Two new documents reviewed by the City Council on Feb. 23 and now available online tell the story of Eugene’s success in street repairs and the challenges ahead for the city to keep its streets in good condition.
The 2014 Street Repair Review Panel Report offers detailed information on nearly a dozen major pavement projects completed last year with $7.7 million in funding from the voter-approved 2012 bond measure to fix city streets. The 2014 bond-funded work also included $739,000 in bicycle and pedestrian improvement projects such as the installation of a new traffic signal on 30th Avenue at University Street. The Street Repair Review Panel is an 11-member citizen group that each year reviews the expenditure of bond funds and an independent audit. The group “unanimously concluded that the bond proceeds were used for the authorized purposes.”
The 2015 Pavement Management Report was produced by the Public Works Maintenance Division to rate each segment of the city’s 538 centerline miles of streets and 45 miles of off-street shared-use paths. One of the key measures tracked by these annual reports is the backlog of needed repairs on improved asphalt streets. In 2015, that figure stood at approximately $84 million, down from the previous estimate of $100 million. While $84 million is still a significant backlog, it is nearly $200 million less than what the backlog was projected to be had Eugene not embarked on a pavement preservation program funded primarily by voter-approved bonds and a local gas tax.