Opinion: Plan to improve South Tahoe’s roads
By Tony O’Rourke
As the city sets it sights on improving the roads of South Lake Tahoe, it’s a good time to reflect on the overall condition of the streets and how the Road to Tahoe ever got paved in the first place.
• The city’s current roadway network is comprised of over 256 lane miles of roadway.
• Prior to 1960–1965, “rural road standards” existed throughout the community. In 1965 when the city incorporated it inherited the roadway network from the county.
Tony O'Rourke
• The “typical” roadway structure on these rural roadways has been a minimal two inches of asphalt over existing compacted dirt. In most cases, no drainage infrastructure nor curb or gutter was installed. By comparison, today’s standard residential roadways are 4 inches of asphalt over 8 inches of compacted Class II aggregate base material.
• Making the old roadway conditions even worse, the asphalt mixture used to create these roads included an oil-based binding material resulting in strong, but inflexible roads causing large thermal cracking throughout the network.
• In 1995, the city began investing approximately $546,903 per year for roadway rehabilitation and overlay – for a total of $7,109,749 expended, excluding years 2000, 2004 and 2005.
• In 2007, the city created a pavement management system to more accurately evaluate and prioritize road maintenance. Prior to the new system, windshield surveys were used to visually observe the road conditions and repairs were scheduled based on appearance. Using the new system, the city inspected every roadway and assigned a score based on the amount of pavement distress per segment. The higher the score, the better the road condition. The average score on a scale of 1 to 100 is an overall 50 or an F grade.
• The city recently evaluated the cost to covert and improve all roadways from rural conditions to “complete streets,” which includes curb, gutter, sidewalk, landscaping and lighting at cost of approximately $300 million.
• For the first time in the city’s history, the City Council adopted a Strategic Plan and five-year financial plan which places roadway rehabilitation as a high priority and for the first time the city is allocating a substantial amount of funds to roads. The city will be expending approximately $4 million annually or $20 million over the next five years for roadway improvements. This figure is eight times the amount spent on any previous year in the city’s history.
The roads to Tahoe will finally begin to look and wear better than ever.
Tony O’Rourke is city manager of South Lake Tahoe.
Tony O’Rourke is a dedicated and hardworking city manager and I can understand that he is trying to paint a positive message, but this report is nonsense.
The city engineer said that it would take $5.2 million PER YEAR, just for the city to keep up with road repairs and maintenance. So the proposed $546,903 per year for roadway rehabilitation and overlay is about 10% of what the city council was told is the MINIMUM that should be spent.
Now we are told that the city is going to allocate $20 million over the next ten years. According to former councilman Bill Crawford, the total cost for repairs is probably over $200 million, so again the city is only going to budget 10% of what is required.
This year, the year the city council promised to address the problem of our roads, the total budget was a pathetic $100,000, or about 2% of what is needed.
Recently, I sent Mr. O’Rourk some very disturbing pictures of how our broken streets and broken drain pipes are creating ugly scars of pollution and sedimentation on our pristine beaches and lake. It is disappointing to see that this serious problem was ignored in his report above.
Our streets are not going to fix themselves. Every year we delay adds millions of dollars of debt to our community, our business and our homeowners. Either the citizens of this wonderful town demand a full budget to fix our streets or we can expect further economic decline for what was once a great destination resort. It is time to face the reality that you cannot have a world-class resort with Third World streets.
Frankly, if the City Council cannot even come up with an adequate budget to fix our crumbling roads, then it is worthless and should be dissolved.
For more on how the City of South Lake Tahoe has become a major polluter of our beaches and lake, see here:
https://www.laketahoenews.net/2011/04/hwy-50-project-not-total-answer-for-what-ails-south-tahoe/#comments
The City Mgr. has once again failed to know anything about the History of the Streets in So. Lake Tahoe.
In the early 70s, the City started an Overlay program of 12 miles of City streets to be overlayed each year. This happened for 3 years, then the cost of asphalt started to go up and as the price of asphalt went up the amount of money Budgeted for the program did not increase along with the cost of asphalt. This resulted in less and less being done, in fact it got to where the City Overlay Program in 1995 the city was only doing about 2 miles of over lay each year, and the roads were starting to crumble.
Had the City stayed with the overlay program, The City Streets would have all been overlayed in 10 years. There are 127 miles of City Streets,[254] lane miles, and had the City Overlay Program continued on track as started, The City streets would now be on there 3rd go around with and overlay and the streets would be in good shape now.
In the early 80s the cost of curb and gutter was estimated to be around 85 million, now were looking at 300 million because the Council in there Wisdom decided not fund as the cost went up.
Curb and Gutter and underground drainage are the answer to stopping erosion into the Lake. The entire City should be put into an Improvement District and access every property owner.
The property owner is the one who will benefit from this with higher property values and a better looking town.
Well this is a step in the right direction. In future years hopefully this will become an item that tops the list of things the City gets done every year
I hear the city is waiting for flying cars so that they don’t have to pave anymore roads.
Does this mean an end to “dodge the pothole”? Darn, I had just about figured out the pattern.
I love how any proposed solution gets absolutely hammered. Those poo-pooing ideas rarely offer any solutions themselves. Until we can come together as a community we will be in the same situation. Constant b!tching and no vision toward the future. Status quo is not acceptable! Offer ideas or solutions and come together for a common goal. Otherwise your rants should not garner any response or consideration (I know I am being hypocritical right now..) Let’s come together to move our community forward and stop the constant moaning and groaning. Get involved and actually do something!
Tahoegal: Thank you for a very good post. It gives me faith that there’s some positive energy in our community. Unfortunately Steve Kubby’s and Bill Crawford’s constant naysaying is becoming tiresome. I find their attitudes in danger of making their names a verb and synonymous with negativity (LOL)!
Are we ready to pay higher taxes to get the roads fixed? Are you ready to pay higher gasoline taxes, property taxes, etc…
We all know the streets need repairs and we all know our city is broke.
We all will have to pay more taxes or make due. I am in favor of higher taxes for road repair and will vote for them if I get the chance.
$100.000 WON’T EVEN FIX THE POT HOLES…$$
BUT YOU KNOW WHAT ,IF THE HOLE HAD A IDIOT TO START, WE ALWAYS CAN FIND MONEY FOR THAT CRAP.
KUBBY AND BILL ARE JUST TELLING YOU PIPE DREAMERS THE TRUTH,WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT?
I applaud Mr O’Rourke for trying to take steps in a positive direction to fixing the roads. Unfortunately as Mr. Kubby points out, it is only a drop in the bucket for what is needed for improvement. The staggering cost to fix the roads is being escalated every year even with the band aid approach being taken to fix them. This is an issue in all of South Lake Tahoe and not just the City… Is it solely the local taxpayer’s responsibility to pay for the cost to reconstruct roads? Afterall, we live in a tourist community. Like Beaver Creek, in winter we have chained up heavy equipment driving on the roads, plows scraping the surface, tourists required to wear chains, abrasives laid down for public safety (major water quality issue / DG / Tony?). These all have negative effects on the environment and the road system in general. Currently, there are no sustainable means to capitalize on the local tourist base to fund roads or their repair. In the Bay Area toll roads are everywhere to fund infrastructure… In Orange County, Measure M has levied a half cent sales tax to fund roads. The voters approved it… Some areas are passing vehicle related fees… Even with property tax, state license fees, local registration fees, we still wouldn’t have enough to fix the ailing roads. Every person who has the luxury of coming to Tahoe should have to pay for roads and road improvements, which are degrading annually from heavy winter use like this last one. Being this area is one of the highest regulated environments known to man, we should use this opportunity to improve the roads, which are directly related to the environment and Lake Tahoe’s water quality. Research is showing that by improving road integrity, water quality can be improved. Better roads also make it easier to sweep with the new generation sweepers, this concept also being pushed by regulatory agencies. This basin is a giant sink, somewhat closed with a particle residence time of hundreds of years. Anyone can drive the roads to Tahoe “for free” and pollute the environment with their cars, boats, chains, trash etc… How much more would you, “local taxpayer public” pay for improving roads? $10, $50, $100 per year? I am sure most homeowners would be willing to pay at least $10, yet unfortunately taxing every home / business is still not enough to fix the problem… I say this basin should start to operate similar to a national park or state park and every vehicle required to purchase an annual parking pass for a small fee of like $10-25 per year paid to the 3 transportation departments on South Shore. Doing this would generate revenue of which some could go to marketing to compensate businesses. Code enforcement could generate revenue through ticketing… Business could sell them at a fee… Somehow…, it could work… A small fee would not stop someone from coming to Tahoe and if so, you probably don’t want them here to begin with. Any national treasure you visit, you have to pay for. Why not here…? Regulatory requirements are increasing and budgets are decreasing. The estimated cost of the environmental program to restore clarity is staggering… Who is going to pay for that? With road improvements come water quality improvements that go hand in hand as 72% of the loss of Tahoe’s famed clarity is coming from roads. Business as usual needs to change and the longer we hold off on this the more financial and environmental burden is held on the local taxpayer.
Once again Kubby notes the facts wrong. Just read his comments. Slow down on the weed Kub. Thanks for the update Tony.
Mr. O’Rourke, thanks for confronting the problems of our community! You were left with a mess! When your predecessor would talk about the City about being in sound financial shape, it was clear he was not taking into account all its future obligations, such as pensions.
But it was also clear that our decaying, teeth-jarring roads were simply being ignored! The money that should’ve gone to roads went to pay raises and staff increases with any balance going into the bank so as to make the short-term account balance look better!
I don’t claim to have the knowledge of how much financial investment our roads need, but it would be great if something were to be done! If it’s not enough, it will at least be a start!
However, if this is an attempt to get a tax increase through, I’ll just have to say-A. We’re already a heavily taxed community so why aren’t the roads being taken care of out of existing revenues? and B. So let’s then see all the City’s financial records to determine if we can’t better allocate resources for the cause?
During the Great Depression, people given government support were expected to work for their payments. That is how the road from Placerville to South Lake Tahoe was built. Why is it the people who are supprted today expect it as entitlement without having to provide something back to society like their grandparents did?