By Jessica Mathews / news@whmi.com


The Village of Pinckney has been awarded state funding to collect data on the condition of roads throughout the community.

Pinckney is one of seven communities that will share $27,000 in state funds administered by the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments or SEMCOG. SEMCOG encourages the use of asset management for maintaining and upgrading the region’s infrastructure and streets are rated using the Pavement Surface Evaluation and Rating or PASER system. The Village will receive $350 to collect road condition data on ten miles of residential streets. Data on major roads is captured on a two-year cycle that SEMCOG does in partnership with the Livingston County Road Commission and MDOT.

SEMCOG Planner Ed Hug says the funds serve as incentives for local communities to collect the data and learn more about their road system, which can then be shared with the Council and public to create plans to help use the limited resources available for roads.

Hug is working with Village DPW officials on the project and will provide assistance and expertise and loan a laptop and GPS unit to get them started with the rating system. He’ll assist with data collection and the analyzation process afterward, saying the direct assistance provided is a great way for communities to get started with their asset management program. Hug tells WHMI ten miles may not seem like a lot but when you’re a small community, that can be quite a bit and they want to provide whatever assistance they can to help them do their ratings.

While getting started can be somewhat intimidating, Hug says the data collection process is fairly simple. Since Pinckney is a small community and with just ten miles, Hug says it will only take a couple hours to collect the data and then another couple of hours in the office to demonstrate how to use the data to make informed decisions about roads in their community.

Hug says they’ll review the data generated that can be put on maps or used to target different types of road maintenance projects. He says like a lot of communities, there are probably a lot of bad roads and officials can determine where to do spot fixes instead of huge repairs that eat up the budget. Hug says collecting the data helps show what’s out there and what can be done for fixes and this provides a good first step.

Hug says the goal would be to get the work done this fall but if that doesn’t happen, then the data would likely be collected in the spring.