The streets illustrated below are proposed for paving this summer and fall at a cost of approximately $ 1.2 Million. Utility work, including water main replacement, will be conducted on Rogers Street prior to full reconstruction of Rogers Street in spring. Roger’s Street reconstruction and other roads will be rebid in November/December because following the public advertisement of the City of Northville’s $2.4 Million 2019 Local Road Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Program, the City received no bids at the bid opening on June 05, 2019. Numerous contractors downloaded and viewed the City’s bidding documents, but ultimately did not provide a bid for the proposed work.
City staff and its engineering consultants contacted plan holders asking why they declined to bid. Contractor’s cited various reasons for not submitting a bid, including: significant existing workloads, rain delays, the loss of key personal, and difficulty finding subcontractors. 2020 summer paving projects have not been identified as of today and are still being considered.
Currently, there are about 24 liner miles of poor pavement in the City. If we reconstructed (or at least did heavy rehabilitation) on all of them, it would cost almost $10 million. We looked at this strategy (fixing all the worst roads first) and that resulted in, at the end of 10 years, not much improvement to the overall road network. That's because we spent ALL our money on the poor roads, and neglected keeping the good/fair roads in good/fair condition. The strategy to fix only the worst roads first doesn't work.
The City’s plan is to spread the budget out over all roads, not just the poor ones. This will allow us to slow the deterioration of roads in good and fair condition, save money, and, long term, improve a greater number of roads overall.
The City anticipates significantly improving 20 LM of poor pavement (83%) in the first 10 years, by investing about $7 million in poor roads, and maintaining the good/fair roads so that they don't fall into disrepair slowing the rate that older roads turn into "Poor" roads. However, at the end of ten years, some roads will still have deteriorated to poor (albeit at a slower rate). At that point the City would continue to repair the remaining poor roads in the following years.
Since 2011, the City has seen a 38% increase in poor roads (from 33.5% poor to 46.5% poor). This road bond stops the percentage of poor roads from growing and begins to put the City on a positive trend of improvement. All poor roads will get some kind of treatment. That is, if a poor road is "stable" and may be able to receive minor improvements, and is not a high priority road, it may not be selected for total reconstruction, but localized patching (preventative maintenance).
Voters approving the road bond in November of 2018. This is the City's first year of the road improvement program, so far only this year's road work has been identified. Prior to selecting a road for construction all underground utilities must be evaluated. This includes City controlled utilities such as drinking water, sanitary sewer, and storm water systems, as well as infrastructure that is not controlled by the City (DTE, Consumers etc.,). As you can imagine, the last thing we want is to rip up a road that has just been paved!
City staff and its engineering consultants have begun road evaluation for next year's (2020) work.