Brian Davis, Chief Coordinator - Street Resurfacing for the City of Los Angeles, explained how the City selects streets for resurfacing to a packed house at the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council Meeting on Tuesday, September 11, 2007.
According to Mr. Davis, the City streets currently have a C- rating. There are a total of 6,500 miles of streets in Los Angeles, 1,000 miles of which are considered “failed” streets. Based on the City’s budget, the City will only able to address 175 miles of streets in the 2007-2008 fiscal year.
Many Porter Ranch residents came to the meeting wanting to know how to get on “The List” for street repair, frustrated with trying for many years with phone calls and letters. Streets of particular concern were Sesnon, Tampa, Reseda, Wilbur and Stewarton Drive.
Replacing a failed street, and removing everything down to the dirt, costs five times more than just replacing the top 2 inches. The City has determined the most cost effective manner to repair streets is to resurface them before they are deemed failed. 80% of the budget is for resurfacing and providing a slurry coat and 20% is for complete reconstruction. The most economical approach is to repair contiguous streets in a grid format.
Mr. Davis explained that Los Angeles is considered a world leader in street paving technology, with foreign delegations coming to learn from the City. Los Angeles has a state of the art machine that removes the asphalt, recycles and reuses it as a base course.
Because street repair has been prioritized after fire, police and homeland security, and their budget is woefully small, the City is seeking a bond initiative to bring streets to acceptable levels in the next ten years. Some Porter Ranch residents spoke out that it was unfair to burden property owners to pay for street repair, when they are not the only ones using the streets.
When Mr. Davis revealed his committed paving list, there was more than one sigh of relief when residents heard the names of their requested projects. Here is the list of streets to be repaired by the City some time during the 2007-2008 fiscal year.
