The city is in the midst of its annual repaving schedule, much to the delight of residents who live on streets that are getting fresh coats of asphalt.
In Cranston, it used to be that which roads got paved during the summer depended a lot on who your City Council member was and whether he or she was on good terms with the mayor's office.
The current administration, however, insists that it has done everything possible to remove politics and favoritism from the process that determines which roads will get paved with the city's limited resources every year.
Carlos Lopez, the city's director of constituent affairs, said in an interview that the new process is based on a calculation that factors the condition of a road, constituent complaints about potholes and damage, estimated costs and a ranking system. City workers fanned out across the entire city, Lopez said, raking each road on a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 being virtually undrivable and 100 representing a near perfect road.
"What we try to do is stretch every dollar," Lopez said. "As far as the politics involved, we've tried to minimize it and take it out of the equation completely. You're not going to see roads being done that aren't needed, or being done in one ward but not in another ward."
But Lopez concedes that there's no way to make everyone happy. And that's due to the complicated nature of financing road repairs.
In recent years, the price of asphalt has increased dramatically. Lopez said if it cost $50 per ton a few years ago, the going rate is $120 today. (The numbers he used were an example, not actual prices for asphalt.)
And the city can't just pick the worst roads and go down the list based on need. If it did, Lopez noted, the entire budget would be consumed with projects in western Cranston, where many roads weren't properly surfaced in the 80s and are now crumbling. The worst roads in the city, based on the ranking system, are all country roads in western Cranston.
"The people on the east side would be up in arms if we did that," Lopez said.
Laten Knight Road has long been eyed for repair. Along with buckling, potholes and a crumbling surface, the road has a deep ditch on it sides — a major safety hazard. But the cost of paving this road will cost upwards of $1 million, according to city records.
With the road being addressed this year, now some constituents are complaining that it's "too smooth," Lopez said, raising concerns about speeding and increased traffic.
"We can't win," Lopez said.
Stretching the road repair budget means lots of compromises. Lawnacre Drive, for example, isn't one of the worst roads in Cranston, but some parts of it were in disrepair because it is at an incline and large amounts of runoff flow across sections of it.
The roughly $290,000 cost to repave Lawnacre Drive is more than it would cost to just patch the rough sections, Lopez said, but because of the amount of use the road gets and the degradation in the bad spots, "you might as well do the whole street and do it right," Lopez said. "You can only do so many patch jobs."
Residents upset about their street not getting repaved sometimes see streets that don't seem to need repaving getting the job, Lopez said, and it's not always the city's fault.
On Gansett Avenue, for example, the street has been repaved and new sidewalks and crosswalks are installed. The project was funded by grant money as part of the Safe Routes to School program, which means the city hasn't spent a dime for the work to get done.
And state roads, such as Reservoir Avenue, do not fall under the city's purview. But City Hall still gets calls from residents asking why work is being done there but not on their street.
Here's a list of roads on the paving schedule:
Ward 1
Berwick Lane — entire road
Broad Street — Park Avenue to Rhodes Place (only city-owned portion of Broad Street)
Ward 2
Chestnut Avenue — entire road
Oakland Avenue — Intersection of Glengrove Avenue
Ward 3
Eldridge Street — Reservoir Avenue to Hornbine Street
Gleason Street — entire road
Ward 4
Amy Drive — entire road
Hope Road — Seven Mile Road to Lippitt Avenue
Laten Knight Road — Pippin Orchard Road to Mr. Moses
Ward 5
Dean Street — Cranston Street to Meshanticut Drive
North Street — entire road
Overhill Road — Dean Street to South Street
Ward 6
Lawnacre Drive — entire road
Pontiac Avenue — Mayfield Avenue to Warwick Line
Woodridge Road — entire road
