MORGANTOWN — A list including 12 miles of roadway paving projects spread across 53 city streets, and separately funded initiatives to pave two Morgantown Parking Authority surface lots and 6,000 feet of rail-trail.
Those were among the items presented to Morgantown City Council as part of the city’s 2022 paving plan.
“We are going big this year. The last few years have been up in the air. One year we didn’t pave because of COVID. Last year we paved like four miles or five miles of roadway. So this year we’re going big,” Morgantown Director of Engineering and Public Works Damien Davis explained.
As in most years, the bulk of the plan is focused on paving. In this case, City Manager Kim Haws said, the city is looking at about $1.5 million worth of asphalt-focused street resurfacing funded by the city’s $3 weekly user fee.
Staff Engineer Drew Gatlin laid out how the paving list was created, using the 2017 Dynatest roadway assessment as well as observation by city staff, citizen requests and complaints, and coordination with utility providers.
“This year we are paving about 10% of our roads. That’s putting us on a 10-year paving plan for the entire network,” Gatlin said. “That’s really aggressive. We would like to keep this up, and we’ll try.”
In addition to “clustering” paving projects in an attempt to increase mobilization efficiency, Gatlin said the city has also begun looking at several paving projects as a two-year process, meaning there will be streets that will receive new curb ramps and other pedestrian improvements this summer ahead of paving next summer.
“That makes the project significantly more efficient from a time standpoint, and also an impact-on-people standpoint,” he said. “We have a significantly higher chance of achieving both the letter and the spirit of accessibility laws if we have more time to consider and design and do these ramps.”
In addition to paving, there are a handful of special projects that are likely to take place this construction season.
Among those will be a realignment and reconfiguration of the area where 8th Street and the entrance to Terrace Heights Apartments converge on University Avenue.
“We spent a bunch of TIF money and built an excellent sidewalk all the way up 8th Street, and then it just kind of ends right there at Gallatin. This is going to complete that connection and enable a significantly more comfortable passage of everybody through that intersection,” Gatlin said.
Other projects planned for this summer include a widening of North Street as well as the anticipated start of the Campus Drive relocation and, potentially, the start of streetscape improvements for Walnut and Pleasant streets.
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