Successful paving plan draws Florence’s interest

RUSSELLVILLE — Pondering whether Florenceshouldestablish its own paving department, officials only had to look about 20 miles south to see the benefits of the idea. Impressed with their findings, Florence leaders have asked Russellville officials to help establish a similar program there.

Russellville started work on a program four years ago that involved building up equipment and training. The city finally was able to get it started 18 months ago, Council member David Palmer said.

The result: 42 miles of streets have been paved with a program that uses a combination of city and contractor work.

That is a major chunk of roadwork for Russellville, which has 102 miles of streets, said Palmer, who as a retired engineer for Franklin County has a heavy background in paving.

“That is extraordinary,” he said. “Fortytwo miles represents essentially 42% of the entire network in 18 months.”

Palmer said before the program, not counting years when Alabama Transportation Rehabilitation and Improvement Program funds were available, the city probably averaged around 2 to 3 miles of paving per year.

CONTRIBTUED/DAN BUSEY
The City of Russellville started its own paving program 18 months ago. So far, the city has paved 42 miles of streets. The plan has attracted the attention of nearby Florence officials who are considering the establishment of their own paving department.

“While we were buying pieces of equipment, getting them in and training employees, that was over a four-year period,” Palmer said. “So, instead of trying to just hire contract work during that time, we stuck that money back. By the time we had all of it in place and ready to go, we had $4.2 million set aside for paving.”

The $4.2 million in funds were split 50/50 between paving by city crews and contract work. The $2.1 million of contract work allowed for 8 miles of roadwork while the in-house portion paved 36 miles, Palmer said.

That means 75% of the work was done in house with the average cost per mile being $58,333.33, compared to the average cost of the contracted roadwork, which was $262,500, or 4.5 times as much per mile.

Palmer said city officials developed an infrastructure management system that allows them to build out the transportation network for the city. He said they are working with Florence officials to establish one in Florence.

“We build a digital street network that resides within the system as a geographic information system layer,” he said. “The network is broken down into segments of streets, and each has attributes like width, length, surface time — things pertinent to being able to analyze the nature of each one of those streets.”

They then inspected each street, looking at length and distresses of each one.

“It’s a literal measurement of observed distresses,” Palmer said. “It’s an objective method of inspecting the network. Because of that we’re able to convert that inspection data into life-cycle metrics, priority metrics and cost estimates.”

City officials then established a current transportation position with each street listed either as maintenance position, which is the best condition, transition position, or reconstruction position, with is the worst condition.

Palmer said Russellville officials have noticed the advantage of having their own road crews, and Florence officials likely would as well.

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