HOUSTON – Question: George Petheriotes asks, “How does the city decide what streets to repave? I understand keeping the major streets in good condition but there are a lot of other streets in need of repair.”
Answer: The City of Houston has 16,000 miles of roads,--that is the same distance from Houston to Tokyo and back. Yeah, it’s a lot.
That’s why its a process to determine which road will get fixed first.
- According to Houston Public Works, it all starts with the 3-1-1 calls: Which streets are residents having issues with the most?
- Then they run a street maintenance assessment to determine pavement conditions: How bumpy is it? How much life does it have left? does it get a lot of traffic?
- This plays into whether crews need to repair and rehabilitate, which is an asphalt overlay for example or a total reconstruction of the road.
- Then they have to check if its already in the que to be worked on under certain initiatives like the Mayor’s Rehabilitation Initiative to check to see what kind of funding they can use to fix the street.