City of Kingsport authorizes survey of street conditions

In an effort to determine the latest road conditions in the Model City, a survey of every street maintained by the City of Kingsport will begin next week, with the results to be used when prioritizing future paving projects within the city.

Roadway Asset Services will be driving a specialized vehicle throughout the city over the next month, shooting lidar (3-D laser scanning) down on the roadway, assessing the condition of the streets and identifying cracks along the surface.

Similar surveys were conducted in the past – first in 2016 and again in 2021 – to determine the condition of the 400 miles of streets maintained by the City of Kingsport. This information created a digital image inventory and served as the baseline data for the city’s sustainable paving plan.

In order to collect all relevant data, the vehicle will be traveling all roads within the City of Kingsport over the next month. To ensure the highest quality of data and imagery, the vehicle will only collect data during daylight hours.

“It’s a process that ranks the roughly 400 miles of city roads from best to worst, which will then allow us to know which ones need a new coat of asphalt,” said Deputy City Manager Ryan McReynolds. “This survey will give us the latest information on the condition of our roadways and enable us to better plan our future paving projects.”

For the past eight years, Kingsport has used a data-driven approach to street resurfacing. First, by ranking all city streets from 0 to 100 based on condition and then creating an annual paving plan where the lowest ranked streets are given priority.

By following this program, Kingsport has repaved on average 17 miles of streets every year since 2017.

For more information on Kingsport’s paving schedule, updated road condition maps, or to view the latest presentations, visit www.pavekingsport.com.