funding and maintenance issues for walkways: march 15, 2016

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FAIRFAX COUNTY TRANSPORTATION ADVISORY COMMISSIONFAIRFAX COUNTY TRAILS AND SIDEWALKS COMMITTEE

MARCH 15TH 2016 JOINT MEETING

FUNDING AND MAINTENANCE ISSUES FOR WALKWAYS

Maintenance and Stormwater Management Division

March 15, 2016

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TAC/TSC MARCH 15, 2016 JOINT MEETING: FUNDING & MAINTENANCE ISSUES FOR WALKWAYS


PROVIDED QUESTIONS:• I was asked to prepare my discussion for the joint TAC/TSC meeting on March 15, 2016,

based on the following questions:

• 1. What is the current funding mechanism for trail maintenance?• 2. What would be the ideal budget for maintaining existing county trails?• 3. What can be done to increase trail maintenance funding in the County?• 4. What are the legal and liability considerations for trail maintenance or lack thereof?• 5. How does County staff prioritize trails and sidewalks for

completion and for maintenance. Does it have “tiers” of trail and sidewalks quality and connectivity? If the County was able to secure additional funds for maintenance, how would County staff recommend the funds be allocated across the approximately 700 miles of Fairfax County walkways?

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AGENDA:I’m going to review some metrics for a baseline perspective and rearranged the questions into the following agenda:

• 1. Inventory metrics and background information:• County Inventory metrics and other GIS inventory estimates• Who maintains• Who installs• Current Walkway Condition

• 2. What is the current funding mechanism for walkway maintenance?• 3. What are the legal and liability considerations for the lack of walkway maintenance?• 4. How does County staff prioritize walkway repairs and maintenance:

a) Does it have “tiers” of trail and sidewalks quality and connectivity? b) With the increased funding, how would County staff recommend the funds be allocated across the approximately 669 miles of Fairfax County walkways and 69 pedestrian bridges?

• 5. What would be the ideal budget for maintaining existing County walkways?

• 6. What can be done to increase walkway maintenance funding in the County?

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#1a: INVENTORY:• Who Maintains Walkways:

• Maintenance and Stormwater Management Division 669 miles of walkways and 69 pedestrian bridges:– 238 miles of trails– 51 miles of School Sidewalks(cut-through walkways for convenience/school bus vs walking)– 380 miles of Public Street Sidewalks

• Fairfax County Park Authority– 323 miles of Stream Valley trails and others

• Virginia Department of Transportation– 1700 miles of Public Street Sidewalks – Very few trails (e.g., Sections of Beulah Road, Fairfax Parkway)

• Other Agencies / Volunteer Organizations / Homeowners Associations 1100 miles:

– Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority– Internal HOA Walkways - Public Access Easements– Private Equestrians– Federal

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#1b: BACKGROUND:

Who Installs Walkways:

• Developers constructed the majority of walkways as required: – Subdivision Ordinance– Comprehensive Plan (Trails Plan)– Proffers– Public Facilities Manual

• Public entities or other groups such as volunteers, through discretionary spending: e.g., 2007 Bond Referendum of $15 million for Pedestrian improvements and the Nov 4, 2014, $100 million transportation bond referendum, of which approximately $78 million has been allocated to pedestrian improvement projects. Private and federal walkways projects.

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#1c: Current Walkway Condition:

• Complete Walkway Assessment was completed Fall of 2013:– Provided 8500 geo-located photos with associated assessment metadata– Hyper-linked the photos and assessment data into the GIS– Defects: e.g. castings, cracking, faulting, obstructions, settlements etc.

7Maintenance and Stormwater Management Division



8Maintenance and Stormwater Management Division



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• Results: Countywide Summary:– Poor Condition #1 is considered hazardous and in need of repair now– Fair Condition #2 are deteriorating walkways and will need repair or

become Condition #1 within 5-10 years (Study Late 2013 so now 2-7 years)

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• Trouble with Point Assessments: Fixing the aforementioned failed point sections only provides a patchwork of repairs that will not renew the trails but simply this still only takes care of a failure in a reactive approach. Note sidewalks are different and can be done by sections but still there are other factors to consider.

• Staff recommends a proactive annual renewal program for the existing County walkways and pedestrian bridges for sustainable reasons.

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#2: Funding mechanism for walkway maintenance• Operational Funding ($360,000): for the funding of staff, 5.50 FTE

(maintenance crews) and 0.25 FTE (part time engineering support), and a smaller amount for tools/dump fees/materials and CLF support. This fund supports MSMD staff for: vegetation clearing, welding (hand rails/pedestrian bridges), painting, spot trip hazards, carpentry support (pedestrian decking), small area damage by storms (trees blocking/trail damage), and spot ADA

• Capital Maintenance Funding (proposed 3rd quarter adjustment: $837,664 + proposed FY17 $400,000): larger project/repairs, walkway rehab, more/larger ADA projects, larger bridge projects, special skills (consultant/contractors), and larger volume of work (MSMD crews have decreased from the mid-1980’s although the inventory has significantly increased).

• BOS contingency funding or support: 2 bridge projects, 2 walkway repairs, and developer proffer funding for maintenance.

• Volunteer Work: Reston Association, GFTB, and HCCA

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#2: Funding mechanism for walkway maintenance• Maintenance Expenditures Per Mile of Walkway

Note: 81 miles (12%) is less ten years old and 258 miles (39%) is older than 20 years old Note: Net worth of the walkways and pedestrian bridges is approximately $220 Million

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InventoryCapital Maintenance Budget

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#3: Legal and liability considerations:

• I am a professional engineer and an asset manager not a lawyer

• However, as an Asset Manager I believe walkways promote multi-modal solutions for ongoing traffic problems and well maintained walkway:– Encourages exercise as well as other health benefits related to an active and

healthy lifestyle– Reduces carbon footprint and promotes air quality improvement– Provides more social spaces and better/easier neighborhood watch

viewpoints and improves community connectivity– Improves neighborhood housing values and provides economic

improvement benefits– Promotes safety; walking on the edge of the road when walkways are not

present or damaged is dangerous.

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#4 How does County staff prioritize walkway repairs and maintenance• Do you have “tiers” of trail and sidewalks quality and connectivity?• With the increased funding, how would County staff recommend the funds be

allocated across the approximately 669 miles of Fairfax County walkways and 69 pedestrian bridges?

• We used the Assessment Study data and solve the point assessment methodology issue for more accurate TPE as well as targeted the most used segments:– MSMD staff linked the obtain data points and metadata to DPWES walkway asset ID’s

through the proximity status of each photo.– MSMD staff made maps showing where the walkway conditions as well as the proximity to

certain community resources, such as schools, VRE/Metro stations, community centers, and commercial centers.

– Used GIS walkway lengths, widths, and materials to develop costs– Thus, MSMD staff can prioritize the needed walkway repairs as related to pedestrian

usage.

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#4 How does County staff prioritize walkway repairs and maintenance

• What about that point assessment issue?– The process that we used created an integer that represented the calculation of the product

of inverse of contractor severity scores and length. Assessment rankings were recoded to scale proportionally to damage. Preprocessing was done on walkway points where if a point was too far away from a valid DPWES walkway then that record data was removed. Further, if a walkway was given multiple different severity ratings then all of the severity ratings were combined. The equation used for the ranking was inverse severity rank multiplied by length where a higher score indicates a greater amount of degradation.

– Equation:

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DISTRICT GIS/MSMDWALKWAYSEGMENT TPE

GIS/MSMDONLY PRIORITY WALKWAYS TPE

2013 WALKWAY ASSESSMENTSTUDY TPE

BRADDOCK $609,741 $95,540 $130,060DRANESVILLE $2,318, 045 $534,456 $1,610,334HUNTER MILL $1,079,857 $36,119 $498,115LEE $1,484,891 $458,274 $1,007,648MASON $685,046 $189,923 $644,486MOUNT VERNON $1,006,490 $362,745 $747,382PROVIDENCE $912,116 $452,206 $782,428SPRINGFIELD $609,741 $196,004 $318,986SULLY $1,703,367 $851,900 $943,782Total $10,409,294 $3,177,167 $6,683,230

WALKWAY SEGMENT VS POINT ASSESSMENT REHAB COSTS

• NOTE: Priority Walkways are walkways that are within/touch the 500 foot buffer of target centers (i.e. Schools, town centers/commercial, transit, and public)

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#5 What would be the ideal budget for maintaining existing County walkways?

• Assessment Study recommendations: Basically catch up immediately on the backlog of failures ($2.5 million) and then work on then on the deteriorating ($4.2 million). So to sustain the ($220 million) walkway network with $420,000 annually (escalate for inflation) would be about 10-11 years to catch up. – The Assessment study also stated that the assets last 50-years and 2% of failure throughout

the network (failing and deteriorating percentage is 3.7%); thus, 2% X $220 = $4.4 million per year for annual maintenance funding.

HOWEVER:• Considering renewal issues or the point assessment vs the segment walkway

rehab issue for the backlog work of $10.4 million, it about 18 years to catch up. Again, the fair or deteriorating walks should last another about 8 years.

• Thus, to catch up before the deteriorating segments fail (8 years) would require a sustained funding (with inflation escalations) around $1.3 million. This assumes the “Good” walks in the network deteriorate at very slow rate and no inventory is added.

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#5 What would be the ideal budget for maintaining existing County walkways?

REALITY CHECKS:

• For the last 5 years, MSMD averaged about 5 miles a year (value is approximately $330,000/mile) of added walkways and with the $78 million pedestrian bond initiative. This could be around $100 million in additional infrastructure to take care of after we catch up with the backlog (about 8-10 years) of failing and deteriorating inventory. Should the maintenance budget be increased due to this increased inventory?

• Recent History: – The last two years our budget was $300,000 per year so we had to save for two bridge repairs that

TPE was $460,000 to fix. We also had about dozen bridge issues in last several years which required stop gap repairs, rehabilitation, or replacement. Thus, we have done very little trail and sidewalk rehab in last several years because of these two critical bridge repairs and or other repairs required us to reserve our annual capital budget for these repairs. Exception is pilot project of precision sidewalk cutting.

– A year ago, we added an Engineer IV to the transportation maintenance program; for the last six years we had no full time transportation support positions and recently we have been approved for another transportation maintenance position: Project Manager

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#6 What can be done to increase trail maintenance funding in the County?

• Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and the County Executive have a hard job:

http://fairfaxnet.fairfaxcounty.gov/News/PublishingImages/budget-where-it-goes.jpg

Additional Information

For additional information, please contact

www.fairfaxcounty.gov/dpwes

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William Schell

703-877-2846

[email protected]

funding and maintenance issues for walkways: march 15, 2016

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