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City to Spend $242M to Repave Roads, Mayor Says

By Nicholas Rizzi | May 21, 2015 2:24pm
 The mayor allocated $242 million in his budget to repave crumbling streets across the city.
City to Spend $242M to Repave City Roads
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OAKWOOD — The city plans to boost its road resurfacing budget by $242 million in an effort to fix crumbling streets.

Mayor Bill de Blasio joined Staten Island elected officials in Oakwood on Thursday to highlight the funds he allocated in his executive budget for road repairs.

The funds should let the city fix 2,500 miles of streets  — roughly the distance from Tysens Lane in Staten Island to Las Vegas — by 2017, de Blasio said.

"I understand very humanely the problems of potholes in the city and what it does to our cars," de Blasio said.

"We're adamant about trying to not only fill the potholes quickly — and I think DOT's doing an outstanding job at doing all they need to do in the short term — but getting ahead of the problems and fixing the problem on a bigger level with repaving."

The city's streets — especially on Staten Island — have been inundated with potholes and rough surfaces because of the brutal winter and years of not repaving enough to keep up, de Blasio said.

Borough President James Oddo, who launched a "Pave Baby Pave" campaign to push the city to increase the funding, brought several graphs highlighting the poor job of repaving Staten Island roads in the past that he said the money will correct.

"We didn't get into this position simply because of this past winter," Oddo said. "We didn't get into this position overnight, we got into this position because for over a decade and a half we didn't put the investment into our roads.

"It will not get better over night, but it will get better."

Roads set to be repaved on Staten Island with the funding include Clove Road, New Dorp Lane, Arthur Kill Road and Rockland Avenue.

De Blasio said the money will focus on troubled and highly trafficked streets across the city including the FDR Drive in Manhattan, Kings Highway in Brooklyn, Hillside Avenue in Queens and Westchester Avenue in the Bronx.