudent and efficient way and get a bigger bang for our taxpayer dollar. We'll do that not only this year but in future years as well to ensure that we spend our money wisely."
Mark Cotter, the city's public works director, said the censor-loaded van will likely hit the streets in September. He hopes it will give the city a good baseline on the quality of its roads.
"We're going to get a consistent approach on how the streets are ranked, because the reality is, if you send out 20 people, even if the form is the same, you're going to get some variability," Cotter said.
"Variability" describes what happened to the scores for St. Charles Lane, which is part of Crowne Point, a semi-circular 50-home development with a single entrance and therefore not subject to through traffic.
The city uses a 10-point scoring system to assess roads, where 10 is considered a perfect street condition. The scores for the four segments of St. Charles Lane were upgraded between 2009 and 2010 to above 9. In the annual report documenting road quality conditions in 2011, the segments of St. Charles Lane had scores between 9.3 and 9.41.
But those scores dropped precipitously. In 2012, the St. Charles segments had scores ranging from 6.86 to 7.19.
The rapid decline in scores for St. Charles stood out compared to other streets, according to an Argus Leader analysis of the data. The St. Charles segments were among 857 residential streets that had a score of 9 or higher in 2011 but less than 9 in 2012. Only 10 of those streets had bigger declines in their scores than the St. Charles segments.
Of the 2,458 residential streets that saw a decrease in their scores between 2011 and 2012, the average decrease was 0.6. Just 52 of those roads — .02 percent of them — had decreases of 2 points or more. The St. Charles segments were among that .02 percent.
Meanwhile, the rutted Covell Avenue north of 33rd Street, where Karrie Heckman dodges potholes, is considered in better condition than the roads of Crowne Point, according to the city's scoring system. Even in the most recent annual report, the Covell segments continue to have higher scores, ranging from 7.85 to 8.62.
Huether was out of town on vacation last week, according to spokeswoman Heather Hitterdal. Hitterdal added in an email that any insinuation that Huether used his influence to get his road repaired "is a ridiculous accusation."
She also released what she said was an email chain, initiated by Huether, after the mayor learned his street was being repaved in a letter the city sent to his home. The email, dated April 6, was sent to other city officials. In it, Huether expresses happiness that his road is being repaved, but he also wondered how his area got prioritized when other roads are in worse shape.
"There are a bunch of examples in the core of our city that seem to be much worse," he said in the email, pointing out Seventh, Eighth and Ninth streets west of Minnesota Avenue as specific examples.
He then asked for a briefing on how the city prioritizes road maintenance and a list of the worst roads and when they were scheduled to be fixed.
In an interview this month and subsequent emails to the Argus Leader, Cotter defended the city's maintenance system. With regard to Crowne Point, the streets in adjoining neighborhoods, including more heavily traveled collector roads, were repaved in the last few years. Redoing Crowne Point this year put all the roads in the area on the same maintenance schedule, making it easier for the city to manage future maintenance projects in the area, he said.
The roads in Crowne Point were last inspected in 2010. The inspection in 2012 – which led to the big drop in scores – revealed thermal cracks, which provide conduits for water to get under the pavements, Cotter said. The most recent inspection also showed that the curbs and gutters were deteriorating.
"The whole concept of pavement preservation is to do the 'right treatment at the right time,'" Cotter said in an email, "and it was the right time to do an overlay project in this neighborhood."
STORY CONTINUES BELOW MAP. CLICK ON DIFFERENT COLORED LINES TO SEE HOW STREET GRADES HAVE CHANGED IN MAYOR MIKE HUETHER'S NEIGHBORHOOD. MORE INFO BY CLICKING TOP OF MAP.
Cotter also cautioned against using the data to draw conclusions about the street conditions of specific blocks. The system, he said, is a "network analysis tool" that guides decision making, and not at a segment level, but for neighborhoods.
"The goal is to plan projects to maximize the life cycle of not only individual street segments, but the street system as a whole," he said.
That system, city officials insist, is not governed by a "worst is first" philosophy. Streets with the worst conditions don't automatically get redone ahead of others. That's because, Cotter said, it's not cost effective.
To totally reconstruct one block, Cotter said it costs the city about $100,000. A mill and overlay – in which the top of the asphalt is ground off and replaced with a new layer – costs about $10,000 a block, which is the treatment the Crowne Point neighborhood received this summer. Micro-surfacing treatments, in which a protective coat is applied to extend the life of pavement, costs about $3,000 a block.
"We're affecting hundreds of blocks this year with that particular strategy," Cotter said.
That strategy led to the mill-and-overlay of Crowne Point, which had last seen a surface treatment in 2006. And it's a strategy that led to the micro-surfacing this summer of Riverview Heights, another upscale Sioux Falls neighborhood where the roads were repaved in 2008.
It's a strategy, according to the Argus Leader analysis, in which 383 road segments that had a score of 9 or better in 2011 had an even higher score in 2014, either due to the variability of humans grading streets or because they were subject to repairs.
And it's also a system in which 436 segments with scores of less than 8 in 2011 continued to have scores of less than 8 in 2014.
Rob Schneider lives on Walden Drive near Kuehn Park, one of the lowest-ranked segments in the city with a score of 2.49. Schneider, who has lived there since 2000, had hoped his street might be repaved this summer, but was disappointed to learn it wasn't in the program. What maintenance the city has done over the years has consisted of filling some potholes with material that he says washes away in the rain.
As he points out the sunken gutters and disintegrated asphalt, he wonders if the city's strategy of focusing so much of its resources on keeping nice streets nice means that residents who live on the worst streets will continue to live on the worst streets for a long time to come.
"There's nothing bigger than a square foot," he says of the asphalt. "It's just piece after piece after piece of little chunks of asphalt."
Argus Leader reporter Joe Sneve contributed to this story.
How the city grades its streets:
Each year, a group of city employees that can number as many as 20 inspects street segments, looking for signs of wear and tear. They check for cracking, surface defects, joint deficiencies, issues with curb and gutter as well as other problems. They assign numbers to each category in Field Inspection Data Sheets, and then each street segment is assigned a score known as the Overall Condition Index. Each street segment is inspected every two to three years. The scores are used to determine the city's maintenance program, although the worst scores are not necessarily repaired first.
This method of grading streets has a shortcoming in that it relies on human subjectivity: One person might think a defect is worse than another person. This year, for the first time, the city is using a van with censors to generate a more objective report.
The ten residential street segments with the lowest rating in 2014
Walden Drive West from 36th Street West to Kingswood Way South, Score: 2.49
8th Street East from West end to Cleveland Avenue North, Score: 3.73
Strabane Trail West from Strabane Circle to Edinborough Drive, Score: 4.08
La Quinta Street West from Killarney Street West to Shannon Circle, Score: 4.51
Sunflower Trail South from Caraway Drive to Sunflower Circle West, Score: 4.59
Lews Avenue North from 3rd Street East to 3rd Street East, Score: 4.79
La Quinta Street West from Mosby Street to Western Avenue South, Score: 4.82
Duluth Avenue North from 5th Street West to 6th Street West, Score: 4.95
35th Street West from Elmwood Avenue South to Lincoln Avenue South, Score: 5.04
Summit Avenue South from 21st Street West to 22nd Street West, Score: 5.07