Historic street paving data added to Salem’s online map

Salem officials are not unlike those in every other community. One of the most common constituent questions they face is, “When are you going to pave my street?”

Now, the city has put its historic paving data on an easy-to-read online map, complete with the years paved, the type of treatment, and the estimated cost, with plans to add maps of forthcoming paving schedules.

The map (at www.mapsonline.net/salemma) includes information on the 201 street paving projects undertaken by the city from 2008 through 2015, color-coded by year. Users can also overlay ward boundaries to see how projects are spread throughout the community. The projects cover 190 streets and reflect more than $9.3 million in road repaving work.

After clicking and dragging to highlight streets on the map, a list appears showing the years those streets were paved and corresponding treatment and cost information.

Most of the work in creating the map involved converting street paving information already listed on an Excel spreadsheet to GIS format, according to Chief of Staff Dominick Pangallo, and confirming what type of work had been done and the costs for each street.

The map, he said, “illustrates to the public the level of investment that has gone into public streets in Salem over the last eight years and helps people understand where we’ve done work already and what it cost.”

“It’s also to provide folks with a frame of reference for how much it costs to pave a street,” he added.

The fairly even allocation of street paving projects across the wards is a credit to the city’s Pavement Management Plan, Pangallo said. Chapter 90 funds are allocated roughly in proportion to the number of street miles in each ward, and the management plan then determines which streets will be paved next.

“For 2016, which is just being finalized now, once that program is ready and the contract is out, we’ll post that as well so folks can see those added in to the ongoing layer,” he said.

The map focuses solely on Chapter 90 and capital funds spent on roads. It does not include pothole repairs or instances where a utility contractor opens a street to perform work and then repaves after the project is done.

“This is laying a groundwork for a conversation on how much it’ll cost to tackle the projects and priorities in the years to come as well,” Pangallo said. “We can always add more [to the paving plans], but there’s a cost balance of that we want to be cognizant of.”