VERO BEACH — The overall condition of Vero Beach roads has improved for the first time in nearly two decades, according to city officials.
Danessa Chambers, a city engineer, told the Vero Beach City Council that the city recently recorded a two-point increase in its pavement condition index, an industry-standard rating system that scores roads on a scale from 0 to 100.
“For the first time in almost 20 years, not only did we not drop in condition over time, we actually experienced a two-point increase,” Chambers said. “That is huge.”
Historically, the city’s roadway conditions have steadily declined, making this year’s study the first to show measurable improvement. Many roads are now considered to be in fair condition, while several previously poor-rated areas have already undergone repairs through earlier projects.
Chambers said roads typically deteriorate because of age, flooding issues and wear from increased traffic and roadside use.
“Your failed roads are roads you didn't get to quick enough, they're roads that have added use,” she said. “So when you get a lot of people illegally off street parking and pulling off the edge and it breaks the whole edge of the road, or if you have areas that are holding water or known for flooding, the water sitting on the road. If you had a road that was constructed way back in the day, it's super old, and its road section was never really built for how it's used now. That's usually the scenarios in which you end up with this type of failed road.”
Despite the progress, Chambers said the city still faces difficult decisions on how to prioritize limited funding for roadwork.
Rather than focusing solely on the worst streets, she said cities get better long-term results by balancing major repairs with preventative maintenance on roads that are still in decent condition.
“When you're limited on funds and you're spending so much extra money per mile to catch the worst roads and you're letting all of those other roads drop, you're actually losing more life than you're gaining in any given year,” Chambers said. “So that's why it's important. You don't want to ignore the worst roads because you don't want people living on those roads or using those roads to not have good condition roads. But you can't put all of your eggs in that basket.”
Chambers said pavement preservation projects currently account for a much larger share of the city’s road budget than what is typically recommended nationally because Vero Beach is trying to recover from years of declining conditions.
“They recommend about a 20 to 30 percent of your budget goes towards pavement preservation just for maintenance purposes,” she said. “You'll see in another slide that we did about 64 percent last year because we're a little bit playing catch up with our PCI having dropped in previous years. So we're really hitting that, ‘Let's get the most for our money’ bucket. And then we're using the remainder of the money to grab some of those lower level roads.”
She added that preventative maintenance is significantly more cost-effective than full roadway reconstruction, making early intervention critical to extending the lifespan of city streets.
At the same time, the cost of roadwork continues to rise. Chambers said spending on roadway projects has nearly doubled in recent budget cycles, increasing from roughly $400,000 to $500,000 in prior years to nearly $1 million in the two most recent cycles.
“Every time I come up here, unless something different has happened in the economy, our prices are just constantly on the uprise,” she said.
City officials praised Chambers and city staff for their work improving roadway conditions across Vero Beach.