For immediate release: Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Kansas City is celebrating a significant achievement in its Street Preservation Program: the city has now surpassed 1,500 lane miles resurfaced since the fiscal year 2021-2022. Achieving this goal completes resurfacing for 25% of all Kansas City roadways. Kansas City covers around 6,000 lane miles of pavement spanning across 6 Districts. This long-term investment in infrastructure highlights the City's commitment to safer, smoother streets and improved quality of life for residents.

Key Highlights:

• Fiscal Year 2024-2025 Progress: 338 lane miles resurfaced so far.
   
• Technology Asset Management: Using cameras, lasers, and asset management equipment throughout the city to catalog road cuts and damage to better assess street preservation needs. Using technology attached to vehicles tracks potholes, cracks, cuts and imperfections in the roadway. The data is used to prioritize future resurfacing and track cuts made into recently resurfaced roadway optimizing taxpayer dollars.
   
• Trash to Roads: Repaving neighborhood roads using advanced materials derived from recycled waste, such as tires and plastics known to increase the life of pavement.
  The goal is to explore new technologies that not only divert waste from landfills but also create longer-lasting roads that reduce maintenance costs and strengthen the resilience of supply chains.
  
  The program will test three different asphalt mixes, each containing a 0.5% additive of either recycled tires, plastics, or a combination of both. Under heat and stress, these polymers are expected to bind together, reducing rutting and cracking.
   
• Enhanced Safety Measures: Installation of 115-speed humps to calm traffic and promote safer streets. This initiative will construct two (2) speed humps, addressing longstanding traffic safety concerns and utilizing data-driven methodologies for selection and implementation.
   
• Higher accountability for street excavations: To reduce the number of cuts in newly resurfaced pavement the City is working with utilities to ensure they are coordinating efforts around resurfacing and scheduled work. Any cuts in recently resurfaced roads require full lane resurfacing for a full block to ensure repairs are of the highest quality and durability.

These accomplishments are part of a strategic overhaul in roadway maintenance, including increased funding, adopting an advanced asset management tool, and earlier contract execution to streamline operations.

Beginning in 2021, to tackle deferred maintenance of our streets, the City made significant changes in the maintenance of roadway infrastructure. Not only did the City Council increase the amount of funding invested annually for street resurfacing, but it also implemented an asset management tool to track the maintenance of roadways, and major improvements were made to the contract execution process. In previous years, resurfacing contracts were finalized in the spring just before work began, but now contracts are finalized in the fall. This allows us to do astronomically more work, providing a more streamlined approach to contractors planning the upcoming work season.

For More Information:
Visit KCMO.gov/streets to learn more about the Street Preservation Program.