What to Know
- Philly crews are set to begin paving season as they look to smooth out some of the hardest hit city streets.
- The City plans to pave more than 95 miles of city streets this spring, summer and fall.
- Mayor Jim Kenney is calling for even more city workers for the capital improvement project.
Anyone who drives or bikes in Philadelphia likely has a gripe: potholes.
The City of Philadelphia officially launched its 2019 paving season Wednesday as it looks to get rolling on repaving roads and filling holes in the street. And, Mayor Jim Kenney plans to put big bucks toward smoothing out more roads.
Kenney, Streets Department Commissioner Carlton Williams and other city leaders revealed the PavePHL map and showed off some of the paving process at a news conference at North 18th and Haines streets in the West Oak Lane neighborhood.
“I know that repaving and potholes are major concerns for our residents, I hear about it everywhere I go,” Kenney said.
The paving map, which is posted online, allows residents to track the city’s repaving projects. Paving takes three to five weeks so that the roadway can be milled, adjustments can be made, the surface can be paved and the road can be striped. Residents must move cars at points during the paving process.
The Streets Department must pave around 131 miles of road annually to keep up with the national standard of roads being in a “state of good repair,” the city said in a news release.
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The City has failed to reach that national goal for years, the mayor’s office said. A total of 77 miles of roads were paved in 2018. The goal is to pave more than 95 miles this year.
“So far, we have paved 64 miles of streets with two paving crews, compared with 47 miles this time last year,” Williams said. “The new paving guide and PavePHL map make the paving process more transparent and inform residents on what to expect when their street is getting repaved.”
Kenney’s Fiscal Year 2020 Budget calls for the gradual implementation of a third paving crew and an additional 30 employees at a capital investment of about $200 million that would further expand the paving program to get it close to the national standard. The city has already increased paving by 238 percent over the past five fiscal years, Kenney’s office said.
"We are proposing $200 million over six years to improve the City’s roadway infrastructure, investments that have been overdue for a decade," Kenney said.
