Obstacle Course

Tulsa motorists who have come to regard the city's rough-and-tumble streets as an unpleasant fact of life might be encouraged to learn that the road repairs package that voters approved last November is about to begin bearing fruit.

On Nov. 4, 2008, local voters approved a proposal that will provide $451.6 million in funding for street repairs through the third penny sales tax and a general obligation bond issue during the next five years. City officials said they expected the money to start rolling in by summer, enabling work to commence. And according to Paul Zachary, deputy director of the Public Works Department's engineering services, that is exactly what is about to take place.

"Orange is going to be a color we'll see a lot of in this city," he said, referring to the familiar traffic barrels that mark construction sites and warn motorists to slow down.

Zachary said an initial round of $58.9 million in bonds will go on sale after the new fiscal year begins July 1, funds that will be paired with $11.1 million from an earlier bond issue and sale that are being switched from another project until it is ready to begin. Zachary said some funds will be available as early as June 16, enabling his department to begin entering into agreements with consultants. That actually puts the Fix Our Streets program a little ahead of schedule, he said.

That news comes hardly a moment too soon for anybody who drives around the city on a regular basis. The poor condition of city streets was put into perspective last week when a report issued by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and TRIP, a national nonprofit transportation research group based in Washington, D.C., rated Tulsa ninth in the country among major urban areas--those with a population of greater than 500,000--for the percentage of its roads that were in poor condition with 47 percent.

The city fared even worse in terms of areas that had the highest additional vehicle operating costs due to rough roads. On average, the report states, Tulsans spend an additional $703 a year, placing the city fourth in the country.

The study was based on Federal Highway Administration data compiled in 2007.

Few local drivers would regard that assessment as a shock. But for District 7 City Councilor John Eagleton, who unsuccessfully led the push for a more ambitious and expensive roads repair package to be put to voters last fall, the news was further evidence of the enormity of the problem Tulsa faces in getting its roads up to par.

"I really was surprised Tulsa was only the ninth worst. I've been to several of the towns on that list, and I'm convinced that report just has it wrong. San Diego's roads are not that bad," he said, referring to the city that was rated seventh--two spots worse than Tulsa--with 53 percent of its roads classified as poor.

Eagleton minces no words when it comes to his assessment of Tulsa streets.

"I just had a buddy who came back from Afghanistan, and he was surprised at how bad the roads were here," he said. "I'm not joking."

Eagleton was the leader of a City Council faction that favored sending voters a 12-year, $2 billion roads repair package, but that proposal had the support of only four council members and lost out in favor of the shorter, less-expensive proposal championed by Mayor Kathy Taylor and District 9 Councilor G.T. Bynum.

Even now, seven months later, Eagleton remains a sharp critic of the proposal that ultimately was passed, earning the support of 60 percent of voters.

"The plan we have out there doesn't fix the roads ... It's a five-year plan that only makes things worse," he said, citing its lack of funding for maintenance.

Bynum disagreed, indicating he believes the five-year plan will have a significant impact on the quality of the city's streets.

"Absolutely," he said. "There's no doubt in my mind or I wouldn't have supported it. It's got the same level of overall improvement over the five years as the other package would have reached."

Bynum said the city needs to demonstrate to voters it can effectively manage this streets improvement program before it asks Tulsa citizens to approve a larger and more far-reaching package. But he acknowledged this five-year plan won't be enough to do everything.

"No one I know of said this would get the whole job done," he said.

The report issued last week left little reason to doubt that. Along with the 47 percent of local roads that were rated as poor, another 29 percent were classified as mediocre. Eight percent of Tulsa roads were rated as fair, and 16 percent were regarded as good, meaning that fewer than one in four local streets fell into those latter two categories, while more than three-quarters are poor or mediocre.

The city with the highest percentage of roads in poor condition, according to the study, was Los Angeles with 64 percent. Oklahoma City was 15th at 41 percent.

Eagleton said in the aftermath of last fall's election he would consider putting another, more ambitious package before voters as soon as possible. But he acknowledged last week he does not have the council votes to do that.

"The majority of them think they've done their bit for this, but they'll be out of office by the time this really hits the fan," he said, singling out the mayor in particular for not displaying enough leadership on the issue.

The Complete Our Streets Task Force appointed by Taylor to analyze the state of the city's roads in 2007, in fact, flatly stated that a bond issue of no less than $650 million needed to be passed immediately while other, longer-term financing sources were pursued.

Eagleton regards the five-year plan as mere window dressing and believes city streets need a much greater influx of funds.

"It will make the problem worse, it really will," he said.

Bynum doesn't share Eagleton's pessimism, but he is concerned about the timing of a planned performance audit of the Public Works Department and how that might impact progress on the Fix Our Streets program. He said councilors were told by the mayor's administration last week that the audit would likely be concluded by August.

"I wouldn't want to hold up the streets package unnecessarily, but I think it's important to get the performance audit done as expeditiously as possible to assure citizens that their money is being spent wisely," he said.

As for the work itself, Zachary said projects are being prioritized, and many of the streets that will be done first are those that need only preventative work.

"We'll try to do those early in the program so they don't deteriorate" to the point that they need to be rebuilt, he said.

Streets classified as needing rehabilitative or reconstruction work will be worked on later, he said. He said he expects the city to begin posting a schedule this week for which projects will take place in the near term and which ones will occur as late as 2014 or 2015.

All nine districts in the city will have at least 8.2 percent of the $451 million spent on roads there, ensuring that the work is spread out. According to the city's Web site, the projects will be grouped to maximize the efficiency of contractors, but efforts will be made to avoid having them overlap with other projects in the vicinity. The schedule will depend on coordination with those other projects, the amount of funding available, the condition of the pavement, the geographic location and the complexity of the work to be done.

Of course, there is already a considerable amount of street work being done throughout the city, both by the city and the state. Zachary said a 2001 sales tax package that funded several street-widening projects should finally be cleared from the board this summer after it received additional funding in 2006, but the state Department of Transportation already is moving into high gear on projects involving Interstate 44 and Interstate 244 that are likely to be quite lengthy.

Zachary said the department will do its best to coordinate its projects with those being conducted by other agencies so as to minimize disruptions for nearby business and home owners. But the work is likely to be so extensive during the next few years that nearly everyone will be inconvenienced at some point.

"If you drive 10 minutes in any direction, you'll see an orange barrel somewhere," he said. "We'll be mitigating that to the degree that we can by getting in and out of intersections as quickly as possible. We're also trying to main in all the work at least one open lane in each direction."

Visit www.fixourstreetslive.com to see a map indicating the location and cost of all the projects included in the five-year plan.