Brian Lee-Mounger Hendershot is the managing editor for Western City magazine; he can be reached at bhendershot@calcities.org.

This year’s Outstanding Local Streets and Roads Project Awards was less one-sided than last year’s contest. But cities still claimed the top honor in this annual (friendly) contest with counties — which in the opinion of this city-focused outlet, is the most important award of all.  

Elk Grove paves its way to the top

Elk Grove was this year’s overall winner thanks to its systemic, fix-it-first approach to pavement maintenance. The city raised its Pavement Condition Index (PCI) from 68 in 2015 to 80 today. PCI ratings measure the severity and extent of distress on a pavement surface, like cracking and potholes. A lower rating signifies more roadway damage and conditions.

The city is divided into 113 zones that roughly correspond to pockets of development. When staff notice the PCI starting to drop in one subzone, they walk the streets and determine which one of five treatments to apply.

“Once we start getting into more aggressive treatments, the cost goes up significantly,” said Robert French, the city’s operations capital maintenance manager. “The cost could be 10 times or more as expensive to do a street. It’s not in our best interest to let streets get that out of shape before we do any maintenance on them. So, we fix it first, but we also want to maintain what we have at a high level.”

The city — which was incorporated in 2000 — also lowered its costs by reducing the number of consultants it employs for inspections, project planning, and other routine tasks. By training staff for “cut-and-paste” projects, the city’s soft costs dropped from around 15% per project to about 3%. That’s about a million more dollars for the city’s streets. The department now has a wealth of institutional knowledge that saves the city money in the long run.

“They saw what they did before, how it was repaired, corrected, or enhanced and they saw the project through closeout,” French said. “So, they see the problems that may have been missed in the specs, and they can add those and change the specs next year to address those items.”

This systemic approach helped Elk Grove secure the top road maintenance honor.

Burbank puts a busy downtown street on a crash diet

Burbank effectively eliminated 50% of potential vehicle-pedestrian conflicts on a major downtown three-block corridor in one year. Using materials like plastic bollards and paint, the city removed a travel lane and converted the street to one-way northbound. The project also added street parking and commercial loading zones to support the needs of businesses.

“Quick-build” projects like these are a win for everyone. Decision-makers can claim a quick win (or reverse a bad project) and transportation departments can save millions of dollars. Voters get to see immediate impacts on their community.

“[With] a 10-year project you don’t see the results for a very long time, and you don’t have the opportunity to act more quickly, to demonstrate a concept,” said David Kriske, assistant community development director. “You’re stuck doing a full project, and therefore you’re very conservative and very complete on exactly how it’s going to look.

In the city’s upcoming Safer Streets Burbank plan, Kriske hopes the city can turn these projects around even faster through targeted, temporary improvements that set the stage for more permanent changes. The city can’t reconfigure a dangerous intersection in two months. But it can install a temporary median to restrict problematic left turns, modify signal heads, or use bollards and paint to improve crosswalks in two months.

“When you’re doing something that’s a little more transformative, you want to be able to have a little more freedom to try something and have the results sooner,” Kriske said, who noted that creating a more permanent road configuration would take $5 to $10 million to complete.

Burbank received this year’s top safety award in recognition of this achievement.

San Pablo cuts fatalities on one key boulevard

Probably every city in California has at least one problematic, older road. For San Pablo, that road was Rumrill Boulevard, which once ferried industrial goods in and out of the city.

“We’re talking about a roadway that goes back to the beginning of the community, from agricultural times, and has been a transit for goods and services since the very start of San Pablo,” said Matthew Brown, the city’s senior civil engineer.

Today, the 1.6-mile corridor linking Central Richmond and the BART station to key San Pablo destinations looks much different. The sidewalks are wider, the bike lanes are protected, the shade is shadier, and stormwater flows freer and through fewer pollutants. And best of all, collisions are down from 145 to 50 annually, nearly eliminating fatalities.

In short, the roads are now designed for people and cars — not just cars. It’s a big change for the largely underserved immigrant community. The project took ten years to get off the ground and almost as many funding partners.  

In addition to improving safety for drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians alike, the project also decreased localized flooding and the number of pollutants that flow into the San Francisco Bay. The city partnered with high school students to help restore the local watersheds.

“Projects like this take a team — the contractor, Ghilotti Brothers Inc., the design team from NCE, the project management staff at CONSOR, and inspection from UNICO Engineering all worked together to make this possible,” Brown said.

Judges awarded San Pablo the complete street award this year for its efforts. San Pablo tied in the same category with Contra Costa County, which transformed a wide arterial roadway into a pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly corridor with a landscaped roundabout, new sidewalks, bike lanes, shorter crosswalks, and pedestrian refuge areas.

Other award winners

Also sharing the limelight this year with cities is Los Angeles County, which won an award after reconstructing deteriorated residential roads. The county’s novel approach cut costs by $3.5 million and significantly lowered energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Madera County received top marks for its work on a 343-foot structurally deficient bridge. Staff focused on minimizing environmental impacts and flooding, as well as preserving water quality.

Also recognized this year as honorable mentions are the cities of Long Beach, American Canyon, and Moreno Valley, as well as Fresno County and Merced County.

The Outstanding Local Streets and Roads Project Awards are sponsored by the League of California Cities, County Engineers Association of California, and California State Association of Counties. Visit Save California Streets to learn about the nitty-gritty of each project.