MORGANTOWN — On a scale of 0-100, the condition of Morgantown’s city-maintained streets in 2017 was 38.
That score, known as a pavement condition index, or PCI, is used to evaluate the condition of road pavement based on a visual survey, ride quality and the number and types of distresses in the pavement.
That same year, the city conducted its first user fee funded paving project.
Today, Morgantown Staff Engineer Drew Gatlin explained, early data returns show the average PCI score across the city will likely be north of 60.
Over that same seven-year window, the condition of priority roadways and major connectors or “emergency response roads,” has climbed from 48 to approximately 85.
“We are rapidly improving,” Gatlin recently told members of the Morgantown Traffic Commission.
“Since the passage of the [municipal service fee] … we have paved 242,000-some linear feet of roadway over six projects, which is more than 45 miles. From square footage, we are at about half of our entire network since then. So that’s a very rapid improvement.”
The city did not have a paving project in 2020 due to COVID.
Gatlin explained there is a significant change in how the city designed its 2024 paving plan. The project, which began last week, is expected to address about 5.5 miles of city streets this summer.
“What I did, essentially, was remove the requirement for the contractor to go all over the city. If you’ve been around here and you’ve been through certain paving projects in the past few years, since 2017, the contractor was working, literally, all across the city. We’re paving one roadway and then we’ll mobilize to another roadway, then mobilize to another one. They might move around the city 30 or 40 times over a project,” Gatlin said. “We have three main areas where we’re working this year.”
Those areas include 5,732 linear feet of paving spread across 10 streets and alleys in Evansdale; 6,597 linear feet on seven streets and alleys in Sabraton and 16,386 linear feet of paving on 27 streets and alleys in Greenmont.
“We thought that by reducing that mobilization — now that we have the general network, and particularly the emergency response streets network, in a much higher condition — that maybe it would make sense to go into certain neighborhoods and do everything else that we have yet to do in these neighborhoods,” Gatlin said.
It was explained the move to a more area-specific project model was part of an effort to increase efficiency in the face of exploding materials costs since COVID.
Then something unexpected happened.
“Our prices all the sudden dropped 30% this year; unit price. We’re back down to paying the numbers we were paying in 2019 on a tonnage basis,” Gatlin said.
The municipal user fee, also called the Safe Streets & Safe Community Fee, is a $3 weekly fee charged to everybody working within Morgantown’s municipal boundaries.
According to the city, $1.20 of every $3 goes to street projects with the rest going to police ($1.23) and the city’s public works department (.57).
Since its inception, the city says its average annual expenditure on paving has climbed from $292,673 to $1.8 million.
As for the 2024 project, Morgantown City Council approved a bid of $792,840 from Anderson Excavating to do the work. The Dominion Post requested an estimated total cost of this summer’s project but did not receive a response in time for this report.
The 2024 paving list and maps locating the projects are available at morgantownwv.gov by finding the “paving plan” link in the “residents & visitors” pull-down.
