Angelina County commissioners discuss ‘very poor’ road study results

ANGELINA COUNTY, Texas (KTRE) - A new report on Angelina County roads shows many are in bad shape, even worse than first thought.

Angelina County Commissioners reached out to TxDOT for recommendations on surveying companies. They wanted a comprehensive report showing the conditions of county roads.

County Judge Keith Wright said the county contracted Infrastructure Management Services for $80,000 to complete the study.

“They have different laser systems, and they just drive roads, and they can take that data and use engineering programs to come up with different conditions,“ Wright said.

Judge Wright said this meeting was mainly for the public to understand the findings.

Each road was categorized by very poor, poor, marginal, fair, good, very good and excellent.

It found 48 percent of the roads were in very poor condition, 28.4 percent of the roads were in poor condition, 10.9 percent were in marginal condition, 4.3 percent were in fair condition, 4.1 were in good condition, 3.6 were in very good condition, and .5 were in excellent condition.

Each group is given a pavement condition index or PCI. The overall network PCI Score for the county between 0 and 100 is 30.

“When you are looking at a PCI for 48 percent of your roads looking at 0 to 25, it’s eye opening,” Wright said.

Almost half of the 500 miles of roadway in the county are in very poor condition.

Commissioners used numbers from previous repair costs to give an estimate on what it would take to fix the worst, very poor, roads. That number is around $15 million.

“It’s going to be very expensive in order to get roads to a condition people will appreciate, even I would appreciate,” Wright said.

Commissioners are working on next year’s budget and say there will be more money built in for road repairs and contractors. They hope to make a dent with $300,000 TxDOT GRANT, $300,000 from an oilfield company who damaged the roads, $1.8 million from the tax note money and a little over $1 million from the current budget.

The worst roads on the report get higher priority.

Judge Wright also noted that you can only pave roads in the late spring and summer months due to the warm and dry conditions needed.

For the full road report visit the Big Red Box on our website.

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