Road Resurfacing Program

Like most towns our age, Molalla’s streets are aging and in need of extensive repair in several places.  In 2016, the city performed an analysis of street surfaces called a Pavement Conditioning Index (PCI) that showed the City’s 54.33 lane miles of streets with an average PCI of 61.  This placed the City’s overall system PCI within the “Fair” condition range of 50-69 and eventually led to the passage of a street improvement fee that would allow the city to bring it’s PCI up into the “Good” condition range of 70-100.  Unfortunately, the street fee was overturned by referendum and the City’s PCI continued to slowly degrade. 

However, a renewed focus on the transportation system led to the unveiling of a new program in 2022, the Road Resurfacing Program, which shifted the focus away from “full buildout” to restoration and preservation of existing streets.  Full build out is still the optimal level of service provision, but due to exorbitant costs and lack of funding it is typically only done in conjunction with new development. The city also updated the 2016 PCI analysis in 2024 and the results show the City’s now 62.2 lane miles of streets with an average PCI of 63.  In other words, the PCI was increased by 2 points despite a lack of funding and an additional 7.87 lane miles of roadway added.

Currently, the City is executing a plan to bring the systemwide PCI up to the “Good” condition range of 70-100 in 6 years (by 2031).  However, a shortage in funding for street maintenance must be overcome in order to execute the plan. For this reason, the City Council is considering one or both of a local gas tax and/or a utility bill street fee.  Please visit the Street Surfacing Program – Funding page on the Molalla Current to learn more about this process, how street maintenance is funded, what Molalla has done to limit costs for street surfacing, and more.  Additionally, the Molalla Current page allows you to ask any question or provide any comment you believe would be helpful on this topic to your elected decision makers!

See Street Surfacing Program - Funding