116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Curious Iowa: How does Cedar Rapids prioritize road construction projects?
Summer is peak season for road maintenance
Jul. 24, 2023 5:00 am, Updated: Jul. 25, 2023 1:01 pm
A sure sign of summer is detour signs and a trail of orange traffic cones.
The end goal of construction — smoother streets and better sidewalks — is positive, but the inconvenience of one-lane roads and rerouted traffic can upset tempers and frustrate even the most calm drivers. How do cities decide which roads need the most attention and which projects get priority?
Curious Iowa is a series from The Gazette that seeks to answer your questions about the state, its culture and the people who live here. Road construction is a popular topic among curious Iowans who’ve written to The Gazette with questions they want answered.
Marion Patterson of Cedar Rapids told The Gazette that while traveling with her husband, Rich, “We notice cones everywhere and wonder why we didn’t invest in cones! And storage places for them.” Patterson asked The Gazette to investigate where traffic cones hibernate during the winter.
Another Curious Iowan wondered how potholes and roads are prioritized for maintenance. In this edition, we answer those questions and look at how local-option sales tax dollars are reconstructing roads in Cedar Rapids.
Where are traffic cones kept in the winter?
Traffic supplies are kept at the Traffic Maintenance Shop located in the Cedar Rapids City Services Center at 500 15th Ave. SW.
That’s a fraction of the traffic cones drivers see on the roadway during large projects like the reconstruction of Mount Vernon Road.
“For the big projects where there’s literally hundreds and hundreds of traffic control devices, we don’t keep all those ourselves,” City Engineer Ken DeKeyser said. “Those are provided by a contractor.”
How are potholes managed?
Potholes occur during the natural cycle of water freezing and thawing in cracks in the streets. When water freezes, it expands and causes road material to pop out and form a pothole.
Cedar Rapids Assistant Public Works Director Mike Duffy said potholes can be prevented by sealing cracks in the pavement, something city crews do throughout the summer, as well as pothole repairs.
Potholes are identified for repair by both city crews and residents. In Cedar Rapids, the MyCR app allows residence to file requests for city crews to inspect areas. Duffy said that city crews also routinely look for areas to repair through their routing system.
“These routes are very similar to our snow removal routes, which are prioritized based on traffic volume and use,” Duffy said. “When a MyCR request is received, the supervisor will look at the report and evaluate the pavement to determine the best course of action.”
Sometimes, that means patching part of the roadway. When a problem area covers a large portion of pavement, maintenance may include crack sealing, asphalt overlaying or reconstructing the roadway.
Before repairs begin, Duffy or the streets superintendent ensures that funding and resources are available to make repairs.
“We haven’t really had much of a problem as far as our point repairs and our pothole patching,” Duffy said. “It’s a need, it’s safety driven, it’s something that we have to do.”
The full process of repairing a pothole starts with milling, or grinding the top layer of asphalt down. Then, the area is cleaned before asphalt applied. Once the asphalt has cooled, cars can drive on the repaired section. The entire process takes a few hours.
Duffy said the city’s strategy for repairing potholes has changed in recent years. Patching holes can result in odd shapes or “bubble gum street” as Duffy described it. So, the city has focused on repairing square or rectangular sections. Duffy called these “point repairs.”
“We get a square repair that we put the asphalt material in and we roll that down tight. What that does for us then is create that repair and it’s just a lot easier to drive over than just a typical potholes which could be an odd shape,” Duffy said. “They tend to grow and you get multiple potholes in certain locations so we just do the point repair in these locations.”
Point repairs are a permanent fix rather than a temporary pothole repair, Duffy said. The city’s use of this method has reduced the need for follow up repairs.
One recent point repair on C Street SW on July 13 used 12.32 tons of asphalt. Duffy said asphalt costs roughly $89 per ton, which makes the estimated cost of that repair $1,097.
A city work crew fills a pothole on C St. SW Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Thursday, July 13, 2023. Work crews fill potholes daily, among other tasks, during the summer. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)
A city work crew fills a pothole on C St. SW Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Thursday, July 13, 2023. Work crews fill potholes daily, among other tasks, during the summer. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)
Ryan State (right), Pacience Dixon (center), and Tate Kuennen (right) fill a pothole on C St. SW Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Thursday, July 13, 2023. Work crews fill potholes daily, among other tasks, during the summer. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)
How have local-option sales tax dollars repaired Cedar Rapids roads?
In 2013, Cedar Rapids voters passed a 10-year 1 percent sales tax. The money goes to Paving for Progress, a city program that uses sales tax revenue for street repairs, maintenance, construction and reconstruction. Seventy percent of these projects are in residential areas.
“We’ve had a lot of deferred maintenance over decades, which has resulted in a lot of pavements that are in poor condition and we just don’t have a very good funding source to take care of not only the major streets but the minor streets as well,” DeKeyser said. “Paving for Progress has been a very good tool for us to make sure that we’re funded to do a heavy number of streets every year.”
Duffy said Paving for Progress has made more rehabilitation projects possible as opposed to what Duffy called “patching the patch” on streets with a history of problems.
DeKeyser said that prior to Paving for Progress, street repairs relied on grants and general fund money.
“That was only a fraction of what you see today with Paving for Progress,” DeKeyser said. “So about the only thing we could do with that is fix the major streets and the more money, the local money you spend on the major streets, the higher the grant you’re going to get from the state or federal government so it’s a vicious circle that’s even less money spent on the residential streets.”
"You can drive around the streets and you see the progress that we’ve made,“ Duffy said. ”You can still see the progress that we need to make.”
In 2021, voters renewed the Paving for Progress program for another 10 years. The current program expiration date is June 30, 2034. Since the program’s inception, the city has used the funds to undertake 300 projects for $178 million.
One of the large Paving for Progress reconstruction projects happening right now is on Mount Vernon Road in the southeast quadrant. It has taken years to design and will take multiple years to build. DeKeyser said the project is in the first phase of reconstructing pavement, sidewalks and the storm sewer.
DeKeyser said that although construction season can be frustrating for residents, he hopes people remember that they are playing catch up on overdue repairs.
“We are aggressively out every year doing a number of projects,” DeKeyser said. “We’ve done about 40 projects just this last year for the cost of $23 million with Paving for Progress.
“The local option money is well spent.”
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Comments: bailey.cichon@thegazette.com
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