Eagan staff to pursue 80-year pavement life cycle; council backs moving toward 100 years and exploring curb-and-gutter assessments

City staff told the Eagan City Council on May 13 that changing pavement management assumptions could reduce annualized street costs and that the council should consider two related policy changes: adopting a longer pavement life cycle (staff recommended 80 years, with an objective to move toward 100 years) and revising the special-assessment policy to include concrete curb-and-gutter costs in assessable project costs.

Staff explained that Eagan currently uses a 60-year pavement life-cycle assumption for streets (with routine overlays and maintenance at roughly 20-year intervals to achieve that lifecycle) and that modeling showed spreading pavement costs over 80 or 100 years reduces annualized cost by shifting the type and timing of interventions (for example, reclaiming/fully removing bituminous surfacing at intermediate points rather than repeated small…