The Condition of City Streets

One of the areas the City Commission is very concerned about is the condition of our city streets. Many of our streets and alleys are in need of maintenance work due to one or more fundamental problems:

• The street was not constructed properly in the first place, with the asphalt being too thin. Two streets that fall into this category are Grove Avenue, between First and Fourth Streets, and the northern end of Carver Drive. On both streets there are numerous places where potholes were patched, and the original asphalt is very thin – about ¼ to ½ inch in some places. City specifications call for the top level of asphalt on a street to be 1 ½ inches thick (or compliance with state specifications).



• The street was not constructed properly, with inappropriate materials. Blackwood Drive is an example of this type of problem. The underlying soil condition is seasonally moist, and in such case engineers typically call for a base material such as “soil cement” which will not break down beneath the asphalt due to the moist conditions. On this street it appears that limerock, the standard base material used for dry, well-drained soils, was used instead. This has caused the base to fail and the street surface to break up.



• The drainage system is lacking or not working properly. This is often why potholes repeatedly turn up in the same spot. On Fourteenth Street between SR 60 and the entrance to the Sunoco station, there is a pothole that appears periodically because the drainage system for that street is inadequate. The same is true at the corner of Carlton and 12th Street.



• The asphalt is just plain worn out. This is the case on much of Lakeshore and many other streets.



• Most alleys were not constructed for heavy vehicles. Many alleys were built with a clay base and a layer of asphalt. This may be fine for light traffic but it will not hold up when traveled regularly by one of the heaviest trucks on the road – garbage trucks.

To address these problems, the City Commission has directed staff to step up pothole patching efforts, street sweeping with a new vehicle (which keeps drainage pipes clean), and the inspection and cleaning of drainage systems. In addition, the CRA board (consisting of the five City Commissioners) is planning to issue a bond that will include over $2 million of street re-surfacing and the application of millings (recycled asphalt stones) on some alleys. The issuance of the bond has been delayed - first due to questions on the state legislature’s tax reform package, and now there’s a second delay due to a court case in Escambia County. We all hope that question will be resolved quickly so that we can move forward.

In addition, there are a number of streets in the City that are the responsibility of other governments or CDD’s. For example, Burns Avenue is a County Road and it is scheduled to be resurfaced by the County in the 2007-08 fiscal year. Buck Moore was resurfaced last year, and Thompson-Nursery is being studied for a widening project to add another travel lane in each direction. The Lake Ashton Community Development District (CDD) is responsible for the maintenance of streets in Lake Ashton.

The State is responsible for Scenic Highway, and City staff has been working with the Florida Department of Transportation to encourage them to place a traffic signal and turning lanes at the corner of Scenic and Mountain Lake Cutoff. State staff says the intersection does not meet their criteria for a signal but they are looking into it. City staff has also asked for more lighting on SR 60 east, and this is in the design phase.