Road conditions continue to be a cause of concern in Orinda, but Ivy Drive residents will be given some relief beginning in 2016. Over the past two months, the Citizen's Infrastructure Oversight Commission has reviewed repair scenarios recommended by city staff and the StreetSaver program and approved the 2016 list of streets for council approval. The list of streets slated for repair in the 2016 Annual Pavement Reconstruction Project is a short one: Ivy Drive.
At its Oct. 6 meeting, the City Council approved the recommendation by the CIOC to repair the remaining section of Ivy Drive, from Fiesta Circle North to Moraga Way.
The CIOC's recommendation to only focus on this one section of road for 2016 comes "because of the success of the past several years of paving projects has brought the arterial Pavement Project Index (PCI) to 78 and the collector PCI to 66," according to the city council staff report. The StreetSaver program, utilized as a method of street selection for road repairs, was putting all the money from gas tax and Return-to-Source funds into minor repairs to keep the good roads good, and ignoring the really bad roads, said Director of Public Works Charles Swanson. "As we're trying to make the program work for us, it basically would ignore the bad road collectors and arterials forever. We had to go back and look at collectors and arterials with bad PCI ratings and look at the streets with a PCI less than 25."
Swanson said this section of Ivy Drive was the next natural candidate on the list of collectors to be repaired. The CIOC decided that for 2016 and possibly the next couple of years roads selected for repair should be the worst remaining arterials, collectors and school routes in Orinda.
Council member Eve Phillips suggested the CIOC look at start-up and shut-down costs for each road segment, and work to lump segments together to ensure the least disruption as possible for residents during construction in the future.
The proposed cost of the Ivy Road project will be approximately $1.2 million. Once a Request for Proposal is sent, and bids are received and approved, construction could begin by April or May of next year, said Swanson.
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