Marysville Project Manager Marc Dilsaver shows the Trimble unit device the city uses to rate streets Thursday afternoon. The device has a map of the streets Dilsaver can use to select roads and score them.
(Journal-Tribune photo by Will Channell)
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Residents might wonder what goes into deciding which streets the City of Marysville decides to pave every year.
City Project Manager Marc Dilsaver allowed the Journal-Tribune to follow the last day of his street rating process Thursday afternoon.
The program the city uses is based on a road rating system from the Ohio Department of Transportation. Dilsaver said Marysville Public Service Director Mike Andrako altered the program during his time working at the City of Gahanna to make it more user-friendly.
The streets and curbs are rated using a small handheld device called a “Trimble unit.” The device shows a map of the city’s streets. Streets that have been rated already are shown in green, while ones Dilsaver still needs to reach are in red.
These are called Pavement Condition Ratings (PCRs). Rating them gives the city data to plan for next year’s paving program. Where the city decides to focus its efforts largely depends on the previous year’s street ratings.
Dilsaver said he covers every street in town, even ones that had been paved recently.
“You never know,” he said. “It gives me a good follow up.”
Each individual street is divided into segments and rated separately. The segments go from intersection to intersection.
For example, Main Street from Fourth to Fifth Street is rated separately from Main Street from Fifth to Sixth Street.
“It helps to break it up to gather more detail,” Dilsaver said. “It actually gives us more data.”
When Dilsaver goes out to rate a street, he drives to it and takes a cursory look. He selects the street on the Trimble unit. It brings up information on the street, including the last time it saw maintenance, whether it has curbs and, if available, the year it was constructed.
Dilsaver then goes into the rating section. Based on both that cursory glance and a more in-depth look, he rates how much cracking the street has on a scale of one to five.
He noted while he doesn’t believe there are any Marysville streets with a rating of five, there may be a few alleys that are bad.
The device asks Dilsaver how many of the cracks are sealed, and how many potholes are on the street. He said patches and holes dug for utility purposes don’t count.
Additionally, some conditions make streets prone to faster deterioration. Harsh winters and traffic damage streets, but shaded roads can also wear out quickly. Water damages asphalt by breaking down its bonding agents, and shade keeps puddles on the street longer, damaging them over the long term.
Some roads, according to Dilsaver, will score the same as the previous year, but a road can never improve.
“A street rating will never go up unless there’s some kind of maintenance that’s been done,” Dilsaver said.
After those ratings, the computer averages all of them into a single rating out of 100. The device then shows how that street was rated the previous year so Dilsaver can compare.
A rating of 80 or above is considered quite good. Dilsaver said when scores get below that, “the city has to start making decisions.
That data will result in a list of potential focus points for the paving program, then Dilsaver drives those again just to make sure.
At that point, the city generally focuses on streets that are rated below 60.
One aspect of the process Dilsaver noted was the potential for different people to reach different ratings. A street that one person rates a two for cracking, another might rate it a three. That’s why Dilsaver is the only person who rates the city’s roads.
“This whole process is subjective, so that’s why only one person does it,” he said.
Dilsaver usually starts rating streets in September, but it varies from year to year. He said there’s no set schedule, but this year he’s a bit behind where he’d like to be.
With street ratings finished, he’ll put everything into the city’s system and begin sifting through it soon.
“I’ll upload the data to the computer, and then next week I’ll probably start looking at everything,” Dilsaver said.