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Challenges in Utility Coordination and Implementation of Pavement Degradation Fees

Abstract

The City of Calgary (The City) has a road network of nearly 16,000 lane-kilometres with an asset value of about $11 Billion. On an extensive roadway network like this which is further growing it can be very expensive and disruptive to carry out maintenance activities on sections affected by utility cuts. A forensic investigation was conducted to determine the level of impact on the serviceability of pavements in Calgary due to the utility cuts and the findings were presented at TAC Conference in 2014 [1]. (Mohammad, 2014) The study estimated 22 percent as the loss of service life. Based on the findings, The City decided to engage the utility companies, developers and other stakeholders in implementing the pavement degradation fees.
In 2015, The City implemented pavement degradation fees to recover costs associated with reduction of service life and any maintenance costs associated with it during its life cycle to bring the road back to the condition prior to the utility cut. While pavement degradation fees is charged on all utility cuts, surface restoration fees has been historically applied to roads with Visual Condition Index (VCI) greater than 7.0 and/or roads less than two years old.
This paper presents the implementation process and associated challenges where stakeholders from various quarters were involved. The paper identifies the steps taken to improve the coordination of right-of-way projects between The City, developers, contractors and Utilities.

Flat rate fees for pavement degradation and surface restoration – statistics from the past
Considerations of roadway classification, pavement surface condition (PQI), age etc.
Exchanging information on planned and on-going construction work in The City’s rights-of-way,
Coordinating the scheduling of right-of-way work.

Conference Paper Details

Session title:
Safe Management of Utility Infrastructure within our Roadways
Author(s):
Lakkavalli, V.
Poon, B.
Dhanoa, S.
Topics:
Construction, Maintenance and operations
Year:
2015