CINCINNATI — City council received a new report card for something you probably already know: pavement condition in Cincinnati is getting worse.
It’s not all bad news, though — the overall pavement condition is still classified as “good.” The city’s overall Pavement Condition Index (PCI) is 70 on a scale from 0 to 100.
That’s an average weighted number, meaning there are better spots and worse spots. Click here to see the condition of your street.
Chris Jones lives on a street with a very good rating, but pulls onto Beekman Street everyday, which the city classifies as poor.
“I just smacked the pothole–boom!” he said. “My wheel went weird.”
Weird means $2,000 worth of repairs. It didn’t take care of everything, like the alignment of the left wheel.
Senan Odeh of Dave’s Auto Care and Towing in Norwood is used to the calls about the pavement. He’s regularly towing from potholes.
“If [a car] hits a pothole hard enough, this tire rod will dislocate, and the tire rod is what controls the tire of the vehicle,” Odeh said.
Even new tires can get bubbles on them, or completely blow out on the side wall.
“Until the cities around here decide to fix the roads and take initiative, we're going to keep seeing problems,” he said.
A new report to City Council from the Department of Transportation and Engineering says pavement condition “has decreased due to a lack of funding versus the rising construction costs.”
Street Rehabilitation Program Report by WCPO 9 News on Scribd
The department says the city’s goal of paving 100 lane miles per year is arbitrary — and also not sustainable.
Rocky Moretti, director of policy and research for TRIP, said costs have massively increased.
“The challenge is that over the last two years, we've seen highway construction costs, which are essentially labor and materials increased by 36%," he said.
In Cincinnati, the cost to rehab one lane mile rose 51% in just one year. It now sits at $500,000 per lane mile.
Mayor Aftab Pureval pushed the sale of the railway as a solution, although that infrastructure money is still years away.
The city has addressed potholes fairly quickly. Of the more than 1,100 service requests made so far in 2024, only 25 are still open.
A DOTE spokesperson said the ones that seem to linger on the street forever usually means more comprehensive street repairs are needed.
