This pie graph shows the distribution of roadway condition ratings in Riverside as of 2024. Nearly 70% of roads evaluated were found to be in good or better condition. | Courtesy of Christopher B. Burke Engineering, Ltd. 
This bar chart compares the distribution of road quality in 2014 to the findings from this year. | Courtesy of Christopher B. Burke Engineering, Ltd.
Riverside has approved the findings of a new study of the quality of its roads, which will help village staff in deciding which roads need to be improved next.
At the Oct. 17 meeting, Riverside trustees voted to adopt the pavement study, the village’s first since 2014, after hearing a presentation from Village Engineer Tracy Wais of Christopher B. Burke Engineering, Ltd., who conducted the study. She presented the board with three cost options for annual road maintenance programs through 2034, but trustees were not asked to settle on one.
“A pavement management program is really important to maximize the pavement’s useful life, postpone expensive pavement rehabilitations and reconstructions, improve the ride quality of the roadway system and provide a cost-effective way of protecting the village’s pavement infrastructure,” she said.
Wais explained that she inspected 30 miles of roadway throughout the first half of the year in order to give each road a pavement condition index, or PCI, rating out of 100 representing its condition. Roads rated 90 to100 were in excellent condition, meaning they had likely just been reconstructed; from there, each stratum of 10 represents a lower quality of roadway, from “very good” at 80 to 89 through “serious” at 20 to 29. Any road rated 19 or below has already failed and needs total reconstruction to become useable.
“The roadways were rated by a visual inspection, looking for potholes, cracks, other signs of distress and overall rideability,” Wais said. “Typically, roadways start needing to be scheduled to be resurfaced after they are [rated] lower than the PCI of 70.”
Roads rated 70 to 79 are considered in “good” quality while those rated 60 to 69 are only “satisfactory.”
Wais said the roads she evaluated had an average rating of 75. While that average is similar to the average rating in 2014, she said Riverside had actually improved its roads since then. In 2014, most roads were rated “good” or “satisfactory;” this year, there was a much more even distribution of roads rated “good” or above, but there were also more roads found to be in “fair” (in the 50s) or “poor” (in the 40s) condition.
She said the village performs two forms of maintenance on streets to extend their lifetimes: pavement rejuvenation application, a spray that increases a road’s flexibility to prevent cracking, and crack sealing, where an adhesive is sealed into cracks to prevent moisture from infiltrating and expanding the cracks when it freezes. Both methods can add about 3 to 5 years of “useful life” to a road, but they are most effective when a road is considered to be in “very good” condition.
Wais presented the board with three options for Riverside to manage the quality of its roads over the next decade, each at a different cost. She said implementing any of the management programs would allow Riverside to prevent a “worst-first, reactive approach” to road improvement, which can become cyclical over time, and instead fall into a more cost-effective rhythm for keeping streets in good condition.
At $800,000 each year, the village’s roads will fall to an average rating of about 64 in 2034, with most roads considered “fair” or “poor.” At $1 million per year, the roads will average about 70 by then, with most considered “good” or “very good.” At $1.5 million annually, the average rating in 10 years will be about 76, with two-thirds of roads rated “good” or better, a majority of which would be considered “excellent.”
She recommended the $1.5 million option, which would set the village up the best to maintain its roads beyond 2034.
“The distribution of the different categories is a lot more even than it was in the other two,” Wais said. “That’s ultimately the goal. When you have even distributions, you can forecast better and have a plan moving forward.”
In response to questions from Trustee Jill Mateo, Wais and Public Works Director Dan Tabb said the pavement rejuvenation and crack sealing have improved the quality of Riverside’s roads since the village started applying them in 2019. Tabb said the rejuvenation costs about $50,000 each year while the crack sealing costs about $10,000 in addition to staff time, as the public works department has done that work since 2021.
Tabb said public works will use the report to plan out which roadways need to be improved first after redoing roads that need to have work done underneath them for sewer- or water-related issues, like replacing lead service lines.
He agreed that Riverside should aim for the $1.5 million annual maintenance program but said staff would “do the best we can to maintain the level that we can afford” if Riverside cannot find enough funding.
Village Manager Jessica Frances said Riverside now funds street repairs through revenue generated from the motor fuel and non-home-rule sales taxes. She said Riverside can conservatively assume it will receive $250,000 each year from the motor fuel sales tax, a lower number than in previous years because of the increasing popularity of electric vehicles, while non-home-rule sales tax brings in about $300,000 or more each year.
If voters pass Riverside’s 2024 tax levy referendum, the village will earn about $260,000 extra each year to improve streets, Frances said, bringing projected funding for street improvements to about $800,000 per year.
Village President Douglas Pollock lauded Wais for her work on the study.
“This is an excellent report … This is exactly what the village needs,” he said. “I think it shows that we’ve done pretty well with limited funding for our streets, but it also shows that we should be doing better.”
