Plano Plans Proactive Approach to Road Maintenance

Plano Public Works developing proposal to fill defects such as potholes, cracks

Problems with potholes are popping up in Plano, and the city is making a plan of action.

"We're doing more work than we ever did in the past, yet we're getting further behind," Public Works Director Gerald Cosgrove said.

Public Works employees are in the process of presenting a plan to the City Council that requests, to start, about $700,000 for a prevention program, an extra crew to fill potholes and to send other projects to the private sector. The project will focus exclusively on maintenance.

"It's definitely more proactive," Cosgrove said. "We're trying to get that asset to last longer than if we didn't maintain it."

His department has named about a dozen stretches of roadway that are considered to be the city's worst in terms of defects."

"It may be a pothole; it may be a crack," he said.

The biggest problem area is Parker Road, west of Central Expressway. One stretch between Independence Parkway and Custer Road has as many as 295 defects per mile.

"It gets to a point where it's just too much, and our goal is to catch it now before it gets to a point where we cannot manage it," Cosgrove said.

Plano voters earlier this year approved a more than $40 million bond package for street projects, but that money will go to new road construction, the completion of existing road replacement and infrastructure work.

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