Editor's note: This is the third story in a five-part series investigating how parts of Athens' infrastructure are rapidly deteriorating as city officials struggle to find the funds for repairs.
In the steady stream of traffic that moves down Court Street on any given day, vehicles, bicyclists and pedestrians compete for space on a tight brick road created for a different era.
The street, a main Uptown traffic artery, illustrates many of the city's most pressing transportation-related problems, from its rolling bricks and one-way directionality to high-demand parking and throngs of pedestrians and bicyclists that interrupt traffic flow.
Those challenges stem from the history of the city's transportation system, which began two centuries ago as dirt paths worn by pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages. Over time, roads were built, first in brick and then with newer materials.
Although many roads have been paved over to accommodate vehicles, about 30, equipped with enough brick to cover 11 miles of a 10-foot-wide road, have escaped the threat of asphalt. A third of those are in good shape, Street Department Director Andy Stone said, but many are crumbling with age and heavy use.
Quite a few of the Uptown streets
the brick streets were laid right on dirt right on clay
and have lasted 80 (or) 100 years
but they weren't built to withstand the modern traffic
he said.
Red brick roads
Many area residents, including past and present members of Athens City Council, consider the brick streets to be a part of the city's small-town charm.
The brick streets have a lot to say about our community and its history
said Councilwoman Amy Flowers, D-at large. I think it really gives us a unique appearance. It's one of the first things that I noticed when I came to Athens and I came to OU.
Efforts to restore some brick streets that had been paved over date back to the late 1970s, when Council approved $70,000 for the city to strip the asphalt and re-expose the brick on several streets.
In 1990, council members passed a resolution ' more akin to a recommendation than binding legislation ' requesting that the city preserve, if possible, all or part of 10 Uptown streets. Only parts of two of those streets have been paved, and the rest have been renovated with their original bricks or left to wait for repairs.
But some residents and officials are fed up with the prevalence of bumpy, broken roads that settled and shifted over the years.
Why do we need all these brick streets? said Councilwoman Bojinka Bishop, D-2nd Ward. They're slippery. They're messy. So I know that some decisions have been made to preserve some historical character to the city
and I think that's probably a nice thing to do
however G? maybe we don't need quite as many.
Stone has adopted a similar philosophy and created a list dividing the city's brick streets into three categories: those that Council protected, those that need to be paved and those that don't need immediate attention.
The most recent major project was the summer rehabilitation of the intersection of East Union Street and University Terrace, just above Jefferson Hill. That project cost nearly $80,000, more than $50,000 of which went to labor costs because the process of removing the bricks, leveling the foundation and then replacing them is much more labor-intensive than paving.
The brick also is more expensive than asphalt initially ' about $42 per square yard versus $8 per square yard ' but its expected durability is roughly 80 years, triple or quadruple that of paved streets, Stone said, adding that it's hard to put a dollar amount on the value of historical character.
In the past five years, the city has spent more than $3 million on street rehabilitation and improvement projects throughout the city, according to budget records.
Persistent problems
The material deficiencies and uneven roads are effects of the street system's age and can be fixed, but other residual problems are less easily solved.
A study of the Uptown traffic flow conducted in October 1999 tracked traffic patterns and control, street layout and parking, and found that the city had substandard geometry that creates a safety problem
meaning the roads or lanes were misaligned in places.
The study, conducted by the engineering company Burgess and Niple, also reported outdated traffic equipment that the city had slowly started to update. With a variety of replacements and repairs in the years since then, most of the traffic and walkway signals throughout the city are in fairly good condition, said George Enevoldsen, director of Lands and Buildings.
But the biggest concern was the safety hazards presented by high volumes of pedestrians crossing paths with vehicles on crowded streets, especially along Court and Congress streets and the perpendicular streets that connect them.
Using accident data from the three years prior to the study, the Burgess and Niple analysts examined the roads bordering the stretch between Carpenter and West Union streets. Throughout that area, they observed a repeating pattern of accidents involving parked or stopped cars ' a symptom of extensive on-street parking.
The only effective solution to significantly improve traffic safety is to remove on-street parking
the study reported, adding that the potential economic effects of such a move were beyond the scope of the study.
Most city officials say the city needs to add more parking, not cut it.
The study also noted that the amount of pedestrians and bicyclists, who are required to ride in the road and not on Uptown sidewalks, was significant. To improve the safety of people using all sorts of transportation methods, the analysts recommended a variety of possible alternatives, including changing the direction of traffic, closing streets, reconstructing intersections and better coordinating traffic signals. Depending on the combination of those options, the suggested alternatives were estimated to cost up to $1 million.
In the end, city officials decided the proposed changes would be mostly cosmetic and wouldn't significantly improve the amount of traffic the area could handle compared to the current layout, Hazlett said.
Given what we've got to work with
