A majority of Boone County’s paved roads are in fair condition, an engineer told the Boone County Commissioners Monday.
But keeping them that way will be expensive, said consulting engineer Greg Wendling.
A visual inspection of the county’s 404 miles of paved roads, using a system developed by the University of Wisconsin, determined 181 miles show significant aging and need at least 2 inches of asphalt or even more extensive repairs, Wendling said.
A two-man crew drove every county-maintained paved road in the county, he said, and graded them using the Pavement Surface Evaluation and Rating System tool developed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Transportation Information Center.
Using a scale of 1 (failure) to 10 (new construction), PASER assessments help local governments determine when and where to spend scarce highway money. The method is increasingly popular in Indiana, Wendling said.
Bringing the 181 miles of poor roads into acceptable condition will cost an estimated $42 million, he said. Simply maintaining the 74 miles that rated six and seven will cost $1.6 million a year.
That cost was based on hiring contractors to seal coat all grade five roads every five years, seal coat grade six roads every two years, and crack seal grade seven roads every three years, Wendling said.
Having some of the work done by the county highway department could lower the cost, he said.
Much of the fair, poor and very poor roads are in Worth Township and rural Zionsville, the study found.
"This will be a great tool for us, to build a program and to improve the overall condition of our roads,” County Engineer Craig Parks said. “My hope is to be able to take the mapping tools we have now to do with my own staff.”
It will also help the county justify tough decisions on road upgrades, suggested Commissioner Marc Applegate.
“As our county becomes more populated, we really need to think about hard surfacing some roads,” Applegate said. “I’m hoping we can get to a point where we can make some logical decisions — and I know we will.”
None of the county’s gravel roads were included in the study, he said.
“We need to be as intelligent as we can in making these decisions,” Applegate said — including using PASER data to justify not paving a gravel road.
Parks agreed, “On some of those less traveled roadways, it doesn’t make all that much sense.”
Money should be spent on maintaining good roads rather than upgrading poor ones, he said.
Putting low-cost improvements first extends the life of roads, Parks said.
“I think it’s going to take awhile to digest all this, and of course we don’t have $42 million,” Applegate said.