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Department of Streets & Fleet
Reference: Streets & Fleet Department Discussion
To: Mayor Richard N. McLean and Members of City Council
Through: Clint Blackhurst, Acting City Manager
Prepared By: Kimberly Dall, Director of Streets & Fleet
Date Prepared: March 7, 2017
PURPOSE
Provide an update on the operations of the Streets and Fleet Department.
BACKGROUND
Transportation funding has been a frequent topic of discussion over the past few years; citizens in our community as well as across the country are paying more attention to the aging roadway infrastructure. The State of Colorado has projected a $470 million deficit over the next ten years just to maintain current service levels; that deficit increases to $2.96 billion if the State were to achieve their vision goals of service. The City of Brighton is also experiencing a similar challenge related to funding for maintenance of our transportation infrastructure.
Roadways are one of the City’s largest assets. It’s an asset where we receive the most amount of “complaints/comments” from the citizens. Of the more than 3,000 requests we receive from the on-line request tracker, 60% are related to streets activities.
The 20-year life cycle of pavement typically requires structural repairs every 10 years: an overlay at 10 years of age and a rebuild at 20 years. Overlays and rebuilds cost more approximately three to five times more than surface preservation; additional funding is necessary to address the structural integrity of our roadways.
To keep City roadways in good condition, funding to maintain this asset must to increase from the $1.15 million adopted in the 2017 budget to approximately $3 million annually for at least the next five years. This dollar value would address needed roadway repair performed by contractors with specialized heavy equipment.
Since 2008, the City’s streets have been primarily preserved with slurry and crack sealing and have recently included chip sealing. These surface treatments address the top layer of the pavement but do not address the structural components of the roadway.
Activities such as patching, milling, overlaying, and full roadway reconstruction repair structural deficiencies; annually, overlays have been a component of the maintenance activities as well as minimal patching.
The seal and overlay pavement preservation activities are large scale and are performed by contractors. The Streets Division performs all other roadway maintenance activities, including filling potholes, patching, striping, sweeping, signs, snow removal, traffic signals, minor construction activities, and other non-maintenance activities such as traffic control for community events and parades.
As we strive to maintain our streets and address citizen concerns, we are increasing our streets staff by three. The addition of these three maintenance workers will improve our ability to form more working crews and strive towards timely completion of maintenance crew activities such as street sweeping, painting centerline markings, painting crosswalks, sign installations, patching, alley maintenance operations, etc. Prior to the additional staffing, we were not able to simultaneously address work tasks such as repair of potholes/utility cuts and striping operations due to the size of crews required to safely complete each task. The additional workers will alleviate this challenge, improving the ability of the crews to address multiple roadway maintenance needs. The additional staff will promote succession planning and will create greater resiliency within the division.
An item of high concern and complaints is the City’s ability to address snow removal. There are 236 lanes miles of streets on the snow route map distinguished by service levels of primary, secondary, and neighborhood roadways. The City is divided into six routes; there are six tandem snowplow trucks and twelve staff members so all trucks must be operational and all staff must be healthy and present to run a full 24-hour snow removal shift. It averages approximately three to four hours for one truck to run one pass of a route. In the instances when snow is accumulating at an inch per hour, one lane being plowed every three to four hours does not adequately address the City’s snow removal expectations. We are requesting to purchase four new tandem trucks (three in addition to the one tandem truck originally budgeted for replacement in 2017). This would increase the fleet to 8 (eight) snowplows as two of our oldest problematic snowplows will be replaced. This would also significantly improve the City’s snow removal operations as we will be will be better equipped to provide a higher level of snow removal service. The additional trucks would allow for increased frequency of the snow plow routes; the new sanders will allow for better application of melting materials.
In 2017, the fleet equipment needs identified totaled $2.1 million. This included 25 vehicles, trailers, and other fleet equipment needs required by the police and streets divisions. The $2.1M did not address departmental or administrative requests, such as pool cars at city hall and/or replacement vehicles for police detectives, IT, Community Development, Facilities, or Recreation Center. The fleet committee considered budget limitations to identify and address fleet needs that cannot wait beyond 2017. The 2017 Capital Funds Budget adopted by City Council awarded $600,000 for fleet vehicle acquisition. These funds are meant to address replacement of existing and new fleet requirements (for example: new police cars or additional parks equipment to maintain the increasing quantity of parks acres the City has to maintain).
Based on the City’s recent fleet study, the cost to replace all of the fleet units that are over-age or over-mileage is $14.9 million (in 2017 dollars); nearly half of our current fleet is overdue for replacement. The 275 unit fleet has a combined age of over 3000 years.
The $600,000 awarded in the 2017 budget has been applied to five police patrol cars, two turf maintenance machines, and a tandem truck (snow plow and other streets operations). The additional $1.5 million is necessary to address units for turf maintenance for the City’s parks and cemeteries, snow removal operations, and roadway maintenance.
The additional vehicles are:
• Three tandem trucks with snow removal equipment
• Bucket truck
• Flatbed cone truck with traffic control attenuator
• Two tandem truck boxes
• Two turf mowing and maintenance tractors with snow package
• Two turf mowers with snow removal package
• 14’ trailer
The $1.5 million investment in equipment and approximate $1.85 million investment in required roadway repairs will greatly help the City maintain and manage one of the City’s largest assets, roadways.