City plans an alley repair blitz

Potholes be gone.

April 8, 2014; 9:07 AM • by Richard Hayes

If Richmond roads are considered bad than the alleys should be considered nightmarish. There are currently over 800 requests for alley repair and currently the city has six workers assigned to alley maintenance. Repair of many of the alleys requires the use of a motor grader only one out of five city motor graders works.

To attempt to solve the problem, or at least catch up with the backlog, the city is spending $600,000, hiring 20 temporary workers, and renting equipment to fill in the gaps of our own broken fleet.

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Two crews would focus on the most troublesome areas, while the other two would move “methodically” through city neighborhoods.

Each crew would be expected to hit five to seven alleys per day, which will translate to work in roughly 1,200 of the city’s 8,500 alleys.

“In other words, you all should see a significant impact in your communities and in your neighborhoods with regards to alley maintenance,” Bobby Vincent Jr., deputy director of operations for the city’s Department of Public Works, told a City Council committee last month.

If the push goes as planned, the backlog of maintenance requests would be cleared at least as far back as August.

James Jackson, the director of public works, has said that if the project goes well, his department may be able to undertake similar alley blitzes twice a year, though that would require $1.2 million annually.

The article doesn’t discuss whether it would be more efficient to repair our broken fleet and take a more aggressive approach throughout the year rather than once or twice a year blitzes.