Evidence of Rhode Island’s rough roads turns up regularly at Harold Crook’s Garage in Cranston. Bent wheel rims, flat tires and alignment problems can often be traced to potholes, cracks and slipshod repaving following underground utility work, says garage owner James Clarke.
“I see them all year because of the condition of our roads,” he said.
Pontiac Avenue and Budlong Road in Cranston and Allens Avenue in Providence send business his way often. “It’s overworking; the car is made to ride on a halfway-decent road, the suspension is only made to go up and down so much,” Clarke said.
Just how bad are roads in the Ocean State?
According to a 2019 report from national transportation research group TRIP, the condition of Rhode Island’s rural state roads is the worst in the nation, with 39% in poor condition and 31% rated as mediocre. In addition, TRIP found that 79% of Rhode Island’s major state roads are in poor or mediocre condition, costing the state’s residents $620 million annually for car repairs and related costs.
But while data on state-controlled roads surfaces annually, usually in the form of a national study, there is no comprehensive depository for information on municipal roads in Rhode Island. Cities and towns, many of which use contractors to analyze pavement condition in advance of repaving projects, collect their own information on roads independently.
Reports are generally accessed through municipalities’ public works offices, although Providence has posted its Citywide Improvement Plan, which includes large-scale repaving projects, online.
Available information on municipal thoroughfares suggests many are in at least passable condition or are scheduled to be repaved, though in some cases after years of neglect. An effort in the 1980s to create a standardized pavement-management system for local communities, funded by the state, fizzled after just a few years.
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PATCHED: The road near 425 Love Lane, covered with patches and cracks, shows the deteriorated condition of some roads in Warwick. The city is planning a $17-$20 million repaving project, which Mayor Joseph J. Solomon hopes will return many of the roads to a manageable condition.
/ PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
BAD REPUTATION
For years, the poor quality of Rhode Island’s bridges and 1,100 miles of state roads has attracted national attention. Report after report has identified the Ocean State’s infrastructure as some of the nation’s worst.
Headlines in recent years include:
• In July, USA Today published an article that rated Rhode Island as the worst state for infrastructure, with 24.6% of its roads in poor condition and 23.1% of its bridges structurally deficient.
• Last year CNBC rated Rhode Island’s roads and bridges as the worst in the nation, giving the state an infrastructure score of 100 out of 400 and grading it an “F.” According to the report, 23.2% of Rhode Island’s bridges are deficient and 70% of its roads are in poor or mediocre condition.
• In 2017, Business Insider noted that according to a report by the American Society of Civil Engineers, Rhode Island’s roads were the third-worst in the nation, with 53% of them in poor condition.
• In 2016, the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit, published, “What to do about Rhode Island’s Bad Roadways.” The article pointed out that based on 2012 data, Rhode Island’s highways came in at No. 47 in the nation. In 2011, the state ranked No. 50 and came in at No. 49 in 2009.
At Harold Crook’s, it’s $79 to fix a car’s alignment, but often mechanics find multiple problems caused by jolts, bangs and bumps on the road.
“It’s been going on for years, but it seems worse now than ever,” Clarke said of damage caused by bad roads.
Several cities, however, are undertaking large-scale repaving and restoration projects to address rim-rattling roads.
In Providence, a paving plan focused on arterial and connector roads allocated $20 million for repairs in fiscal years 2018 and 2019.
Five paving contracts covering 26.9 miles are on track to be completed by the end of the year and another contract is being developed, said Victor Morente, spokesman for Providence Mayor Jorge O. Elorza.
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TRAFFIC BARRELS: Narragansett Boulevard in Cranston, near the Providence city line, has permanent traffic barrels along the side. Since 2015, the city has repaved 42 of its 315 miles of roadways and plans to do more, hoping to do 12 or 13 miles per year, said Public Works Director Kenneth Mason.
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The funding also covered a large-scale assessment of the city’s 405 miles of roads. Completed in 2018, the study by Massachusetts-based Streetscan rated Providence’s pavement condition at about a 72 out of 100, placing the city in the “good” category of 70 to 85. According to the report, 2% of roads under city maintenance were very poor, 9% were poor, 34% were fair, 33% were good and 21% were excellent. Many of the very poor byways are short stretches of residential roads.
Providence’s scores are average, according to Ralf Birken, Streetscan’s CEO.
“In general, the distribution that we found is very common in New England,” he said.
The company does pavement assessments in cities across the country.
“[Providence is] on a good path of figuring out how to prioritize the streets, because they have the whole data set on making those decisions, they’re not in a bubble,” Birken said.
A proposal by Elorza for the Providence Public Building Authority to issue a $70 million bond toward additional roadwork and other improvements is pending before the City Council, Morente said.
Warwick Mayor Joseph J. Solomon said roadwork was a priority when he took office in spring 2018. “Last year was the first time in 20 years that we implemented a proactive program,” he said.
Solomon, a longtime city councilor prior to becoming mayor, said that for years, efforts to appropriate funds for road repair and maintenance were not successful, leading to many rough stretches of road.
“We will from this point forward be taking a proactive approach,” Solomon said. “We’ve gotten a lot of complaints from people, but I think there were more complaints in the past. I think that may be because of [already completed] improvements, and people know there are improvements coming up.”
According to Solomon, Warwick spent about $2.5 million on repaving more than 13 miles of roads and is about to launch a citywide $17-$20 million repaving project that includes switching streetlights to LED bulbs.
The city plans to fund the updates through a loan from the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank. Scheduled to begin in the spring and last for up to two years, the work is expected to return the bulk of Warwick’s streets to a manageable condition.
“A good part of it is having an asset that’s going to last 20 years, and after that trying to maintain it on an annual basis,” the mayor said. “We’re going back to ground zero and hopefully have a maintenance-type budget so this will not pile up on us again.”
Pawtucket is taking a similar approach.
A study commissioned by the city in 2013 showed that about 95% of its 180 miles of roads needed work, said Pawtucket Public Works Director Eric Earls.
Projects planned for fiscal 2020 will increase the mileage of roads repaved since 2005 to 111. About 85 of those miles came after the passage of a $15 million bond in 2014, and another bond passed earlier this year will fund further work, Earls said.
“At this point we’re in a very good place, where it becomes more about preventive maintenance than having to catch up,” he said. “When you don’t fund it, you’re just putting out fires –and that gets really expensive.”
In Cranston, where local roads averaged a 69 out of 100 in a 2015 study, the city has since repaved 42 of its 315 miles of roadways and plans to do more, said Kenneth Mason, Cranston’s director of public works.
“We’re hoping to do 12 or 13 miles per year,” Mason said.
A $20 million bond passed in 2016 is funding current roadwork, along with other highway department needs, but the money won’t meet every need.
“We still definitely have quite a few roads that need repaving,” Mason said, citing bumpy sections of Park Avenue and Budlong Road. “We’ve made progress over the last three years, but we continue to need funds.”
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GOOD MIX: Kang-Won Wayne Lee, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Rhode Island Transportation Research Center at the University of Rhode Island, says poor roads are often caused by pavement that’s not thick enough and poor asphalt quality.
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‘INFERIOR MATERIAL’
Where the roads are poor, the culprits are often pavement that’s not thick enough and poor asphalt quality, says Kang-Won Wayne Lee, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Rhode Island Transportation Research Center at the University of Rhode Island.
State-maintained roads are typically about 2 feet thick, including a layer meant to keep the underlying soil from freezing, said Lee.
The depth not only protects from truck wear, it helps mitigate potholes and cracks caused by temperature extremes.
But many municipal roads measure less than 1 foot thick, leading to frequent damage, Lee said.
“Freezing soil under asphalt pavement is very bad … so we need to have pavement that’s about 2 feet thick, but [cities and towns] can’t afford that, so I would suggest having a base layer,” he said.
Quality is another issue.
“The asphalt [used by cities and towns] is not as good as what the state is using. They are using inferior material,” Lee said. “You need a good mix of sand and stone, and also a good liquid asphalt binder, but those materials cost more.”
Lee also stresses the importance of vigilance when it comes to road conditions. In 1987, with then-Gov. Edward D. DiPrete’s support, he and a civil engineer from Providence’s planning division led an effort to implement a standardized pavement-management system for municipal roads throughout the state. Funded by the state, the $8 million, three-year project involved all 39 cities and towns in Rhode Island. Although responses showed the need for a pavement-management system, the program, which required annual pavement evaluation, did not catch on.
“They slipped away from it,” Lee said.
He suspects that a lack of funding set the program up for failure.
Money has been falling away from road projects in Rhode Island for some time, agreed Mason, Cranston’s public works director.
“I think statewide there’s been less money available for the repaving of roads for the last 10 or 20 years; there used to be more federal money available,” he said.
Pawtucket has changed its paving approach to get ahead of persistent maintenance issues by sealing cracks that would otherwise lead to potholes and milling off old asphalt before laying down new paving.
“That makes a more solid surface rather than putting it down on top of old cracks,” Earls said, adding that the city has fielded just four pothole calls since May.
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IN NEED OF REPAIR: An R.I. Department of Transportation vehicle avoids road cones and a traffic barrel surrounding a deep hole on New London Avenue in Cranston. A $20 million bond passed in 2016 is funding current roadwork, along with other highway department needs, in the city.
/ PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
UTILITY WOES
At BTS Tire & Service in Pawtucket, damaged wheels and tires are common. In early spring, potholes are usually the culprit, said Manager Richard Carlone.
“It depends on the weather, a lot of times after a heavy rain or thaw, you could get eight or 10 [cars] a week,” he said, adding that repairs can spike up to $500 depending on the damage.
Potholes are a definite nuisance in Providence, where 332 pothole damage claims were filed by drivers in fiscal 2019. Increasingly, though, it’s work done by utility companies that is flattening tires and ruining shocks, some garage owners say.
“A lot of it is the roads that the utility companies dig up. They patch it up and do an awful job,” said Clarke at Harold Crook’s Garage. “They put those temporary steel plates on them and when you go over them in a car your teeth will chatter. It ruins the suspension in a car. … The next thing you know you’re spending $1,000.”
State lawmakers took recent aim at the problem by requiring utility companies to repave and repair roadways that they’ve opened for work on underground gas or water lines.
The measure, signed into law in July, requires repaving to earn approval from municipalities or the state, and outlines a complaint procedure if utility companies don’t properly cover their tracks.
“Our roads have been cannibalized by various utility companies,” said Rep. Joseph M. McNamara, D-Warwick, a co-sponsor of the legislation. “There are streets that have been dug up … that have lines of tar down the middle of them, the roads look like [whoever did it ran].”
BOUNCING BACK
A 10-year Transportation Improvement Plan aims to make major fixes on state roads and the 1,187 state-maintained bridges, officials say.
By rehabilitating or replacing 150 structurally deficient bridges and repairing 500 others to stave off deficiency, the state expects that by 2025, it will meet federal guidelines requiring 90% its bridges to be structurally sufficient.
“We’re aware of the poor condition of the roads and bridges, and that’s why in 2016 Gov. [Gina M.] Raimondo signed into law the RhodeWorks program, to get us on that path where we can remove ourselves from those poor listings of deficient roads and bridges,” said Charles St. Martin, spokesman for the R.I. Department of Transportation.
Currently, 77% of the state’s bridges are sufficient, he added.
Bumpy state roads are smoothing out as well.
After state thoroughfares tallied a high of 1,543 pothole damage claims during 2015’s fierce winter, the R.I. Department of Transportation contracted with an automated pothole patching service. The effort has reduced both potholes and their damage on cars, according to data compiled by the state. So far this year, about 450 pothole damage claims have been received, St. Martin said.
Still, some state roads, such as Elmwood Avenue in Warwick, remain notoriously jarring. Despite crack sealing on the road from its intersections with Park Avenue and Wellington Avenue, Elmwood is not a smooth ride, says Jay Nardolillo, owner of Jay’s Auto Service in Warwick.
“They did such a poor job, it was nothing but bump after bump after bump,” he said.
Nardolillo, who opened his business 44 years ago, thinks poor road quality feeds an alignment-altering cycle of damage and repairs.
“It all stems from the roads not being built right or maintained right,” he said.
Elizabeth Graham is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Graham@PBN.com.
