City of College Station Blog

By Colin Killian, Public Communications Director

In this week’s episode of “What’s Up, College Station?” Grace Hallowell and Public Works Director Emily Fisher discuss the City’s street maintenance program, including how her team assesses the condition of the 368 centerline miles of streets they manage.

The public is invited to a Street Maintenance Open House on Wednesday, May 28, from 6-7:30 p.m. in the Bush 4141 Community Room at City Hall to learn more.

 The “What’s Up, College Station?” podcast is available weekly via Podbean, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple, and Amazon/Audible. Please subscribe, rate, and recommend!

If you have a suggestion for a future topic or interview, email me at ckillian@cstx.gov.

TRANSCRIPT

Grace Hallowell:

What’s Up, College Station? I’m Grace Hallowell, and today my guest is the Director of Public Works, Emily Fisher. We were chatting a little before we started. It’s your first time on the show. And it’s National Public Works Week.

But our main focus today is the street maintenance open house, which is coming up soon. So, to kick things off, what is involved in street maintenance?

Emily Fisher:

Well, the first thing we need to do is get the condition of our streets. So we do that using something called a pavement condition index. And we set eyes on every street in the city and basically give it a grade, and then we take the lowest graded streets. That works into our street maintenance plan, which we update yearly. It changes a lot based on which streets need it and which don’t. We developed this plan and like to share it with the public so they can give us input.

Grace Hallowell:

And the yearly refresh is something that is very important because a lot can happen in a year. So when is the public open house?

Emily Fisher:

So next Wednesday at 6 p.m. in City Hall and Bush 4141, it’s really just a come-and-go event. We’ll have our street maintenance plan for the next four years. Citizens are welcome to look at that and ask questions. They can ask about their specific street. Also, we’ll have comment cards for anyone to fill out.

In past meetings, we’ve had people come by and say, “My street’s great, but my drainage is… Could y’all come and take a look at this?” We don’t know about something until someone tells us a lot of times. So that’s worked out great. So really anyone can come out, take a look, talk to us. And that’s 6 to 7:30.

Grace Hallowell:

The websitecstx.gov/publicworks has a helpful guide because the Public Works Department does not maintain all of College Station’s streets.

Emily Fisher:

That’s a great point. We have a map there that has a color code for who maintains what street, because there are many. There’s TxDOT, A&M, and the City of Bryan. Some streets are private and are not maintained by us. It’s a great reference.

Grace Hallowell:

And with it being National Public Works Week, why is that so significant?

Emily Fisher:

This is a week when we recognize all of our men and women who work out in the field daily, maintaining streets, maintaining drainage, working on the city’s fleet vehicles, collecting solid waste, and all of our traffic signals and signs. It’s a lot to keep running. And we have an amazing group that does it and want to recognize that.

Grace Hallowell:

It is an incredible job by everybody involved. Thank you so much for joining me today, Emily.

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