Road Maintenance - Joseph Abate
Road Maintenance
As many of our members know, the Board has been strongly interested in improving the surface condition of our roads, as well as the possible installation of speed humps to reduce traffic speed. These two concerns have been ongoing since at least 2017. This information piece will hopefully bring readers up to date.
Road maintenance History:
In all the time our HOA has existed, our streets have been fully repaved only once and given only one chip seal coating; which was accomplished in the ‘80’s. This a fully unacceptable record from the Board’s point of view. Somewhat worse is that, while spot repairs shall be made, our streets require repaving now but are without any plan to repave them during the fiscal year 2023. This is not the information the Board expected to learn, especially since streets north of Chula Vista and between 1st Avenue and west Chula Vista saw full repaving in 2020.
There is a history to this and to the method the County used to decide which streets and roads were repaved. County Road Maintenance saw inconsistent funding and an erratic method of deciding which roads to repave until 2019. In that year over 1,300 miles of Pima County roads required maintenance. County population increase and consequential urban growth the since the ‘80’s and the size of Pima County also had impact. Added to this were some years of bickering, at the County Board of Supervisors, over District 1 allocated road maintenance funds.
Why is 2019 of any importance? Public influence.
2019 was the year that the Pima County Transportation Advisory Committee (PCTAC) conducted a public survey regarding how to allocate resources for local roads: The overwhelming public response was to repair the worst roads first and develop a systematic, equitable approach to maintenance.
With that input, the PCTAC adopted the following process for selecting local road repairs for Fiscal Year 2021:
Ranking was determined by sorting the 1300 miles of road segments, from worst to best, using a Pavement Condition Index (PCI), from 0 to 100.
0 = worst condition
100 = best condition
Roads with the same PCI index number were additionally ranked by
Presence of School Crosswalks
Lack of sidewalks
Lot density
Additionally, subdivisions often have roads of different PCI ratings so it is often impractical to move from one subdivision to the next to repair similarly rated roads, only to return multiple times. PCTAC uses the following criteria to develop a list of road within subdivisions that maximizes work with the available repair budget:
Select the worst-ranked road segment from the list to be the “trigger road”, then select all road segments in the same subdivision or contiguous to the trigger road
Once all qualifying road segments have been selected, select the next worst road on the ranking list
When the remaining budget is too small to repair the next worst road on the ranking list within the subdivision, that road is skipped and the another “next worst” road is selected
What can the Santa Catalina Estates Property Owner‘s Association do to influence a positive outcome to this issue?
First, identify the problems found during walks and driving through the neighborhood. Then, contact Pima County:
Call Pima County at (520) 724-6410 to report what you find
Install and use the mobile app “SeeClickFix”
Launch the online portal
Contact Pima County Sheriff’s Road Condition Hotline, at (520) 547-7510
We can also keep the subject top of mind with our County Supervisor, Mr. Rex Scott. The best way to do so is to contact Cami Evans at:
Cami Evans
Office of Supervisor Rex Scott, District 1
Pima County Board of Supervisors
(520) 724-2738
Pima County’s plan, at this time, is to repair all currently failed and poor roads to achieve an average network PCI of 80, by the year 2030. For a full accounting and explanation of how streets and roads are selected for repair/repaving, please visit the Pima County Transportation Advisory Committee website