In our commitment to getting answers about your streets and how they're repaired, On Your Side Investigators uncovered continuing problems in the city of Cleveland. We found basic ideas are challenged from all sides. These are people who have a direct impact on whether or not you continue to hit potholes and have crumbling roads.
"It's not rocket science. It's what we really need to do," said Larry Galehouse who has dedicated his life to streets as the Director of the National Center for Pavement Preservation based out of Michigan State University.
We showed him the condition of Cleveland streets. "It's a cultural shift and we have to get our elected officials to understand that they need to make these changes,” Galehouse told us.
Cleveland's Chief Operating Officer Darnell Brown told us streets diminish over time. He admitted the condition report was too old and the city had a new formula for repairs as of 2014. “To allow the science, if you would, to predict what streets ought to be done because doing worst first improves the riding surface across the entire city."
Galehouse is not a fan of worst-first. “We cannot afford to continue to build and use the worst-first philosophy."
Even with the new roads condition report, there's disagreement about training. A source close to that evaluation told me there were 8 hours of training before going out on a $600,000 project to rate roads.
“That's totally unacceptable,” said Councilman Jeff Johnson.
Councilman Tony Brancatelli has a different thought. “8 hours on training on what they already know shouldn't be that big a deal."
However, our source told us the evaluators were not all engineers. He called them construction oriented.
Johnson said there’s a lot more to these problems than meets the eye. “One of the back stories of this is that city council as it exists today does little challenging of Mayor Frank Jackson's Administration,” said Johnson.
Brown told us $200 million of city, regional, and state money will have gone into repairs through 2017.
Galehouse told us investment in the infrastructure is desperately needed and Cleveland streets need a better plan. "Yeah, looking at this, it's pretty serious,” said Galhouse while examining Cleveland reports.
While we wait for the now-late, but newly updated road-conditions report, we want to hear from you.
Keep your comments coming on our roads feedback page located on our News 5 app and on our website.
