For more than a year, we've told you about Cleveland's broken roads and the fact that the system for repairing them is broken, too.
Debunking the study
In February, we debunked a $600,000 study that graded the condition of city streets by showing you several examples of the streets rated a perfect 100. They were the very first streets we randomly selected and they were clearly not perfect.
Earlier this month, we asked Mayor Frank Jackson about our findings and he said, "Maybe you (News 5) should search a little bit more and you might find more and then you can give it to me and then I'll handle it."
Challenge accepted
When starting out on the mayor's challenge, we, once again, looked at all the streets rated 100 from the Pavement Management Study. And, once again, on the first stop we made, we found problems.
The beginning of Scranton Road to Carter Road is a perfect section of street, according to the Pavement Management Study released just months ago. However, we found cracks, rough patches, and areas nowhere near perfect along that entire street.
The second street we looked into had problems, too. Again, we are randomly choosing streets rated 100. We have no idea what we're going to find. This time it was a section of Scranton Road from Fairfield to Train. There were tons of bumps, bruises and cracks throughout it.
We told Amy Bednar about the rating.
“No. That's an egregious statement to make,” she told us. She works in that area of the city and drives Scranton all the time. Bednar had a message for Mayor Jackson:
"The mayor can actually be my passenger. We can take a trip down Scranton Road and see what it's like to have to dodge the potholes over here."
Broken Roads, Broken System: See what the City of Cleveland graded your street and grade it yourself
The next street was Roxboro. We found it has overlapping grades. From West 146th to Warren, it's a “C” but then the study gave it a grade of 100 from Warren to Warren — a whole 20 feet worth of road.
That issue should sound familiar because we saw the same situation in our initial report debunking the study. Tyler Avenue got a 100 rating from West 130th all the way to West 130th.
And finally, the fourth and fifth streets we checked out were Rodman from Rugby to Coit and from Rugby to Earlwood. That is newly paved but neighbors told us they don't understand it?
"I don't really like it,” said Larry Brown who lives off of Rugby. “I sure don't like it."
You see, it's an alley with few homes on it. More-traveled roads that cross that alley like Earlwood have bad spots right next to the paved Rodman. Then, on Rugby, just feet away from Rodman, the road is even worse. And when you look at Coit, drivers said it’s a disaster.
"Dodging holes… holes here, holes there,” said driver Anita Koroma from her car. “And eventually, it's going to be a bad accident because somebody trying to dodge the holes."
So, keep checking News 5. We'll be finding more examples of questionable road ratings and letting the mayor know about them.
We contacted the mayor's office and, once again, let reps know about the errors we found and how quickly we found them. We are still waiting for a response.
