|
CC Work Session 2. 3.
<br />Meeting Date: 08/27/2013
<br />By: Bruce Westby, Engineering /Public
<br />Works
<br />Information
<br />Title:
<br />Consideration of Long -Term Street Maintenance Program (SMP) Costs and Funding Options
<br />Background:
<br />In 2009, staff estimated that the required annual cost would be $3,200,000 to fund the city's long -term street
<br />maintenance and reconstruction program (SMP) to maintain a Pavement Surface Evaluation and Rating (PASER)
<br />system rating of 7 or better on all 141.82 miles of non - Municipal State Aid city streets. This annual cost was
<br />determined based on an assumed 40 -year life- expectancy for a typical city street and accounted for all costs
<br />required to maintain and eventually reconstruct all roads at the end of their assumed 40 -year life span, excluding
<br />initial construction costs. This then resulted in an estimated total cost of $9,588,203 to maintain all non - Municipal
<br />State Aid Streets over the 5 year period from 2011 to 2015, which equated to an annual cost of $1,917,640.60.
<br />Maintenance costs were also estimated for the same streets for the 10 year period from 2011 to 2020. These costs
<br />totaled $72,401,106.00, which equated to an annual cost of $7,240,110.60.
<br />Per Council direction, staff has recently been working to re- evaluate these costs, which resulted in the following
<br />actions and findings.
<br />Recent studies have concluded that streets constructed over solid, well - drained subgrade soils, such as the sands
<br />found in the Anoka sand plain which Ramsey is located upon, and that receive regularly scheduled maintenance,
<br />should realize a 60 year life expectancy. Therefore, if the City Council continues to annually dedicate the necessary
<br />SMP funding required to properly maintain all city streets, our streets should last for 60 years or more between
<br />reconstructions. The maintenance program staff recommends consists of crack sealing all streets 3 years after initial
<br />construction, overlay, and reconstruction operations. Concurrent crack sealing and seal coating operations should
<br />then occur in years 6, 13, 26, 33, 46, and 53, with an overlay and edge milling operation applied in years 20 and
<br />40. Then, in approximately year 60, either a reclaim and repave project or a full reconstruction would occur, after
<br />which the maintenance cycle would begin all over again.
<br />After updating the city streets database, which contains detailed design information for all street segments
<br />throughout the city, staff was able to more accurately estimate the annual costs needed to fund our long -term street
<br />maintenance and reconstruction program. This required staff to research and apply average 2013 unit bid prices for
<br />street maintenance operations including crack sealing, seal coating, overlaying, reclaiming and repaving, and
<br />reconstructions. The applied 2013 unit bid prices came from projects bid this year in other nearby cities, as well as
<br />from projects we bid this year, including our 2013 Street Maintenance Program.
<br />As Council may recall, staff previously planned to develop a dozen typical sections or more to represent typical
<br />combinations of street widths and roadway types throughout the city, including urban (curb & gutter, storm sewer
<br />and boulevards) and rural (no curb & gutter and ditches) street sections and different pavement sections based on
<br />the existence of clay or sand subgrade soils. While this approach would have yielded reasonable cost estimates, by
<br />updating our streets database and applying average 2013 unit bid prices, staff was able to much more accurately
<br />calculate the estimated costs needed to maintain all city streets over their projected life spans, as well as over the
<br />next 5 to 10 years.
<br />City staff has been rating and evaluating the pavement condition of all city streets for many years now. In general,
<br />roughly 23.5% of city streets are currently rated between 0 and 6, whereas 76.5% are rated between 7 and 10. This
<br />indicates that we have been doing a reasonable job of maintaining the majority of city streets at a PASER rating of
<br />7 or greater, which is identified as one of the city's Strategic Initiatives in Strategic Imperative II of the recently
<br />
|