Streets Paved With Gold: SF’s Ridiculous Repaving Costs Can’t Be Explained

The City spends so much more than others in Bay Area for the same work, and that’s why our streets are a mess

Any frequent user of San Francisco’s streets knows the pains of the pothole. A voter I met at a house party joked that he doesn’t need to take his kid to the roller coasters at Six Flags anymore, he just needs to drive down Webster Street. All jokes aside, a report published this past August shows that only 6% of roads in San Francisco-Oakland are considered in “good” condition¹.

And what most folks don’t know is how woefully expensive it is for San Francisco to keep its streets in just “fair” condition. Sadly, the City itself doesn’t seem to know either. For too long, City Hall has tried to throw money at our streets and roads without the necessary process improvements to ensure that all that money really delivers smooth streets. That’s why we need new leadership.

As Supervisor, one of my top priorities will be to improve the quality and safety of our streets and drive down the extremely high cost of doing road work.

As Supervisor, one of my top priorities will be to improve the quality and safety of our streets and drive down the extremely high cost of doing road work. I will be data-driven, benchmarking San Francisco against other cities’ best practices, and rigorously outcomes-focused in maintaining our streets and roads more efficiently and cost-effectively.

We don’t have to accept the poor quality of our streets as the new normal.

How much do we spend compared to the rest?

Across the Bay Area, the average cost to repave a lane-mile is about $191,000, with Solano County at the low end at about $112,000 and San Francisco far in front at $351,022. The costs also fluctuate depending on the type of repair, with a crack or chip seal being the cheapest and a total reconstruction of the road being the most expensive.

Santa Clara County, for instance, spent $263,768 per lane-mile to lay asphalt thicker than 2 inches on its roadways (one of the best treatments available) in the 2016–17 fiscal year, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s StreetSaver program. By comparison, San Francisco spent $456,097 per lane-mile for the same work. Similar discrepancies were seen in the cost of surface reconstruction, with Contra Costa County spending $335,365 per lane-mile versus San Francisco’s $679,487.

Since 2011, San Francisco has managed to pump about $150 million into street repaving, repair, reconstruction, and new construction. This work has covered some 1,400 segments of street thanks to a $248 million bond designed to address poor road conditions. With the $150 million investment (the remaining bond money went toward street safety and accessibility improvements), Public Works was able to more than double the number of blocks it treats every year from 400 pre-bond to 900 now. But with all this money and effort, San Francisco only increased its Pavement Condition Index (PCI²) from 64 out of 100 to 69³ — a number still considered to be “at risk” that earns San Francisco an E grade from StreetSaver.

But while spending heavily on maintenance usually means you’re spending less overall because your streets need fewer major repairs, that has not been the case in the City. And now that the bond money has dried up, Public Works estimates that it will need $65 million a year⁴ just to maintain today’s lackluster pavement condition.

So very expensive

Why is it so much more expensive to treat a lane-mile in the City than anywhere else in the Bay Area and the country⁵? The City has not done a comprehensive analysis. The limited report by the Controller’s Office showed San Francisco repaving costing 10 times more than cities outside the Bay Area⁶, and even greater in some cases, but City Hall chose to ignore the findings and performed no detailed follow-up work.

Talking to repaving contractors, Public Works staff, and technical experts, along with looking at the numbers, reveals low-hanging fruit⁷.

San Francisco City Government uses a unique composite substance made of concrete and asphalt that’s much more expensive than what’s used everywhere else. Claims that the material would wear down slower and cost less to maintain over its lifecycle have not been substantiated.

San Francisco City Government uses a unique composite substance made of concrete and asphalt that’s much more expensive than what’s used everywhere else. Claims that the material would wear down slower and cost less to maintain over its lifecycle have not been substantiated.

Well-meaning but ultimately counterproductive regulations mean that fewer and fewer repaving contractors want to work with the City. For instance, San Francisco arbitrarily enforces rules around when contractors can start work in the morning or how contractors should divert traffic around construction sites, leading to excessive fines and project-delivery challenges.

Public Works’ project management is also notoriously ineffective, hampered by antiquated systems and poor training of project managers. In a particularly egregious example, the entire street repaving team at Public Works shared one spreadsheet sheet to track the status of contractor invoices, which could only be opened by one user at a time because of the old version of Windows Server that Public Works operates. As a result, contractors have little insight into when they’re going to get paid by the City, and those with other options chose to do business elsewhere.

A well-meaning law that limits street maintenance and repaving to once every 5 years also leads to more costly repaving, as the optimal maintenance cycle for many streets is 3 years. Thus, compared to other cities, San Francisco spends a far lower proportion of its street repaving budget on high-value, low-cost maintenance like crack repair, and a far higher proportion of its budget on low-value, high-cost interventions like complete resurfacing.

We can have smooth streets

If elected, I will be the only Supervisor with business experience. Reforming Public Works’ street maintenance to drive greater efficiencies and smoother streets will be among my top priorities. I will order a detailed audit of the City’s spending on street repaving to determine conclusively how and why the costs are so dramatically high here compared to other cities. I will hold Public Works accountable for coming into line with best practices around street repaving, and will pursue legislation to eliminate the regulatory barriers to cost-effective work.

We are one of the wealthiest, most talented cities in the world. There’s no reason we shouldn’t have smooth streets.

1. http://www.tripnet.org/docs/CA_Transportation_by_the_Numbers_TRIP_Report_Aug_2018.pdf
2. Evaluators with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s StreetSaver program determine PCI scores. Roads are evaluated by their signs of pavement distress, ride quality, and cracking.
3. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission changed the way it calculates PCI in 2017 so it aligns with federal standards. This meant San Francisco streets saw a whopping 5 point increase from 69 to 74 solely as a result of the scoring change. In this piece, to make comparisons with historical numbers more straightforward, I use pre-2017 PCI scoring methodology.
4. https://sfgov.org/scorecards/livability/pavement-condition-index
5. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10fkdg1VTTgogwkyLBAnJRWm_FEazRM2efCHQ5F-xf1E/edit?usp=sharing
6. https://sfcontroller.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Auditing/Citywide_Benchmarking_Report_CONSOLIDATED.pdf, Page 27–28
7. There are probably also some unavoidable reasons why SF street repaving costs are higher than in other counties, arising from San Francisco’s topography and density. But a data-free City Hall has never quantified what portion of the cost differential between San Francisco and other cities is due to unavoidable versus avoidable costs.

Over the coming months leading up to the November election, I will be sharing stories and data about the top challenges we face in San Francisco — from homelessness and property crime to street safety and neighborhood-specific priorities for District 2. I’ll explore tactics used in other cities and whether they resulted in any meaningful changes. And I’ll present datasets that offer insights into what can be done differently by our city government.

Paid for by Nick Josefowitz for Supervisor 2018. Financial disclosures are available at sfethics.org.