Cincinnati is expected to repave more than double the number of lane miles this fiscal year compared to last fiscal year, thanks to a bigger budget and a significant reduction in costs.
City officials hope to reverse a trend of spending more to pave less, while the citywide average pavement condition declines.
Council member Mark Jeffreys says this is a top priority for the city, pointing to a survey that indicated just 12.4% of residents reported they are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the condition of city streets.
“Twelve percent is unbelievably low. Like, basically no one thinks that our roads are in good condition,” Jeffreys said.
A higher percentage of residents (18.5%) reported being “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the condition of streets in their own neighborhood. An analysis of the survey results indicates residents’ top priority is maintenance of city streets, sidewalks and infrastructure.
City data indicates conditions are indeed declining. The metric used is Pavement Condition Index (PCI), a score between 0 and 100 that ranges from “failed” to “excellent.”
According to the most recent report, published earlier this year, the citywide average PCI for all roads was 61, considered “fair condition.” It has declined nearly every year since a peak average of 70 (“good condition”) in 2018.
The city has a few different goals when it comes to street maintenance. One is to maintain a "fair condition" citywide average, which is a PCI between 50 and 67. Another goal is to repave at lease 100 lane miles per year (not including preventative maintenance), a metric the city has not reached in several years.
How the city has reduced costs
The cost to repave a single lane mile has steadily increased over the past several years:
- FY19: $271,920
- FY20: $330,000
- FY23: $500,000
- FY26: $635,900
“My budget was getting wiped out with the cost per lane mile, so that reduced my capacity,” said Department of Transportation and Engineering Director Greg Long.
Long says his department has made major changes to how they package street paving projects that go out for contractors to bid on, which has reduced the projected cost of repaving one lane mile to $250,000, a 60% reduction compared to last year.
So what changed?
Long says he’s designing projects in a way that allows more contractors to bid on it.
“At one point, we were down to essentially two contractors that were bidding on our rehab work, and that's very, very low,” Long said. Low competition means higher prices.
Previously, jobs were often grouped together in one package that was too large for smaller contractors to complete. Long says they’re also separating out things like curb and sidewalk rehab.
“Some of the paving contractors don’t do a lot of concrete work,” Long said. “I’m giving the contractor community what they’re good at, so they’re rewarding me with better bid pricing.”
He says a recent paving project got five bidders for the first time in 10 years.
Future paving projections
Cincinnati expects to pave 20 lane miles with funding from fiscal year 2026, which ended June 30. That’s lower than the year before, but the amount of preventative maintenance tripled in the same time period.
For fiscal year 2027, the city expects to fully repave 52 lane miles and conduct maintenance on another 60 lane miles.
The projections for fiscal year 2028 are based on what the city administration is likely to recommend for the street rehab budget; all spending decisions are up to City Council, which will vote this June on the FY28 budget.
The number of lane miles projected for repaving and maintenance are about the same, assuming a slight increase in the budget (from about $22 million approved in FY27 to about $22.5 million expected in FY28).
But, the Cincinnati Southern Railway Trust board just agreed to send the city an “extra” $10 million for FY28, after hearing from city officials that they could pave an additional 21 lane miles and do preventative maintenance on another 25 lane miles.
It’s up to City Council to decide how to spend that “extra” $10 million, within the conditions of state law: it can only be spent to maintain or replace existing city-owned infrastructure.
What about potholes?
The Department of Transportation and Engineering is responsible for full repaving of streets, as well as some kinds of preventative maintenance aimed at prolonging the lifespan of the pavement.
Separately, the Department of Public Services is responsible for filling individual potholes, as well as other kind of preventative maintenance like sealing cracks.
According to the city's data dashboard, DPS has filled about 21,500 potholes so far in 2026. About 97% of potholes reported to the city were filled within 12 business days of the report.
So far this year, about 7,100 potholes have been reported. That's lower than at this time last year, when over 9,200 potholes had been reported. But the number is significantly higher than in 2024 (about 4,700 reports for the whole year) and 2023 (about 4,000 reports for the whole year).
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