The city of Mexico has nearly 80 center miles of roadway, and these streets are tested in their wear and tear.

Drew Williford, city engineer and public works director, said the streets department uses measurement tools to determine a road’s viability and when it needs repair.

The city previously used the Pavement Surface Evaluation and Rating (PASER) system, which evaluated roads on a 1-10 scale.

A few years back, the city started using a pavement evaluation system called Tiger Eye, in collaboration with the University of Missouri, and its usage of Machine Learning to detect and evaluate pavement distress. The city now uses the Pavement Condition Index, a 1-100 rating system, to provide information on roadway condition, Williford said.

“It used to be we had our own employees drive every single road every few years and re-rate the roads,” WIlliford said, noting Tiger Eye has been a “tremendous help for us moving forward.”

In Williford’s office, he can access a dashboard that stores information on streets.

“This has been a wonderful tool for us,” he said. “This is one of the primary tools we use to begin planning work throughout the city. We look at the type of pavement and then we look at the condition of the pavement, traffic volume - all those items. We also try to do a lot of grouped work so that it's not spread throughout the whole city, with the idea that every time a contractor has to stop a job and relocate, you’re paying for that time. So if we can do a group of streets in one area, we think we can get more for the same amount of money.”

In deciding which streets receive repairs, city engineering reps analyze streets’ condition through Tiger Eye and look at traffic volume, current condition rating and what projects can be fit into funding. A review of pavement type is considered, too.

“We have a lot of needs out there and we aren’t able to address all the needs at once,” he said.

He described how the city goes about assessing pavements, including being efficient with tax money and that there’s a focus on sealing streets to keep them in good condition. The city began using chip-sealing a few years ago, and as far as the surface seal that goes over the whole surface of a road, it provides the most bang for the buck.

As far as what percentage of streets are asphalt versus chip seal, Williford said a lot of times the city doesn’t have the funding to do both in one year, so officials will alternate year to year. The center has about 53 center line miles of asphalt and 26 center line miles of concrete. The city tries to plan repairs several years in advance.

For the asphalt streets, city officials perform chip-sealing, microsurfacing and crack-and-joint sealing, the last of which would be “the very best bang for our buck,” Williford said. Street Division crews examine roads prior to resurfacing to determine whether there are base failures or stormwater drainage issues present, Williford said. If these issues are detected, then crews proceed to address these issues prior to resurfacing.

For concrete pavement, concrete is usually just replaced by each panel. Crack-and-joint sealing is performed by contractors for both asphalt and concrete, depending on the year, and the city tries to tackle one area of town at a time and cycle through those different areas.

As far as funding, if the city were to be fully funded, the necessary budget would be around $1.3 million per year, Williford said.

“We have been operating typically on a budget of $300,000-$400,000 a year, and so trying to make those tax dollars extend to the maximum extent has been our focus and trying to use Tiger Eye to begin drilling down to the data that shows us where the greatest need is has been how we’ve proceeded,” Williford said.

He named some streets that are getting resurfacing of the asphalt - paid for by the American Rescue Plan Act Stormwater Grant through the Missouri Department of Natural Resources grant - and they include Curtis, Kentucky, Anderson and Calhoun streets.

City officials are also exploring new technologies, such as fiber reinforcement in asphalt, Williford said, and officials have used that technology once and it will be used again this next year and continue testing that to see whether officials notice it improves pavement life.

Residents are asked to report their concerns to public works at 573-581-2100 (ext. 3), and then from there, city officials use a program called gWorks to track concerns and address by priority, Williford said. He said city officials are responsive to resident concerns about roads and that their roads’ problems are logged in and assigned to someone to evaluate.

A follow-up is performed and residents could be told that it could take some time for the situation to be remedied, as it is dealt with on a priority basis. There might be other projects ahead of this concern, and a really significant problem could demand city officials’ attention, such as a sinkhole. But city officials hope to respond to issues as soon as possible, although some items could get pushed back if it’s a project that is large in scope.