Show All Answers

1. How are street pavement maintenance projects paid for?

For the City of Eureka, and most public agencies, Gas Tax funding is typically the main source of funds for road maintenance. Gas Tax is paid at the pump per gallon and is distributed to the State, Counties and Cities.

2. Is there enough Gas Tax Funds to maintain the road system of most cities?

Typically, no. Gas taxes were increased in 2017 to counter act the declining value of the dollar after not having been indexed to account for inflation. To bridge this gap in funding, many cities have passed local tax measures to fund maintenance and preservation of their transportation infrastructure. In November of 2020, voters of the City of Eureka passed Measure H which supports additional funds for road maintenance and repair throughout the City.

3. How much does it cost to pave a road?

Good question but hard to answer. It depends on many factors. A simpler way to look at it is this: The City’s road infrastructure would require approximately 6.87 million dollars per year to maintain it at today’s current condition. In other words, approximately 6.87 million dollars per year is needed to not allow the overall road network to deteriorate any worse than it is!

4. How is the City’s street network condition measured?

Every five to seven years, the City (and all cities in the County), have every road surveyed for condition, called a Pavement Condition Survey or Index (PCI). This gives every road (each will be broken into many sections) a score from 1-100. 80-100 is “Good”, 50-70 is “Fair”, 25-50 is “Poor” and 0-25 is…well you can guess. With this we can estimate what a road of a 30 PCI ranking (a lot of construction $ to improve) vs. a road with a 75 PCI ranking (a lower $ to preserve).

5. What is the City’s overall Pavement Condition Index (PCI) ranking?

In 2023 it was 61 (fair) and is expected to lower by two to three points per year, based on the past budget.

6. Are the City of Eureka’s streets doomed to be horrible?

No!!! For the first time in many years, the future looks very bright for road maintenance in the City of Eureka! Thanks to the voters of the City who passed Measure H in November of 2020, there is a promising future. The City averaged about $500,000 per year in Gas Tax funds for road construction previously, which only met a portion of the approximate three million dollars needed every year. With Measure H, the projected funds for road maintenance is approximately three million dollars per year.

7. What is the process of road selection for receiving pavement maintenance?

There are a number of factors that go into a decision to perform road maintenance on a roadway. They include, (in no particular order): Road condition, traffic volume, length of roadway needing repair, type of repair required, and underground utility (water / sewer / power…) issues. Historically with a very limited budget, the City was limited to work on (largely) the highest traffic volume streets in order to extend the dollars as far as possible. With a more stable budget, road maintenance will include a combination of reconstruction (high cost / high work effort / lowest condition roadway), pavement grinding and patching (moderate cost / moderate effort / moderate condition roadway), and pavement preservation (lower cost / lower effort / better condition roadway).

8. What is the paving plan now that there are additional maintenance dollars?

The City published a paving priority list for the next five years as part of the annual Capital Improvement Plan (CIP). This is a guideline to identify the streets that are of high priority for the next five years. As part of this list, the City is committed to setting aside a portion of the dollars to repair lower volume streets as part of these annual projects. These projects, as well as the priority list, will be somewhat fluid as final details will be determined once engineering design takes place for each roadway.

9. How soon will the work start?

Typically projects are designed & bid in the winter, construction will kickoff in the and wrap up in the fall.