October 23, 2014

Mayor Emanuel Announces More Than 250 Miles Of Roads Repaved In 2014

City More Than 70 Percent to Goal of 355 Miles of Streets and Alleys Resurfaced This Year

Mayor's Press Office    312.744.3334

Mayor Rahm Emanuel today announced the City has repaved more than 250 miles of roads in 2014, nearly three-quarters of the way to completing the plan of restoring more than 355 miles of streets and alleys across Chicago this year. The Mayor made the announcement while visiting a Department of Transportation street resurfacing crew on the Northwest side.

“Making sure residents in neighborhoods throughout Chicago have passable streets to keep them moving in all seasons is critical to the quality of life we all expect,” said Mayor Emanuel. “We have repaved more than 255 miles of roads this year, well on our way to an unprecedented goal of 355 miles, and through a new investment in my budget we are establishing a new standard of paving throughout the city going forward.”

By the end of the year, under the mayor’s Building a New Chicago infrastructure investment program, CDOT, the Department of Water Management (DWM), private contractors and utilities will have resurfaced more than 1,000 miles of streets since 2011 (155 miles in 2011; 269 miles in 2012; 290 miles in 2013; and 355 miles in 2014). Combined nearly a quarter of Chicago’s 4,600 miles of streets will have been resurfaced.

In his budget plan, the mayor has established a new standard of paving a minimum of 300 miles a year throughout the city. To make sure the City is ready for the next winter, Mayor Emanuel also plans to provide $10 million in additional funds to ensure the City will be able to fill potholes and conduct repair streets all year round, instead of just seasonally.

In 2014, CDOT plans to repave more than 107 miles of arterial streets, 90 miles of residential streets and five miles of alleys. Gas, electric and telecommunication utilities are expected to repave 20 miles of streets as part of their infrastructure work. DWM has also increased their workload in 2014, to install 85 miles of new water mains, 21 miles of new sewer mains, relining 51 miles of sewer mains, and install 15,000 new water meters. DWM will also repave a total of 133 miles of roadway.

With better coordination on infrastructure improvement projects through CDOT’s Project Management Office, both departments and utilities worked together to reduce the amount of project conflicts that would open up a street more than once. By setting new standards for restoring the public way after construction, the utilities resurfaced more miles of Chicago streets. This led to a savings of approximately $14.5 million in 2014 to date.

You can view the repaving map from 2011 through 2014 here.

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