Why This Measure Matters

If streets are not adequately maintained, it impacts our economy, emergency services and quality of life. 

What’s the Story?

• City Streets are the single largest asset the City maintains. We regularly inspect the condition of our streets on a scale of zero to 100.  A perfect street is rated 100.
• Ratings on a street can fluctuate due to wear and tear by vehicles and weather, especially freeze-thaw cycles.
• Our target is a system-wide average pavement condition of 75. The current average rating is 65.
• We use the ratings to tell us two things: one, which streets we need to resurface, and two, how the full system is doing. We get an understanding of how the full system is doing by averaging the ratings for all the streets.  
• This approach helps us spend less money managing the streets’ surfaces. Knowing the condition of the pavement helps us decide which streets can be preserved with lower-cost chip seal treatments rather than costlier asphalt overlays. When a street degrades to a certain point the full street needs to be rebuilt. Preserving it with chip seal helps prolong the street’s life before it gets to that point.  
• The ratings are also a signal to decision makers about how much funding we should dedicate to maintaining pavement. The most recent chip seal projects the City did were in 2024, when we chip sealed several major streets: Harrison Avenue from Cooper Point Road to Division Street, Olympic Way between the two roundabouts, Cooper Point Road from Harrison to 14th Avenues, Legion Way from Plum Street to Boundary Street, and State Avenue/South Bay Road from Wilson Street to the city limits.
• Some of these were paid for by federal grants, which allowed us to stretch our local funding further.  

Target

Pavement rating of 75 

Reporting frequency