Council considers sidewalk program; street projects ‘not on track’

Presenter: Eugene’s mayor and city councilors said Wednesday it may be time to create a sidewalks program. They also worried about falling behind on street bond projects. Sept. 23, from Public Works Engineering, Katie Marwitz:

Katie Marwitz (Eugene, Public Works Engineering): With each bond measure, we’ve seen the evolution of the makeup of the bond, and the current bond not only has funds for roadway rehabilitation, but also has dedicated funds for walking, biking, safety, street trees, and funds available for leveraging opportunities.

And this is also the first time that there has been dedicated and an approved list of active transportation projects.

As with each of the bond measures, there’s been built-in accountability measures, including the formation of the street repair review panel (that we call the SRRP) and review from an outside auditor.

So our current PCI and a reminder, PCI equals Pavement Condition Index. That’s really just our score. So the current PCI for the system is a 72. So 72 is a good score. This is really the result of all the work of the bond measures to date, and by prioritizing how and which streets to rehab, we’ve seen those numbers climb over time towards our goals.

We’ve seen a shift in a couple of places in the wrong direction, as our needs of the system continue to outpace the available funds. That’s for a number of reasons. Some of that is just the rising cost of construction. Some of it is the wide distribution of the use of bond funds.

And some of it’s just the ongoing aging infrastructure. If we look back at some of the streets that we addressed early on in the first bond measure or two, that’s almost 20 years ago now.

I do want to give a short preview of what you can expect to see next year in 2027. So Chambers Street paving is right at the top of that list. And you can expect to see some significant changes at the intersection of 18th and Chambers, enhancing safety for all users while rehabilitating that aging roadway.

County Farm Road, Agate Street, and Willow Creek will also all be rehabbed next year in ‘27. North Delta Highway paving will be completed in combination with a large stormwater CIP that’s addressing needs on the Ayres Culvert.

And there’s also several smaller scale pedestrian projects planned, including lighting upgrade projects.

Presenter: With a reference to the late Public Works director Kurt Corey,  Councilor Mike Clark:

Councilor Mike Clark: I remember the first discussions with Kurt Corey, rest his soul, about the process of how our Public Works department has the capacity or not to fund maintenance on an ongoing basis so that our streets didn’t fall into real disrepair, which requires the considerably more expensive version of reconstructing them from a base entirely.

And he used to describe it as kind of going along down a slow downhill grade, and then it falls off a cliff in terms of the difference between maintenance and what it costs to maintenance and do minor repair, versus when the condition finally fails to the fact where you need to rebuild the road entirely. The costs zoom way up. 

And I just wanted to make the comment that that was the whole reason we decided to put a bond forward in the first place was because the cost of regular maintenance before we had a rebuild problem was beyond our city’s financial capacity at the time. 

And so we wanted to make sure that the bond funds were used to do adequate maintenance and adequate repair before substantial rebuilds were necessary.

And if those particular needs are growing at a rate, I have had some concerns in the past that we may be deciding to spend too much money on alternative modes and alternative means with bond funds, as opposed to what it was intended to do in the first place, which is keep us from incurring large scale repair costs as time goes on so that we would be doing an adequate job of maintenance.

We may be approaching the place where we are already spending too much money on alternative means, alternative modes, as opposed to making sure that we’re doing the basic job of what the bond funds were intended to do in the first place, which is avoid the massive repair of rebuilding entirely those whose conditions have deteriorated.

Presenter: In the final months of his fifth term, Councilor Alan Zelenka:

Councilor Alan Zelenka: Since I’m going off the Council, I think it’s very important for the Council to keep the formula that has worked with these bond measures, that was put together by myself and Councilor (Bonny) Bettman, that we crafted this. 

You have a list of projects so people know what we’re buying and we stick to that list and we’re not shifting monies around—it’s not a shell game; that the projects are spread all over the city so everybody gets a benefit; that we have an independent third party audit that says what we’re spending, what we said we were going to spend on, and that there’s a citizen review panel that looks at this. 

And with annual reports, the Council, that accountability system really works. And hopefully it carries through a need to get voter trust.

But having said all that, I take a little different tack on this report. I found it rather disappointing, in that, there’s just not enough progress on it. It seems like we’re way behind, almost everything’s over budget, the PCI is going backwards.

We’re two years in and we only have 8 of 41 street projects (20% completed); walk projects, 4 of 18 (22%); bike, 1 of 9 (11%); safety, 4/17 (24%).

Presenter: He referred to the Agenda Item Summary or AIS, the packet prepared for councilors before each meeting. Councilor Zelenka:

Councilor Alan Zelenka: Even more troubling is in the AIS it said that walk, bike and safety projects are not on track to be completed within the five-year period. 

And the problem is that when we go out for the next ask on this—because this is our perpetual strategy of doing these bonds—how are we going to ask for more money if we haven’t done what we said we were going to do in the time frame we’re going to do?

That presents a very problematic place for the Council to be.

Presenter: Principal engineer Katie Marwitz:

Katie Marwitz (Eugene, Public Works Engineering): We have had some challenges in the last couple of years with staffing and that’s something that we’re working on, trying to fill those gaps, trying to make sure that we have the right mix of people, trying to make sure that we build really quality projects.

And so that’s something we know that we need to continue to work to try to catch up.

Presenter: City Manager Jenny Haruyama:

Jenny Haruyama (Eugene, city manager): So given what I’ve heard so far today, I mean obviously this will come back to Council. This is your first cycle in terms of diversifying your projects. And we’re seeing a little bit of the impact of that. 

I think part of the next conversation will be, if you want to proceed with that same mix, or whether there’s another methodology or approach to doing that.

We also have another conversation on sidewalks, which adds a different dynamic. So I think to answer that question, I think we have to complete the conversation today. 

But what I can do is bring this conversation back to Council in terms of what staff recommends, in terms of moving the ball forward and maintaining that PCI, which ultimately is important.

Presenter: Eugene Mayor Kaarin Knudson: 

Kaarin Knudson (Eugene, mayor): Katie, I’ll just offer two more points. One is what you’ve mentioned about speed notification signs, in places where we know we have a number of people trying to safely cross the street, and a street condition that’s going to take multiple years in order to construct the full infrastructure needed to meet our contemporary needs. 

Those are great strategies to be able to increase safety. That is really important when we are talking about multiyear projects and investments.

The other project that I would be remiss not to mention is appreciation for how nimble and creative the team has been to accomplish the Patterson project for all modes: drivers; people using the bus; people walking; people riding bikes; the stretch really from 18th, 19th on Patterson down to near 24th.

Already, even under construction, it is a significant improvement—even with it being in construction—in terms of clarity for where people should be in their vehicles and the speeds that people should be safely traveling next to schools, next to businesses, next to places where we want people to be walking in their neighborhoods safely.

So I just want to appreciate the team for how flexible they were in seeing that opportunity and its alignment with Council’s vision for a safe and sustainable and thriving community, but also an extraordinary amount of energy from the community and real advocacy to see us move more quickly for safety projects.

We hear a lot from people in our community about the importance of safe pedestrian crossings, of safe bicycle infrastructure, safe sidewalks for people to use.

Those are really important parts of our transportation network, and we have to be planning for the remainder of the 21st century with these investments. 

Presenter: The discussion shifted to city sidewalks. Senior transportation planner, Jody Trendler:

Jody Trendler (Eugene, transportation planning): Sidewalks are an essential part of our city’s transportation networks, and they enable people of all ages and abilities to get where they need to go safely throughout their day. 

They’re of particular importance to people who cannot or do not drive, especially people living with disabilities, seniors and youth. And Eugene has over 700 miles of existing sidewalks. Like many elements of our transportation system, ongoing maintenance is not funded.

But unlike those elements like streets and bridges, it’s not the city, but property owners who are expected to repair sidewalk under city code, even when there’s a city street tree involved.

Sidewalk repairs can run upwards of thousands of dollars, making them unaffordable for many property owners. So that’s all to say that sidewalks are a bit unique when it comes to transportation infrastructure. 

So we’re here today specifically on this topic. Community advocates have been asking the city to take a more proactive approach. And we’ve also seen several U.S. cities have been found liable under ADA Title II for their accessibility and sidewalk programs.

So coming up with a strategy to address sidewalk infill and maintenance is a tactic we’re looking at in the city’s updated strategic plan for the next two years.

In addition to having 700 miles of existing sidewalks, we are also missing miles of sidewalks due to previous development patterns.

We make progress each year filling those gaps through sidewalk infill projects and many of which are identified in our 20-year transportation system plan. We prioritize those based on things like safety, equity, and proximity to things like schools and transit.

Our city-led sidewalk infill projects are funded by a variety of sources, including the street bond, which you were discussing, also state funds, and by applying for grants like Safe Routes to School.

In the most recent bond, we did allocate $5 million to walking projects, and that’s to build new sidewalk. It’s not going towards the repair of existing.

Many people are surprised to learn that property owners are responsible for the sidewalks adjacent to their property under our current city code. But this is actually the most common policy framework in the United States and in Oregon.

The city works with property owners to ensure that sidewalks and Eugene are up to standard. And that’s mostly led by our Public Works Maintenance division.

We don’t have sidewalk condition index like we have for the streets, and we don’t have a citywide inventory of our sidewalk quality, but we do have several samples collected by our partners. 

I’m going to share some results from a U of O class that developed their own sidewalk data collection app and they fanned out from the University of Oregon to collect data on sidewalk conditions.

So thank you to Professor Anne Brown and her students for designing and sharing their findings. They measured various elements of sidewalk conditions that are part of our accessibility requirements, including height differences, running slope, passage and obstructions, cross slope, and the surface condition itself.

Fanning out from the U of O on foot, they collected almost 14,000 observations, sometimes more than one observation per paver, 20 acres of sidewalk. What they found in terms of those surface conditions, 43% were in moderate condition, another 45% were in good or very good condition.

And about 14% were critical or poor and in terms of uplift or those height differences that can be a tripping hazard or can stop a wheelchair in its tracks.  Of the observations in the study area, almost 40% were above a quarter inch, which is not meeting the ADA threshold.

Presenter: Councilor Matt Keating:

Councilor Matt Keating: It’s pretty alarming that there’s no sidewalk condition index and there’s no citywide data on sidewalk quality. I appreciate that partnership with the University of Oregon, covering mostly two wards, Wards 1 and 3, as I understand it—downtown and the area around the University.

What is it going to take to get us to where our sidewalk maintenance program is comprehensive, is equitable, is sustainable, and what funding options do you predict—based on best practices you see in other cities—that Council might explore?

Presenter: Katie Marwitz:

Katie Marwitz (Eugene, Public Works Engineering): We have found that there’s a lot of energy around sidewalks, as there should be. There’s a lot of really good ideas that we have to explore. So we’re right now, what we’re trying to do is kind of put together the framework and the foundation of, okay, let’s make sure that we know what are the needs of the transportation system as a whole right now. 

And then that can help lead us towards what does a program look like. But I don’t think we’re in a place quite yet that we can say, ‘Hey, this is something we’re recommending,’ because there are a lot of really good ideas and a lot of options.

Councilor Matt Keating: When the city does this type of work, are we charging enough that we’re not limited into how many we take?

Katie Marwitz (Eugene, Public Works Engineering): Recently we have relooked at the admin order for Public Works Maintenance to address the fees and are moving more towards a full cost recovery model, because that’s really important. We need that to be a sustainable program within (Public Works) Maintenance. 

The people that work on this program also do other things. And so to continue to increase it is, again, we would need to address how and what their pieces of their other work program are.

Presenter: Councilor Eliza Kashinsky:

Councilor Eliza Kashinsky: It definitely feels like a quirk of history that throughout the country, sidewalks are treated differently than any other form of public infrastructure, in that we are expecting individual property owners to maintain that public infrastructure, as opposed to expecting individual property owners to pay taxes that we then use to maintain that public infrastructure.

And so, like many of the problems, we have decisions made 100 years ago, that we’re having to try and figure out how to solve now.

I do think for me personally, it does make sense to consider treating sidewalks the way that we treat roads, bike paths, stormwater lines, as things that for the most part, we maintain that infrastructure.

Presenter: Councilor Alan Zelenka:

Councilor Alan Zelenka: What really needs to occur is we need to take this seriously and it needs to be a priority. We need a program. We need a program with goals, with timelines and some performance metrics. 

So maybe a five-year program where we do a comprehensive survey of the city, get that PCI equivalent, cost estimate, an info and notice program, implementation, enforcement loans, maybe a levy to help create the more staff that we need to do that. But it just needs to be a priority.

I guess the question for the city manager is, where does this fall on the priority list? It’s not been a priority, and it’s been neglected, and now it’s a problem. 

And is it going to move up the priority list, and is it going to be a budget discussion, or is it going to be a trade-off with other things? We don’t have existing staff to be able to handle all of this.

Presenter: City Manager Jenny Haruyama:

Jenny Haruyama (Eugene, city manager): Once we get a recommended approach, which is a part of the tactics that Council reviewed last week, we will have some examples or recommendations moving forward. 

This is a competing priority, equally important to the streets, and ultimately I’m going to be looking for Council direction. But we’ll set up a conversation where you can provide that direction based on available resources.

But we’ve got to do the work first before we can answer that question.

Councilor Alan Zelenka: Thank you for that. I was at a meeting last night and people were talking about how do you get the Council to act? 

The City Council works on the squeaky wheel principle. The more people squeak about this, the more—and we’re starting to see that. And things become squeaky when they become a big problem.

Presenter: Councilor Greg Evans: 

Councilor Greg Evans: When my wife and I bought our house 26 years ago, nobody disclosed and said that the sidewalk and the tree lawn are a responsibility of the homeowner to deal with in terms of any kind of repair or replacement or any of that.

So it’s an expense that’s not disclosed within the context of the sale of the property. How do we build into our code? You know, that kind of disclosure?   

There are requirements in our code for urban forestry, for tree planting, and that kind of thing. It does not address the type of trees that are required by that code.

So we have flowering plums in our neighborhood with horizontal root growth situations and the only way that we’ve been sold that you can solve that is by having root guards installed.

So those roots start growing vertically down into the ground, which presents other problems as far as underground infrastructure and other things of that concern. So notification would be one piece of this and then understanding better how urban forestry can work with homeowners and the city to provide the proper trees for the subdivisions, which are required.

Presenter: Councilor Lyndsie Leech:

Councilor Lyndsie Leech: Yeah, thank you so much for the work that’s been done and helping outline the pathway forward for us. I just want to quickly express my alignment with comments about our public infrastructure really needing kind of a more reframing and restructuring our programming.

Yeah, the complaint-based system creates these inefficiencies, and does end up being inequitable. I think really just this piecemeal nature of sidewalk repairs one panel at a time, rather than a more efficient system that could be, an entire segment of the city.

And I do love the program that we’ve implemented that allows for sidewalk repairs where there’s streets already being repaired and at a easier cost, which actually proves that it is cheaper and more efficient to do it in that one fell swoop.

Presenter:  City councilors share concerns about street bond projects falling behind, and about ADA compliance. U of O students found that about 40% of their observed instances of sidewalk uplift exceeded one-quarter inch.