Lubbock is trying to stretch street repair money as far as it will go by scanning streets with special technology.
The City Council will consider a $324,000 contract with Roadway Asset Services for LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technology.
But which streets or roads? David Bragg, director of public works, said just eyeballing isn’t reliable.
“It’s LiDAR equipment. And it’s able to really read into the type of damage that’s done in the roadway and the severity, more so than just riding over it,” Bragg said.
A good analogy would be getting X-rays at the dentist’s office, Bragg said. Streets and roads are given letter grades – from A through D kind of like students.
“We use that to help us determine our maintenance schedule,” Bragg said.
The proposed contract with Austin-based Roadway Asset Services said the work needs to be done with 300 days.
A letter from the company to the city said, “A critical task of this project includes a robust analysis of pavement conditions … for a financially optimized pavement plan.”
The city gets color-coded images showing problem areas like cracks.
Bragg said, “There’s just a van with equipment. … Then we’re able to actually pull all of that into our system for our work orders.”
And if it sees a pothole, city crews can put that on the list too.
Jon Bruegel, who took office last month as the new councilman for District 3, said, “We talked about streets almost every day during the campaign. Of course, streets are one of the top three issues between streets, animal services and public safety.”
“Here in Central Lubbock, one of our biggest concerns is not necessarily building new roads. It’s making sure the roads we’ve got are maintained well and aren’t allowed to crumble,” Bruegel said.
Bragg said the city did a LiDAR review roughly six years ago. This will be the first time he can compare the previous LiDAR and the new one.
“To me, that’s exciting,” Bragg said.
Tim Collins, councilman for District 6, said he rarely hears a complaint about a particular street.
“I have a couple of areas in our district that are needy and Mr. Bragg has done a great job of stepping into those,” Collins said.
For Collins, that’s good. But there’s a bigger issue.
“Anything that we can do to be more efficient is a worthwhile endeavor. … What street is on the verge of collapse that we might have prevented a more serious repair by getting ahead of it?” Collins rhetorically asked.
The whole point is to spend a little money now to save a lot more later, according to Bragg. Minor repairs prevent further damage. That reduces expensive repairs later.
“We get a freeze-thaw cycle that can negatively impact the roadway,” Bragg said.
Water gets into the cracks and freezes. When that happens, it expands the cracks.
“If we let a road fall behind, that cost increases down the road. So, it may cost a little bit now, but that cost multiplies in future years,” Bragg said.
Collins does not want streets to get so far gone that the city needs to borrow money for maintenance.
“We all know that to put a 20-year bond on a 10-year maintenance project is not the right way to manage your business,” Collins said.
Sidenote:
Voters approved a 2024 bond package worth more than $103 million – mostly for new roads, but it also included repair and reconstruction of University Avenue from 50th Street to South Loop 289. A portion of Broadway will also be rebuilt.
Bruegel said, “With limited funding available, we want to make sure it’s used in the most optimized way possible. We want to find the specific blocks of roadway that are most in need and attend to those as quickly as we can.”
Lubbock has roughly 1,350 miles of paved streets. The city manager has been trying to continually increase the street maintenance budget ever since 2016.
“The past two years, council has allocated 14 and-a-half million dollars, which is fantastic,” Bragg said.
