The City of Sammamish’s roads are in “fair to good” condition, according to the city’s Public Works department.
With a Pavement Condition Index (PCI) of 71, the quality of Sammamish roads sits toward the lower end in a ranking of comparable cities, higher than Kirkland and Auburn, but below Redmond, Issaquah, Mukilteo, Newcastle and Olympia, which have PCI’s between 84 and 76.
A brand new street has a PCI of 100. Streets with a PCI of 50 or less are said to be in poor or very poor condition.
City Engineer Laura Philpot told the Sammamish City Council on Monday night it would cost about $3 million a year to keep them in this condition, a sum of money which would allow the city to treat about 7 miles of roadway a year.
With a total of 167 miles of roadway in Sammamish, this would mean maintenance and/or rehabilitation of each section of road on a 24 year cycle.
This level of service was one of three options presented at Monday night’s study session, part of the city’s Pavement Management update.
In terms of cost, this was the middle ground between two other options – either stop any maintenance of roads, or upgrade the condition of roads in Sammamish to “good.”
The former would involve cutting the pavement management budget from its current level of $2 million a year to zero. According to Philpot, without any maintenance, it would take about six years for roads in Sammamish to fall to a PCI of 58 or lower – a level considered to be “fair,” and close to “poor.”
The later would involve increasing the pavement management budget to about $4.3 million a year. This would allow 10 miles of roadway to be maintained every year, and in six number of years would increase the city’s average PCI to at least 75.
Philpot told the councilors that the budget constraints have forced the City of Issaquah, with an average PCI of 77, to eliminate altogether its funding for pavement management in 2010, down to zero from a typical expenditure of between $400,000 and $600,000 a year.
In contrast, the City of Sammamish doubled its pavement management budget, from $1 million in 2009, to $2 million this year.
The condition of local roads was impacted by the extreme winter of 2009, with pavement deteriorating under snow and ice and the following thaw, as well as the stress of snow ploughing efforts and the use of tyre chains.
The cost of maintaining the city’s roads soon led into a broader discussion of building new roads. Councilor Mark Cross said that with Low Impact Development (LID) and increasing the percentage of pervious surface a goal of the city, it should be exploring whether new roads needed to be so wide.
Traffic experts have noted that Sammamish’s wide streets, which span 36 feet from shoulder to shoulder in some developments, not only increases the amount of impervious surface, which has a negative impact on storm water retention and treatment, but also encourages speeding.
City Public Works Director John Cunningham said his department had already begun implementing a policy of requiring slightly narrower streets, including in the new Trossachs subdivision 13, which has 26 foot wide streets.
City Manager Ben Yazici said not only did narrower streets help meet the ecological and traffic safety goals of the city, they lowered the cost for developers, and reduced the cost of maintaining the roadways.
In 2010 the Public Works Department is scheduled to complete pavement maintenance work on 212th Avenue Southeast and 216th Avenue Northeast, as well as local street work in the Ponderosa Trail, Sunny Hills, Tree Farm and Highland Park Neighborhoods.
