70 miles of Mpls. streets set for repair
City residents can expect to see road work through spring and summer, as road crews in Minneapolis will repave 70 miles of city streets this year.
The city is spending nearly $28 million over five years to catch up on deferred maintenance, said Mayor R.T. Rybak.
The biggest project this year is a six-block stretch of Nicollet Avenue South that is long overdue for repairs, Rybak said.
"One year before I was born, this street was repaved. When I was a junior in college it was redone, and since then we haven't touched this," Rybak said. "That's a long, long time because I haven't been in college in forever."
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Nicollet will remain closed to traffic south of Lake Street until the fall.
The rest of this year's construction will be far less disruptive because it involves only sealing and resurfacing," said Public Works Director Steve Kotke said.
"A lot of it is resurfacing, where we come in and mill the street down and put down asphalt and bituminous on top," Kotke said. "The good news about that is that we're usually in and out of there in about three days.
"And we're also doing about 35 miles of seal coating, once again a fairly quick operation."
Next year, even more miles of roads will be resurfaced, Kotke said.