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Auburn engineers say keeping average pavement PCI at 70 avoids costly rebuilds; arterials lag
Summary
City staff presented the 2024 State of Our Streets report, saying local streets meet the target pavement condition index (PCI) while arterial and collector streets fall short; staff outlined funding sources, costs for treatments at different PCI levels and planned projects through 2027.
Auburn city staff on Tuesday presented the 2024 State of Our Streets (SOS) report, saying the city’s local streets averaged a pavement condition index of 71 — above the department’s target of 70 — while arterials and collectors averaged a 57, below the target.
The report, delivered by Senior Traffic Engineer James Webb and Transportation Systems Engineer Bryce (presented together by staff), explained why the city uses a 0–100 PCI scale and why a target PCI of 70 is intended to maximize life-cycle value. “State of our streets refers to the condition of the pavement surface of our roads and is only focused on the condition of the pavement,” Webb said during the presentation.
The nut graph: pavement preserved while in the “good” range (PCI 70–100) can be maintained with relatively inexpensive surface treatments; once a roadway drops below PCI 40 it generally requires full reconstruction at roughly four times the cost per square yard than mid-range resurfacing, staff said.
City staff described current conditions, funding and near-term projects. Local streets: PCI 71 (exceeding the 70 target). Arterials and collectors: PCI 57. Overall citywide PCI: 64. The city maintains about 238 centerline miles of paved streets; the SOS only addresses pavement condition and excludes sidewalks, drainage and state-owned routes such as State Route 164.
Staff outlined the cost differences by treatment: minor sealing/patching (about $20 per square yard), resurfacing/resurfacing-style treatments ($30–$50 per square yard) and full reconstruction at multiple times those rates. Webb stressed the “right treatment at the right time” approach to yield the most pavement life for preservation dollars.
Funding sources: the local street preservation program is funded by a combined 1% utility tax on city and private utilities plus an annual $150,000 transfer from city utility funds, producing about $2.0 million per year — the modeling-based amount identified to maintain the local network at PCI 70. The arterial/collector preservation program needs substantially more, previously modeled at about $5.0 million per year. That program is funded by a separate 1.5% utility tax, a 0.1% Transportation Benefit District sales tax (generating slightly more than $2.0 million a year), and grant revenues; staff noted grant competition is increasing and the pool of highly competitive candidate streets has narrowed.
Completed and planned work: staff summarized 2024 construction (full-depth grind/overlay projects, arterial reconstructions and targeted arterial patching) and described 2025–2027 projects, including local street reconstructions on Third Street Southeast and O Street Southeast, arterial grind-and-overlay projects on C Street Southwest and Lake Tapps Parkway, and a 2027 arterial preservation that follows a 2024 arterial patching pre-work. Staff said they are recollecting PCI data in 2025 to recalibrate modeling originally based on the 2021 data.
Council members asked about responsiveness to individual resident reports of potholes and about trade-offs between programmed preservation and one-off maintenance. Webb and other staff said routine pothole and minor repairs are handled by maintenance crews and that the pavement program relies on citywide data collection (hired vendor surveys) to plan multi-year projects; areas of repeated maintenance are flagged for potential upgrade planning. Staff also noted coordination with utilities to avoid rebuilding a road only to have a utility trench recon them the next year.
City staff next steps include finalizing project scopes, continuing to pursue grant funding for arterial preservation, tracking revenues against projections and publishing an updated summary in the summer 2025 Auburn Magazine. The city webpage and an interactive map were updated with the 2024 SOS information, staff said.
Ending: Council thanked staff and had no formal action on the report; staff will return with updated PCI data and refined project scopes as grants and design progress.
