Tacoma has spent $371M since ‘15 to fix streets. Why are its main routes getting worse?

TACOMA – A nearly $200 million tax package to improve Tacoma streets has been lauded by the city, almost a decade since it was passed by voters, for having transformed residential streets.

The encouraging results from 2015’s Prop A and Prop 3 is reflected in the data. The Pavement Condition Index rating, a 0-100 scoring tool used by the city to assess pavement condition, increased for residential streets as a whole over the past nine years from 61 to 68, according to the city.

In Tacoma, the goal is 70 – the baseline threshold for “good condition.”

The intentional focus on addressing neighborhood infrastructure came with a price. Tacoma’s arterial streets, the higher-traffic volume streets such as Portland and 6th avenues that connect motorists to different parts of the city, dramatically declined over the same period, from a total PCI rating of 58 to 45, data shows.

As the 2015 streets initiative sets to expire in 2025, city officials want voters to embrace a second version of the plan that would turn the attention to improving arterial streets and multimodal transportation for the next 10 to 15 years.

If backed by voters, the next iteration would be marked by a key question: How can the city ensure the opposite effect doesn’t happen, leading to a significant setback of residential-street progress?

In an interview, Public Works director Ramiro Chavez said the city didn’t ignore arterial work over the past several years even as it concentrated on residential streets. Likewise, he vowed that the city wouldn’t neglect residential streets during the next phase just because the focus would be shifting to arterials and multimodal transportation.

“So it will be arterials, multimodal and continue to invest on residential,” Chavez said about a new streets initiative, adding that asset management was the aim.

The city views a new tax passage as an important funding mechanism for mending Tacoma’s streets. Half of the city’s arterials need reconstruction, which is significantly more costly than maintenance, according to city pavement manager Erik Sloan.

In May, city lawmakers approved an ordinance that provides flexibility to use funds from the city’s Transportation Benefit District, which administers the streets initiative, toward street and transportation maintenance and operations. Chavez said that the move necessarily increased Tacoma’s capacity to maintain the residential-street infrastructure it was successful in building.

Different directions

Residential streets are better off than they were in November 2015 when city voters approved two propositions authorizing additional money for street improvements. The subsequent effort to target residential streets resulted in a steep drop-off of maintenance activities on arterials, according to data obtained by The News Tribune in a public records request.

From 2008 to 2015, Tacoma performed maintenance on nearly 276 lane miles of arterial streets and on 116 lane miles of residential streets, a News Tribune analysis of the data shows. Between 2016 and 2023, following the passage of the streets-tax package, the work on residential streets significantly increased to almost 515 lane miles. Meanwhile, fewer than 5 lane miles of arterials were addressed.

The work reflected asphalt repairs, chip sealing and crack sealing but not arterial capital projects or asphalt patching, according to the data and city spokesperson Maria Lee. Chip sealing involves applying hot liquid asphalt on a street and covering it with chip rock rolled with a rubber-tired roller, sealing the old asphalt and creating a new surface. Crack sealing consists of filling a crack with rubberized asphalt that moves with pavement and protects against moisture.

The tax package featured two measures. Prop A increased the sales tax by 0.1% and Prop 3, which passed by just 22 votes, increased property taxes by 20 cents per $1,000 of assessed value and city utilities bill taxes by 1.5%.

The package, initially expected to raise $175 million, was projected to reach $199 million through the end of 2025, Chavez said earlier this year. Including grant-matched funds and other dollars, the streets initiative represented a $371 million investment in roads, according to a presentation by the Public Works Department in February.

Of the funding collected through the two propositions – plus $30 million in new city funding – $156 million was attributed to residential streets; $30 million to walking and biking infrastructure; and $25 million to arterials and freight access, according to the city’s spending plan. Some arterial work was accounted for in $111 million in federal, state and local grants, Lee said, and $30 million was tied to utility maintenance.

Despite complications stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, Tacoma addressed more than 4,000 residential blocks by this past spring and anticipated getting beyond 6,000 by the end of next year, according to Chavez – surpassing the city’s 5,600-block goal in the process.

The state of Tacoma’s entire street network, consisting of 2,000-plus lane miles composed primarily of asphalt, offers insight into the progress that the city has made in improving the condition of residential streets, which make up 61% of the network. In the city, PCI ratings are characterized as such: 70 or more equals “good” condition; 41 to 69 is deemed “fair”; and anything below 40 is designated as “poor.”

One quarter of city-street blocks are in poor condition, according to a News Tribune analysis of 2023 city data, but residential and arterial streets’ respective contributions to that problem have gone in divergent ways.

The percentage of poor-condition residential blocks shrunk from 23% to 16% between 2019 and 2023, while the rate in good shape increased from 41% to nearly 57% over the same period, the data shows.

In contrast, 32% of arterial blocks were in poor condition five years ago – a figure that leaped to almost 48% by 2023, according to the News Tribune’s analysis. The percentage of good-condition blocks rose slightly over the same time frame, from 20 to 22.

During a late-June presentation, Sloan told the City Council that the minimal work that had been completed on arterial streets had helped to avoid a further decline.

‘Opportunity moving forward’

As the city prepares to ask voters to buy into a new streets initiative, the contrasting trajectory of residential- and arterial-street conditions provides a fuller picture of the expiring initiative’s progress over the past nine years.

Council member Kristina Walker previously served as the executive director of the nonprofit transportation advocacy group Downtown On the Go. Walker said that the initiative approved four years before she joined the council had accomplished what it set out to do.

“Clearly, we don’t ever want to see things declining but that’s, I think, the opportunity moving forward, is to focus on arterials,” Walker said in an interview. “That’s clear that’s a big need to the next streets initiative.”

Walker, who noted that arterial roads were more expensive to build, said that she believed the city was right to home in on residential streets since neighborhoods were a center-point for residents.

“That’s where we start and end our day,” she said.

The new initiative, unlike in 2015, won’t be presented to voters as separate requests next year, according to Walker, because city lawmakers might extend one element – the sales tax –on their own. The council might send a ballot measure to voters that could include utility- and property-tax increases, Lee confirmed. Lee said that city staff were still working on an analysis of how much a new initiative could raise and the council was likely to be briefed on the projection in November.

Three key metrics – PCI, crash data and Tacoma’s equity index – would be leveraged to make decisions about which streets to work on, Walker said. Echoing Chavez’s assurance that residential streets wouldn’t be forgotten, Walker added that there would be dollars dedicated to maintenance for those.

“Just because we’re focusing on one, doesn’t mean that the other one disappears,” she said.

Daren Holter is a recently retired city employee who worked in streets operations as a grounds maintenance crew leader. Holter said the prospect of voting affirmatively on a new streets initiative was a tough sell.

Holter, who has raised his concerns about the current initiative during council meetings, said that it initially had been sold as a mechanism for addressing both residential streets and main arterials. Fueled by his belief that the city’s intention was misleading, coupled with his reservations over the May ordinance allowing leeway for initiative spending, he said he couldn’t support a new plan unless it’s drawn up differently.

“We as voters, we just want to make sure that our money is being spent wisely and it’s spent for what it’s supposed to be spent for,” he said in an interview.

Residential streets were the city’s primary target early on. In a 2015 presentation months before the tax measures went to voters, then-Mayor Marilyn Strickland outlined planned spending that was significantly directed toward residential streets. It was similar to the city’s current plan, except it had called for $5 million more for arterials and freight access. Resolution language for the ballot measures indicated that tax revenue would fund maintenance for residential and arterial streets, among other efforts, but did not specify the extent of efforts for each.

The Office of the Washington State Auditor found no issues with Tacoma’s use of streets initiative funds after examining it and other city financial affairs for 2022.

Progress versus perception

Tacoma’s streets initiative bumped the city’s overall PCI rating from 59 to 61, still short of Tacoma’s target of reaching 70 – a number that Chavez said other jurisdictions also strive to reach as a general measurement of street management.

Under a second streets initiative, the target would remain the same.

In a May survey conducted on behalf of Tacoma, 55% of 502 participants initially said they would oppose a new initiative, presented to them as a 15-year plan increasing property tax by 25 cents per $1,000 of assessed value and earnings tax on utility companies by 2% – all slightly more than the expiring initiative had requested.

Support for the plan, expected to cost the average Tacoman household $10 monthly, increased to 58% after respondents were read statements about the measure’s impact, according to the survey.

“There is a large gulf between the residents’ perception of the condition of Tacoma’s streets and what the City says about its progress funded by the 2015 initiative,” the survey’s administer, EMC Research, concluded.

City officials said it’s anticipated that voters would be asked to approve a new initiative in April.

“If the voters of Tacoma don’t entrust us for the next 15 years with another streets initiative, we just have to go back to the drawing board, see what we need to do,” Chavez said.

In Council member Sarah Rumbaugh’s northeast Tacoma district, arterial streets in “rather shabby shape” are a major concern for constituents, she said.

Like other city officials, Rumbaugh underscored that street quality wasn’t the lone consideration. Safety should also be a key facet of the next phase, she said, meaning embracing a complete-street philosophy that has been the hallmark of the city’s Vision Zero initiative, which aims to end traffic deaths and severe injuries by 2035. Streets needed sidewalks, additional and repainted crosswalks, flashing beacons, bike lanes and other accompaniments.

“You wouldn’t notice the quality as much if you couldn’t drive 35 mph on the street,” she said. “But because people are driving it like a freeway, you think it needs to be in freeway shape.”

Rumbaugh, who was elected in 2021, wouldn’t second-guess whether it had been the right decision in 2015 to concentrate as much effort on residential streets, which she also called important. When asked how the city might avoid residential-street degradation to the degree that arterials had declined, Rumbaugh acknowledged that she wasn’t sure.

“I think that we are going to constantly have that see-saw where you’re trying to get the right balance,” she said.