Rather than tear up streets over and over, Kansas City seeks better coordination
Crews took days earlier this fall to resurface 39th Street from the doorstep of the University of Kansas Medical Center to Southwest Trafficway, blocking lanes and snarling traffic.
Less than a month later, a water department crew dug into that fresh pavement to work on a fire hydrant — and once again closed a lane of traffic.
In Kansas City, where funds to repair and replace streets can be hard to come by, digging up freshly paved road so soon frustrated some elected officials — especially given that the city was responsible for both projects.
Mayor Quinton Lucas and members of the City Council voted unanimously Thursday to direct the city to come up with a better system to coordinate between the city’s Public Works Department, which repairs and resurfaces roads, and the city-owned water department and private electric and gas utility companies. The manager is expected to report back in 45 days.
When the issue arose, Lucas noted on Twitter that the cost of resurfacing the roads and tearing them back up are both borne by Kansas City taxpayers and ratepayers.
“Communications breakdowns like these should not happen between utilities and the city,” Lucas said. “We are working with our utilities to make sure this ends.”
In committee, Councilman Eric Bunch, 4th District, who cosponsored the legislation, said there is a “direct fiscal impact” to cutting into freshly laid roadbed, noting that freezing water can seep into cracks and expand, marring the pavement and creating potholes.
The Public Works Department’s spokeswoman, Maggie Green, said in an email that the utility repairs were part of a backlog of hydrant repairs, which are done out of the Water Department’s maintenance office, not the capital improvements office that keeps in regular contact with Public Works.
“In response to this, the director of KC Water instructed his staff not to cut any newly paved roads without his permission,” Green said. “In addition, Public Works is discussing ways to involve the KC Water maintenance team in our coordination efforts.”
At times, the city does effectively coordinate with the utilities.
In Waldo, 75th Street was plagued with potholes from the past couple of winters. Kansas City crews patched those to get by before the Water Department spent months replacing water mains along the street.
Now that the water work is done, it’s on the Public Works’ department list for an overlay.
The city’s acting public works director, Ralph Davis, said in a statement that coordinating with utilities is key to the department’s “ability to care for our roadway system.
“Although we have coordination efforts already in place with our street preservation program, we support this resolution, the additional guidance it provides, and look forward to continuing to work with our utility partners to make progress on this effort,” Davis said.
Green said the department communicates short- and long-term projects to the utility companies, meets with the companies monthly and shares the list of streets it plans to work on every spring. The department also charges fees when pavement that’s less than two years old is excavated.
The city’s street preservation website is updated weekly with the work schedule.
This story was originally published November 5, 2020 at 4:35 PM.
