When spring comes in Chattanooga, so will the paving crews.
With support from the mayor and city council, Chattanooga's paving budget has been growing steadily since 2013. The paving budget for 2018 is close to $4 million, and that's going to mean a lot of asphalt on neighborhood streets all across town.
Patten Chapel Road in Lookout Valley is on the list of 35 paving projects the council approved earlier this month. So are the southern section of South Seminole Drive under Missionary Ridge, Cassandra Smith Road near Greenway Farm and most of the Avalon Hills neighborhood near Dawn School.
Blythe Bailey, Chattanooga Department of Transportation administrator, said the city administration believes it's more cost-effective to maintain the city's streets than to let them go and then have to rebuild them.
"What we're trying to do is keep our streets at a certain quality. Once they sort of fall off the cliff from a certain condition, it becomes much more expensive to fix them," Bailey said.
Street need work?
Call 311 or visit www.chattanooga.gov/311 to report potholes that need patching or streets that need repaving.
Chattanooga has access to different pots of money it can use for road projects. Bailey said Chattanooga's take from the Transportation Improvement Plan, a three-year project planning list administered by the regional transportation planning agency, has grown from $1.5 million in 2014 to $3.5 million.
"We don't use that for smaller street projects, but for larger local streets," such as work on Chestnut Street downtown or multimodal improvements on Bailey Avenue.
The bigger commuter routes, such as Brainerd Road, Hixson Pike, Highway 58 and others, are state roadways, and the Tennessee Department of Transportation maintains them.
But Chattanooga is responsible for keeping up neighborhood streets. Bailey said CDOT uses a complex scoring system that factors in road condition, type of street, how many vehicles use it and other considerations to rank streets on a 100-point scale.
The planners focus on streets that fall into the middle range, 40 to 60, and come up with a list they believe can be done within the annual paving budget. That goes to the council for approval.
District 1 Councilman Chip Henderson said paving is a perennial concern for city residents. One of the 2018 paving projects is the Patten Chapel Road loop off Browns Ferry Road in his district.
"Besides crime, I would say road paving is certainly the No. 1 issue in many districts and in the top 2 in all districts," Henderson said. "There's nothing we do more where people see their tax dollars at work than paving a road."
In District 7, Councilman Erskine Oglesby Jr. said he's glad the list includes 47th Street from Tennessee Avenue to Guild Trail.
"This is something the citizens of St. Elmo have been asking for and I'm excited to make it happen," Oglesby said. "It's to the point it's unsafe for people walking or kids playing. This was on [his constituents'] priority list and this is what we're making happen."
Bailey said city residents who want their roads repaved should contact the city's 311 line or website with specific information about the location and the problem.
But not for potholes, he added. Patching holes is done by the Public Works Department, not CDOT.
Contact staff writer Judy Walton at jwalton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6416.
Here's a list of Chattanooga neighborhood roads to be paved. (Matt McClane)