GREATER GRAND CROSSING — The Chicago Department of Transportation said Friday it had repaved more than 100 miles of streets so far this year — with lots of time still left in the construction season.
CDOT Rebekah Scheinfeld said the city is on target to pave more than 300 miles of streets, topping the 297 miles paved last year, by reaching out to aldermen earlier about where to do work.
Crews were out in the 5th Ward on Friday repaving 72nd Street between Woodlawn and University avenues, pushing the count to more than 110 miles of streets repaved, with more work scheduled for South Side streets in the coming weeks.
The repaving was paid for out of the aldermanic menu funds, a $1.32 million fund each alderman gets for infrastructure projects each year.
Scheinfeld said about half of the repaving has come from these aldermanic funds and largely goes to residential streets, with federal money more often paying to resurface major arterial streets.
She said the projects have been pretty evenly spread out over the city, but aldermen with larger wards are usually a little behind because they have more streets to do with the same amount of money.
About a quarter of city streets have now been repaved in the last five years, according to Scheinfeld.
“The record amount of paving is really paying off,” Scheinfeld said.
She said there have been fewer potholes to fill in recent years and crews are being more aggressive about filling them when they do happen. She said fewer potholes does not translate into more money for repaving since the funding comes from different sources that can’t be moved, but she said it has freed up CDOT crews, which do about half of the road resurfacing in the city, to do more work.
The next streets scheduled for resurfacing include:
• Yates Boulevard from 79th Street to South Chicago Avenue
• Martin Luther King Drive from 87th Street to 95th Street
• Pershing Road from State Street to Cottage Grove Avenue
• California Avenue from 63rd Street to Marquette Road
• Central Park Avenue from Roosevelt Road to Cermak Road and from 26th Street to 31st Street
• Washington Boulevard from Austin Boulevard to Laramie Avenue
• Kedzie Avenue from Howard Street to Devon Avenue
• Broadway from Devon Avenue to Foster Avenue
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