City Engineer briefs Starkville leaders about paving funds
STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – Paving is one of residents’ biggest complaints and cities’ biggest expenses.
With 315 lane miles to take care of, the City of Starkville is always looking for ways to get more mileage out of its paving dollars.
City Engineer Cody Burnett briefed Starkville business and community leaders on how the city is managing to do that.
One way is by sealing cracks when they develop. They have found that getting those cracks sealed before bigger holes can form adds three to four years to the life of the surface, and since the average life expectancy for an asphalt overlay is about 15 years, that can be significant.
Of course, the bigger question for many is when will a couple of those key streets in Starkville be ready for regular traffic flow again.
Starkville has two major projects downtown. We have the Main Street project, and that’s slated to be finished around the end of the year. And, then there’s the Highway 182 project just a block to the north, which is scheduled for March of next year. So, if the public can give us until April, we’ll have made a lot of progress, and the traffic should be back up and running,” said Cody.
Burnett says it costs about $400,000 to pave a mile of 2-lane road.
