How Awful Is Your Street: A Searchable Database of Dallas Road Conditions

By Eric Nicholson Tue., Oct. 21 2014 at 2:23 PM

Dallas has terrible streets. Ask any driver who hasn't been rendered prematurely senile by the constant jostling over disintegrating pavement or any cyclist who's survived a run-in with a man-eating pothole. Hell, ask City Hall, which estimates that it will take three-quarters of a billion dollars to get the city's roads back in decent shape. When you couple aging infrastructure with a long-standing municipal propensity to value shiny new hotels and bridges over nuts-and-bolts governance, this is what happens.

This ground has been well trod, and bitching about the general crappiness of the city's streets is a tired and unsatisfying exercise. But what if Dallasites could bitch about street crappiness with mathematical precision? To not only say, "Sweet Jesus, the potholes on Garland Road sure do suck," but to quantify the precise amount of suckiness those potholes contain.

See also: Dallas Streets Keep Getting Worse and Worse

Behold the Dallas Street Score Database. Search and you'll find the official score the city gives to every single block of every single street in all of Dallas. (BE SURE TO USE ALL CAPS.)

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The score, which the city calls the "Pavement Condition Index," is based on biennial sweeps by the city's street-scanning vehicle. The score is regularly updated in between sweeps by an algorithm that automatically reduces the score based on assumed wear and tear.

We'll try to update it every few months, at least until the city goes live with a planned interactive pavement-condition map. Mary Nix, assistant director of public works, says one is currently being developed.

Send your story tips to the author, Eric Nicholson.

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holmantx topcommenter

Move street repair funding from Capital Budget to the Operating Budget. Hold the next Mayor directly responsible for upgrading the streets. Benchmark (the cost of maintenance, repair and upgrade) for the next mayoral election, if streets are really that important.

Then (Yikes) force the council to PRIORITIZE from a finite Operating Budget, an amount of funds to effect the repairs and upgrades.

As it is, Streets is stuck up under capital improvements budget and run by a (faceless and un-elected) assistant city manager.

Do we really need our councilman going hat-in-hand to Staff? I think that's been the problem around here.

ScottsMerkin topcommenter

Thank goodness they finally fixed the intersection of Ross and Field. You can actually safely stop your car now without ABS engaging at 5 mph when you hit the brakes

TheCredibleHulk topcommenter

We ought to trade the "street scanning vehicle" for a dump truck full of hot-patch and give the folks that spent all of that time devising and designing that web-site a shovel instead of a mouse and there would be several less potholes today than yesterday.

Keep that going for a couple of years and you'd create (useful) jobs and fill potholes at the same time. Win-win.

Seems like this should be much simpler than we make it.

skeechi

Ask anyone from the Northeast and they will tell you we have great streets

JFPO

You're saying the mayor has control of an "operating budget?" I didn't know this.

wcvemail

That's not World Class. Software app is World Class.

bvckvs topcommenter

@skeechi

That's been my experience as well. We tend to be fairly civic-minded around here. So when a road needs fixing we just go ahead and call city hall to have it taken care of right then and there.

But this article is written by a 20-something from somewhere else who just came here to eat our food and complain about our service.