• Sonny Long •
• Originally published January 5, 2009 at 2:03 a.m., updated January 5, 2009 at 2:03 a.m.

Anybody who has lived in Victoria for 10 or more years knows the streets have improved over time. Many of the streets remain in poor disrepair, but our city government is making progress toward better streets citywide.

Public Works Director Lynn Short told Advocate reporter David Tewes why some obviously bad streets don't get repaired right away: The utilities underneath the streets need repair as well. Until the money is available to repair the utilities, constructing a new street on top is fiscally unwise.

The city's street ratings take into account all of Victoria's 311 miles of streets. Even to rate the streets is a daunting task, and the city staff should be commended for producing the inventory. Understanding the formula for ranking the streets is difficult - city staff looks at the streets' number of businesses, current conditions, utilities conditions, number of homes, estimated repair costs and degree of traffic. But some things seem obvious.

One point is that we would like to see more priority placed on major arterial streets when these rankings are conducted. It would seem, in rating the streets, that because these streets are more traveled that they would take precedence over residential and less-traveled streets. One good example is sections of Sam Houston Drive and Red River Street.

In retrospect, many of our streets should have been repaired years ago. But if these same streets aren't repaired now, or as soon as possible, the expense will increase with time because of increased costs of materials and construction. We think the city council is doing all it can with available funds to make our streets better.

We must compliment the city council for its determination to repair the city's streets keeping in mind that these jobs should be done correctly and not haphazardly, but we also must say that certain streets that have heavy traffic should be targeted first for repair.

 

This editorial reflects the views of the Victoria Advocate's editorial board.

• Print
• •
• Share
  • Share this item

    Send this to a friend

    Share on FaceBook

  • Grab the link

    Copy and paste the link:

  • Blog about it

    Blog about this page.

  • Close
• •
• Post a Comment
• •
• Favorite
• •
• Report error
  • Thank you for your submission.
    Error report or correction

    Contact name (optional) Contact phone/e-mail (optional)  

    
  • Close
• •