Do you feel lucky? 2025 street and sidewalk repair maps
And some other tidbits of info
At the March 18th city council meeting, the plans for this year’s concrete and asphalt repairs were revealed. Here’s the map that shows where street repairs are planned. 15 sections will be repaired, with Casper Drive and 111th being the most heavily trafficked.
WHAT WE HAVE
Public Works Director Jeff Arthur told the council If you stretched out our roadways end to end, depending on which direction you went, you would end up in the cities marked with an orange circle on this graphic. Using the same method for sidewalks but with a yellow circle, you’d end up in Grand Junction or Casper, Wyoming.
COST COMPARISON
Here are some cost comparisons:
COSTS PER MILE OR BLOCK
GETTING JUDGY WITH ROADS
In 2020, staff hired a company called IMS to provide a pavement report using the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) that utilizes a 0-100 scale, zero being a complete fail, and a 100 being smooth, new, and one you wish you got to drive on once in a while.
50 PCI puts a road into the critical range. As you can imagine, it’s cheaper to maintain a road before it reaches that critical point, using crack and fill, rather than mill overlay.
Most of the roads staff selected for repair this year are below 50.
A new report was planned for 2025. However, since all the repairs from the 2020 report have not been completed, staff are waiting a year or two before commissioning a new one.
44 roads were recommended for improvement in 2025, but the budget only allows for 15.
In 2020, IMS recommended spending $2.5M a year to get to a 74 PCI rating (satisfactory) by 2026. However, since 2023, the city has averaged spending about $1.5M a year.
In 2023, the implementation by the US Access Board of the Public Right of Way Accessibility Guidelines (PROWAG) and the adoption of Lafayette’s Multimodal Transportation Plan occurred. This led to the cost for concrete work rising from 13%, or ~$400k, to 46%, or ~$ 1.4 M.
PROWAG addresses ADA ramps. Here are some examples of the changes to three ADA ramps in Lafayette.
2025 CONTRACTS
SIDEWALK REPAIRS
Some complete blocks are highlighted, but don’t dance too soon; that just means work is happening on that block.
And now you know if your street or sidewalk will get a facelift this year!
Want to offer more support? Awesome!
Okay, Lafayette, along with other Boulder County municipal brethren, loves to talk about walkability, and bike lanes, but under-budgeting for sidewalks and road maintenance is not responsible behavior. Seems to me that the City Council needs to do some serious prioritizing and put maintenance and maintenance financial planning high on the list. As an HOA board member, I am responsible for ensuring that our HOIA has a reserve e fund to pay for the maintenance of our common property -- that's the law. Why are municipalities not required to do that kind of planning? My suspicion is that elected officials rely on shiny new stuff to talk about during elections rather than maintenance efforts.
Deferring maintenance is like traveling work in a production line -- it keeps the line moving but just increases future costs.
If only there were street names on the map!