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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – The City’s public works department is using the latest industry technology to assess its public road infrastructure citywide. The information collected will allow maintenance and operations staff to make data-driven decisions for project planning through 2028. All 1,804 linear miles of the city’s roadways will be assessed, including, for the first time, all alleyways. Now underway, this collection process will take approximately eight weeks.

Colorado Springs first collected data by this means in 2017 and has used it to plan all maintenance infrastructure needs, like crack and chip sealing, since that time. It has also heavily informed the 2C paving list. Prior to using this system, public works relied on a manual process that took nearly four years to collect similar data. Now, thanks to this technology, the data is collected in only eight weeks, and will be analyzed and available in three months.

“This system is an incredibly helpful and efficient tool that helps us make the best decisions possible for keeping our roads healthy and safe,” said Corey Farkas, streets manager. “With our drastic freeze-thaw conditions, roadways can change significantly in a short amount of time, and this really gives us the best picture possible of how our overall system is performing, and where we need to spend more resources.”

The roads are assessed by a high-tech car outfitted with a Roadway Collection Vehicle System that includes features like a laser measuring system for longitudinal, texture and depth profiling, GPS positioning, street-level 3D imagery, and a laser crack measuring system. The system grades the health of each road segment with a score of 0-100, with 100 being brand new. The scores account for ride quality, types of distress or defects (like potholes or cracking), the severity of distress and the quantity or percentage of how much of the pavement sample is affected by each defect.

Public works plans to use this collection system once every three years.

The $265,750 project is funded by the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority (PPRTA) sales tax. Colorado Springs partnered with the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments to contract with Marker Geospatial on the project. As part of this partnership, the cities of Manitou Springs and Fountain will also participate in this assessment for the first time. Those costs and miles are not included in the Colorado Springs portion.

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