Clive Pavement Management, Design Standards, and Specifications Study

Challenge:  The City of Clive wanted to review its standards for street construction and maintenance practices and determine recommendations for improvements to achieve long-lasting pavements.

Solution: HR Green provided an extensive review of design and maintenance practices. Clive’s pavement management standards were compared against others in the Metro area, the Statewide Urban Design and Specification (SUDAS) standards, and the Federal Highway Administration’s recommendations. Large amounts of pavement condition data were collected and analyzed with complex computer models to identify funding shortfalls, determine the best use of future revenues, and create strategies that will improve the overall condition of the public road network in Clive.

HR Green reviewed the City’s standards for street construction and maintenance practices and made recommendations for improvements will achieve long-lasting pavements. This includes:

• Developing an inventory of the City’s street system, which consists of 75 centerline and 170 lane miles
• Evaluating the system’s current roadway conditions
• Determining major rehabilitation and reconstruction alternatives and thresholds that will trigger their use in the data analysis and projections and their life cycle costs
• Developing two (2) pavement replacement schedules, one using current design standards and the other utilizing the recommended long-life standards, for all existing and future full build-out streets – full build-out is presumed to occur by 2035, and all cost projections will be today’s costs

Using the agreed-upon new design standards, HR Green developed the Clive Pavement Management Report, which included sustainable maintenance and replacement schedules with annualized costs for the following scenarios:

• Maintaining three different levels of Pavement Condition Indexes (PCI) – 70, 60, and 50
• Funding stays the same as it currently exists, which indicates the resulting future PCI
• Funding decreases in the case the franchise fee was not renewed in 2020, and the resulting future PCI

“We wanted to know what was needed to maintain our streets, both now and into the future. The City of Clive contracted with HR Green to complete the [Clive Pavement Management Report] which provided us with the information needed for Council to approve specifications to build long lasting streets and to provide the funding necessary to maintain our streets based on minimum average Pavement Condition Indexes (PCI) for our community. HR Green’s study proved to be an invaluable tool in the creation of Clive’s Street Maintenance and Reconstruction Program.”

Public Works Director | City of Clive, Iowa