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GROSSE POINTE CITY — Although some road projects in metro Detroit are still underway, Grosse Pointe City officials are already preparing for next year.
During a Sept. 16 Grosse Pointe City Council meeting, the council voted unanimously in favor of the 2025 road improvement plan and authorizing City Manager Joseph Valentine to begin work on bid specifications for work on Notre Dame Street between Jefferson Avenue and St. Paul Street, and on St. Clair Avenue between St. Paul and Waterloo streets. As Valentine noted, doing the design work now means that the city can seek bids in January, putting the municipality in the best position to secure contractors and better pricing before contractors’ schedules fill up for the construction season.
A voter-approved road millage levy is expected to generate about $1,080,000 in the 2024 to 2025 fiscal year, which started July 1. Millage funds will be used for this work.
Roads are selected for repair based on their condition and other factors, such as how much money is available in a given year for these projects.
“We try to target the worst roads as quickly as we can,” City Engineer Stephen Pangori, of Anderson, Eckstein and Westrick Inc., said. “They’re also the most expensive.”
Pangori said that means the roads in the roughest shape are the hardest to fit into the budget.
Keeping roads from getting in poor condition is one of the goals of the city’s road program. Along those lines, Pangori said they’d like to focus on concrete roads more in the coming years.
“We don’t want to lose those streets,” Pangori said. “We want to catch them (before they fall apart) and patch them. … When the concrete streets are gone, it’s a total reconstruction and it’s probably the most expensive (option).”
Sometimes, roads that are in the worst shape get moved down the schedule to make way for work on streets that are in better straits, to prevent them from deteriorating to the point of failure. City Councilman Seth Krupp said this is “hard for residents to understand,” but is due to the “cost intensity” of streets that need to be completely redone.
“It’s like road triage,” Mayor Sheila Tomkowiak said. “If something’s failed, it’s not going to fail anymore.”
Last year, the city opted to have its roads evaluated every other year instead of annually. Pangori said engineers went out in August to conduct the road ratings.
The City has 1.745 miles of minor arterial streets — Kercheval Avenue and Cadieux Road — plus 1.838 miles in major collector streets — Waterloo and St. Clair avenues — and these types of streets are eligible for federal aid, according to an AEW report. But the majority of roads in the City are classified as local streets, and these account for 14.84 miles, the report states. Streets are evaluated on a scale of 1 to 10 using the PASER rating system, with good meaning a rating of 8 to 10, fair meaning a rating of 5 to 7, and poor meaning a rating of 1 to 4. The City’s local streets had an average PASER rating of 5.841 in 2024 — down from the average of 6.137 in 2022.
The percentage of roads classified as being in good condition was 28.4% in 2024, down from 34% in 2022, while roads classified as in fair condition were 41.9% in 2024 compared to 44% in 2022. Roads in poor condition rose to 29.7% in 2024 from 21% in 2022.
While there were some declines, Pangori said the state of the roads overall didn’t get substantially worse or better over the last two years.
“In general, the condition of the roads didn’t change,” Pangori said.
Pangori said road projects are coordinated with water and sewer work, to avoid tearing up a new road and having to do the work all over.
“Nobody wants to tear up brand-new asphalt,” Tomkowiak said.
