Jerome Wyche Contributor
The City of Madison continues to address the ever-increasing need to repair and upgrade streets and roadways within the city. Recently, the City Commissioners and city staff held a street repair and upgrade workshop to address the 27 miles of paved streets in the City of Madison.
A previous study was completed approximately six or seven years ago, where all the streets in the city were ranked on a scale of one to eight, with one being the worst and eight being in the best shape. The majority of the streets are ranked between three and six. City Engineer, Brent Whitman has been asked to complete another study update and provide the results to the City Commissioners.
The City of Madison has been working diligently with the Department of Transportation to secure grant funding for inner city road repairs. The criteria for receiving these grant awards are linked directly to those streets that lead to a major evacuation route (Highway 90) and must have a business impact on the city. These grant awards are highly competitive, with the City of Madison competing with other cities/municipalities in the state. In short, “there is never enough money to go around.” The challenges that the city faces are compounded, as 85 to 90 percent of the city streets have major utilities (waste water, water and/or gas) underneath the streets. Many of those existing utilities are approaching 60 to 80 years old. Without repairing the crumbling infrastructure, repaving would be counter-productive. Lawson Circle, located between Hwy. 90 and Pinckney Street, is one of those streets that does not have infrastructure underneath it. The City of Madison will fund the repaving of Lawson Circle with taxes received from the state in the form of local option fuel taxes for gasoline/fuel purchased in Madison County.
The re-paving of Lawson Circle was scheduled to begin on Thursday, June 2, and completed on or about Friday, June 3, or Saturday, June 4, at the latest, weather permitting. Citizens are urged to follow traffic direction devices and the instructions of on-scene road repair workers.