T’is the season.
From mid-March to mid-November, sidewalk repair and roadwork construction get underway, sometimes causing temporary lane closures and traffic delays. The timing not only correlates with the warmer seasons, but also with when the asphalt and concrete plants open.
According to Public Works Director Jay Marcotte, the work is done each year to achieve a pavement condition index (PCI) of 70 or higher for both sidewalks and roads. In 2017, a condition index was completed. A subsequent one was done in 2022, keeping to guidelines that indexes should be updated every three to five years, Marcotte said.
“This one was… more intense,” he recalled. “We videoed every sidewalk. The guy literally rode around on his mountain bike with a GoPro and recorded every square inch of sidewalks we have in town, which is pretty cool.”
That’s about 99 miles of sidewalk, according to Marcotte.
Pavement improvement projects are funded in two different ways: the Pavement Management Program, for which Town Meeting approved in June an allocation of $2.05 million (partly funded by state dollars); and a sidewalk repair fund, for which Town Meeting allocated in June $525,053 (partly funded by the 2024 Override Mitigation Fund). The latter fund grows 2.5% each year, in line with Proposition 2 ½, according to the fiscal year 2027 budget book.
Most recently crews have been working on reconstructing the jughandle on Concord Avenue, a project that includes removing the mulch strip and asphalt sidewalk to extend the parking area. In total, there will be 50 angled parking spaces (including three handicap spaces), half of which will be angled north, the other half, south. A list of roads and sidewalks set for repair this year is available on the Department of Public Works’ page on the town website.
At Town Meeting in June, Marcotte estimated the town would need $25 million to address all the sidewalk needs in town, and another half a billion dollars for roads. But short of that kind of money, how does the town prioritize the repair of its 99 miles of sidewalk and 77.9 miles of public road?
“From [the 2022] study we had done for the sidewalks, Glenn Clancy, at the time, was focused on safe routes to school… We’d take the worst and work our way through,” Marcotte recently said in an interview with The Voice. “I think we’re finalizing that in the next year or two.”
The department is also focusing on tree root damage to sidewalks, he said.
“Our focus has been tree damage for the last three years,” Marcotte said at Town Meeting in June. “We’re still on that. Our inventory has identified all the hot spots.”
According to Marcotte, the town averages in the 60s for the PCI. Whereas the Pavement Management Program is geared more toward sidewalk repairs coinciding with road repairs or upgrades, the sidewalk repair fund is “laser-focused” on spot repairs, particularly fixing damage caused by tree stumps.
“The town never really invested in spot repair,” Marcotte said. “The town was funding it in the $60,000 range on average, maybe less. It came in two chunks. Three years ago, [Town Meeting] approved an additional $250,000.”
The amount of work the town can accomplish each year is partly tied to material costs. In Belmont, 80% of sidewalks are concrete, 20% are asphalt—and concrete is significantly more expensive.
“The argument [against asphalt] is always, ‘You’re devaluing my house,’” he explained. “When they mention value, I immediately tell them your neighbors [in Lexington]— they’re the exact opposite. They’re 80% asphalt, and their property values are the same as Belmont, if not higher.”
Another factor affecting how far Belmont can stretch its dollar is the varying degree of work needed on particular roads and sidewalks. Every year, the town aims to “get the most bang for [its] buck.”
“If you have a road that’s a 30 [on the PCI], that’s a full-depth [repair],” he said. “That’s going to be the most expensive. Then, if you have another road that is a 52, that could be a mill and overlay, and that will bring it back up to an 80. Your full-depth is back up to an 80 or 90, but that cost is going to be considerably different.”
