Jul 14, 2016 By Luke Campbell 3 min read

For the past several years, South Fayette Township’s budget for road maintenance has fluctuated around the $300,000 mark.

However, following a road study last November ordered by the township and conducted by a third-party group to assess, classify and prioritize the 70-plus miles of township roads, that budget is going to more than triple.

In the comprehensive study, which ranked thoroughfares on a 1 to 10 scale, portions of six different roads within the township scored at the very bottom, including portions of Bowman, Cecil-Reissing and Cecil-Sturgeon roads. They displayed severe distress and an extensive loss of surface integrity, ultimately failing the study.

“Those roads, which get very little traffic, are in such bad shape that if we don’t do something about it, we are going to lose them completely,” said Butch Truitt, South Fayette Township’s director of public works. “We’re going to try and get them fixed up enough to make them passable.”

Another issue was the fair conditions on the two most heavily used roads within the township, Hickory Grade and Alpine, as they showed moderate and severe surface raveling; longitudinal, transverse and block cracking; and some areas of rutting.

The results didn’t come as a shock to Truitt.

“It played into what we thought was going to happen,” he said. “Some of the roads in the plan needed attention, and there wasn’t enough money to go around to keep up with everything. Now, we have to put forth the effort to correct that problem.”

Correcting the problem is going to be far from inexpensive, as the total repairs that need to be taken care of over time for the roads within the township are surpassing $32 million.

The township’s public works crew has already begun preliminary work on 11 miles of roads expected to be improved by the end of the year, the first installment of the newly allotted budget of approximately $1 million per year for road maintenance.

Storm inlet improvements, seal coating, base repairs and paving are expected to be done by both the township and Victor Paving, a Monongahela-based company that has done work around South Fayette Township in the past.

“They were real good to work with before,” said Truitt. “They treat the residents really well and if somebody has a problem it is addressed.”

The two connector roads, Hickory Grade and Alpine, will have base repairs then are going to be seal coated in hopes of preserving them for the next three to four years while the township catches up on the roads that were graded at the lowest.

Other work is scheduled for sections of Bowman Road, Boys Home Road, Cecil-Reissing Road, Cecil-Sturgeon Road, Highland Creek Drive, Magnolia Street, McVey Street, McVey Street Extension, Old Oakdale Road, Ridge Road and Sygan Road, weather permitting.

Residents directly affected by the construction will receive indication or notification prior to the work being started.