The value of street smarts
For Victoria Winer, driving over the tire-munching, axle-crunching potholes, ruts, cracks and dips along the alley behind her North Hills home feels like an off-road adventure.
“If we hadn’t been first-time buyers but people who knew what to look for, the condition of the streets around our house would be something we would have thought twice about,” said Winer, who purchased her four-bedroom home in 1993 and has no immediate plans to sell.
Still, with California’s financial crisis reducing state and local funds earmarked for road repairs and a mounting list of work to be done, Winer said she plans to talk to city officials about the condition of her neighborhood streets. She said she believes homeowners who put off considering the effect of street conditions on a sale could regret it.
The wait for repairs throughout the city of Los Angeles could be four to five years because of budget cuts, according to Councilman Jack Weiss, who represents areas of Sherman Oaks and West Los Angeles.
And of course not every request results in a work order. Bill Robertson, director of the Bureau of Street Services for Los Angeles, said safety, access and condition -- not curb appeal or vocal residents -- play major roles in the selection of streets for road repairs.
Todd Williamson’s Laurel Canyon street fit all three categories. Homeowners had petitioned the city since 1979 to pave the narrow one-lane road along Grandview Drive. An exasperated Williamson wrote to the Bureau of Street Services in April 2000, and on May 30 last year -- three years after his letter arrived and seven days after the work began -- the residents of Grandview Drive above Yucca Trail had a new road.
Better access has made the road safer, decreased wear on Williamson’s SUV and provided crucial access for emergency vehicles. The new road also significantly increased the value of his $1-million-plus home, Williamson believes. The home was appraised for $300,000 more in September than it had in March.
As with chipped paint and other external factors, dilapidated street conditions can play on the psyche of prospective buyers, said Mike Galieote, an agent at Pinnacle Estate Properties Inc. in Northridge, decreasing property values by 3% to 5%.
“It certainly looks a lot nicer when you have a prospective buyer coming to look at your home and the road is even and there are no tree roots or potholes,” Galieote said.
Road conditions affect the entire community and often indicate what is going on in the neighborhood, according to Tom O’Rourke, an agent at Prudential California Realty, John Aaroe Division, in Los Angeles. “One pothole becomes two. It sets the tone that no one really cares.”
Ultimately, O’Rourke noted, homeowners pay the price for rough roads. A case in point: a three-bedroom house on Wonderland Avenue in Los Angeles listed at $790,000 that sat on the market “four months longer than it should have,” according to O’Rourke, and eventually sold for $750,000. A tree root that rose about 8 inches from the paved road leading up to the house, slowing cars and damaging mufflers, was a major sticking point.
Similarly, a series of potholes that lined Lake Glen Drive in Beverly Hills Post Office, an area with the 90210 ZIP Code outside of Beverly Hills, contributed to the delayed sale of a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house for almost seven months. Repairs completed, the house sold within a few weeks for the asking price.
Although O’Rourke believes conditions can drop property values by up to 10%, he said homeowners who get timelines for street repairs can use the information as a selling point.
But buyer James Wecker, who experienced a six-month period of utility-related road cuts and subsequent repairs after purchasing his Hollywood Hills home in December 2002, recommended that buyers take the initiative to inquire about the condition of the roads and pending street projects, get timelines for the work and make sure the area will be returned to its original condition.
“They notified us when they were going to be doing the upgrades to the water system,” Wecker said, “but they don’t necessarily tell you that your street is going to be torn up for six or eight months.”
Lack of coordination between city departments and unforeseen events like broken sewer lines can mean a road is ripped up several times. Most street service bureaus share information, however, said Dean Allison, director of public works for Rancho Palos Verdes, so local utility companies can plan upgrades to coincide with scheduled paving projects.
In addition to coordinating with utility companies, street bureaus notify residents by mail about one month before street repairs and provide contact numbers so residents can make arrangements for special needs, reschedule deliveries and turn off sprinklers to avoid wetting newly paved roads.
Most cities issue reminder notices a few days before the work begins and arrange for garbage trucks to come early. Although residents may have limited street parking and access during work hours, usually 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., it’s normally for short periods.
Street repairs can take one to four weeks. But Robertson said his department has suspended or deferred work because of weddings, graduation parties and residential construction proj- ects.
When notified about problems by proactive residents, Weiss’ City Council office tries to ensure that potholes are filled within a few days.
The promise of pothole patrols and quick fixes may be welcome news for some, but Weiss cautioned that the time to think about the quality of your street is not right before you put the house up for sale.
“Look down the road a few years and contact the city,” he said. “So that when the time does come to sell, your time in the queue has already arrived.”
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Where to go to get the word on the streets
How do know if your street is in line for a new look? The mayor’s office or the public works department is a good starting point. Many city council offices review street paving requests and prioritize them based upon need, street condition, the amount of road to be resurfaced and available funding.
In addition, many cities have websites with construction updates, development projects and service request options.
Here is a sampling of local resources:
Anaheim: (714) 765-6860, www.anaheim.net/publicworks.
Beverly Hills: (310) 285-2467, www.beverlyhills.org.
Long Beach: (562) 570-2700, www.ci.long-beach.ca.us/pw.
Los Angeles: 311, www.cityofla.org/BOSS.
Pasadena: (626) 744-4158, www.ci.pasadena.ca.us.
Riverside: (909) 351-6127, www.ci.riverside.ca.us/pworks.
San Bernardino: (909) 384-5045, www.ci.san-bernardino.ca.us.
San Diego: (619) 527-7500, www.sandiego.gov/street-div/info.shtml.
NBC 7/39’s Pothole Patrol: Report potholes and view a list of San Diego’s worst potholes at www.nbcsandiego.com/traffic/2008743/detail.html.
Santa Ana: (714) 647-3380, www.ci.santa-ana.ca.us.
Santa Clarita: (661) 294-2520, www.santa-clarita.com.
Santa Monica: (310) 458-4991, https://santa-monica.org/cm.
Simi Valley: (805) 583-6400, www.ci.simi-valley.ca.us.
Ventura: (805) 652-4590, www.ci.ventura.ca.us.
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Los Angeles is long on roads, short on funds
The city of Los Angeles has the nation’s highest share of urban streets and highways in poor condition, according to a report released in May by the Road Information Program, a national nonprofit transportation research group based in Washington, D.C.
The study rated 67% of the roadways as unacceptable, 31% as acceptable and only 2% as good. Also on the 10-worst list among urban areas with populations of more than 1 million was San Diego (61% of roads unacceptable, 35% acceptable and 5% good) and the San Bernardino-Riverside region (42% unacceptable, 55% acceptable and 3% good).
Bill Robertson, director for the Bureau of Street Services for the city of Los Angeles, said Los Angeles has the nation’s largest municipal street system, with about 6,500 miles of streets -- almost enough for a two-lane highway from California to the East Coast and back.
Weather, traffic and frequency of maintenance affect pavement conditions. But the most heavily trafficked streets in the Western states last 16 to 20 years. California residential streets have a life expectancy of 25 to 30 years.
To determine which roads get resurfaced, most cities have a pavement management system that uses information about a street’s construction and maintenance history to determine the rate of deterioration, identify maintenance needs and prioritize work orders by rating each road based on a pavement condition index that ranges from 1 to 100. A recently resurfaced street, for example, would rate between 90 and 100.
The cost per mile to repave a street ranges from $175,000 to $200,000, but after a street hits a critical rating, such as 60, restoration costs are three to four times higher.
According to Robertson, his department would need to resurface about 350 miles of streets a year for 10 years to bring the city’s system to a rating of 85. And it would need to resurface 290 miles a year thereafter to maintain the roads. But a reduction in the annual resurfacing budget from $53 million in 2002 to $38 million in 2003 has left only enough funds to repair 116 miles of city streets during the period from July 2003 to July 2004, down from 232 in 2002-2003 and 260 the year before.
Road repairs include:
* Resurfacing overlays: the removal and application of a 2-inch layer of hot paving material to an existing road that makes the surface like new.
* Slurry seals: an oil-based preservation process that seals surface cracks from air and water, improves skid resistance and lasts about seven years.
* Pothole filling: a temporary fix for cracked areas and ruts of up to 50 square feet.
Homeowners may have to wait for road repairs, but safety and aesthetics prompt some people to fix their sidewalks. Most cities issue free permits, and Robertson said the cost to repair 200 square feet of residential frontage is $1,200 to $1,500.
Michelle Hofmann is a Los Angeles freelance writer. She can be reached at michellehofmann@earthlink.net.