Omaha Forums

113th St N of Pacific

Public Works would rather the street be unimproved than continue repairs

I wondered what was going on with the large "Omaha's Finest Dirt Road" signs along Pacific.

I have also always wondered why between 72nd and 114th Street and between Dodge and Grover there are several neighborhoods with asphalt roads and ditches opposed to concrete with curb and sewers?

In the westside area, its a test of wills. The city wants the property owners to pay for the roads and they dont want to.

In 115th, apparently the road was |expletive| to start with and the city is expecting the property owners to either live with gravel or pay for a real street. KETV had film of it and from looking at the driveways, the road couldnt have been 3 inches deep.

My Step-Mother lived two blocks west of 90th, South of Pacific. That street was one of the worst kept streets I have seen, in a well to do hood. But it kept the traffic slow.

A lot of those poorly-built streets are vestiges of lax roadway standards for residential development in the postwar period. When developers started doing their own street construction, rather than the city laying out the grid and building them, every dollar saved on the streets mattered. Hence so many postwar neighborhoods with no curbs or sidewalks. It's a lot more expensive to add in those features now than maintain them if they were built in the first place, but in at least one town I've lived in, the city was gradually going through these areas and rebuilding the streets with sidewalks.

Omaha's Gravel Roads make the NY Times.

Omaha’s Answer to Costly Potholes? Go Back to Gravel Roads
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/us/o ... share&_r=0

The New York Times wrote:As in many big cities, the infrastructure here is crumbling, a problem exacerbated by decades of neglect and a network of residential roads, including Ms. Amoura’s, that have never met code. But Omaha’s solution is extreme: grinding paved streets into gravel as a way to cut upkeep costs.

That was rather scathing and condescending in tone.

I don't think that you'll ever see a city friendly slant to any article like that. I found it hilarious that they quoted Mello's jab at the mayor without publishing any specific plans from him regarding infrastructure and what he would do differently. I wonder if they even asked.