What Grade Does Your Street Get?

Turns out L.A. streets are graded like restauants. But what does it mean for you?

Los Angeles may not be called the "City of Lights" but could be called the "City of Streets." LA has more than any streets in the nation.

So many that long-time Director of LA Bureau of Street Services, Bill Robertson puts it this way: "You could take our streets and make a four-lane highway to New York and back."
 
City Grading System
 
How to keep track of the condition of all those streets? The Bureau has a complex grading system. Just like a report card, streets in LA are graded A through F.
 
The analysis is so comprehensive that at one Valley Village intersection there is an A street, a B, and one that received a failing grade.
 
LA Bureau of Street Services is only given a budget of $94 million dollars a year.  Robertson says it needs $250 million annually. 
 
Eighty percent of the budget is to keep the A-D streets from failing. The other 20 percent goes to fixing those F streets.
 
"The City has made street services a priority, he explains.  "But after 50 years of neglect, we are, unfortunately, playing catch-up."
 
Robertson gives the entire LA street system an overall grade of C-.
 
Bill Robertson says that if you want to know your own street grade, and when you are scheduled for service, just email him: William.Robertson@lacity.org
 
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