City of Fargo prepares for road construction season

FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) – With the snow melting away, a new season returns to the region: road construction season.

Fargo city engineers are designing a plan to rebuild roads, using a system determining how many potholes are on the road and how often the street department has to do maintenance.

“We have a pavement management system that goes and drives the city every other year and the vehicle itself is the rating system. So we get a map of all the streets in town that show ‘great, good, average, fair, poor’. You know, we identify those streets when they need to be re-done,” says the City’s Transportation Engineer Jeremy Gorden.

He says you can expect some roads to shut down for a chunk of the summer while others shut down from late summer to next spring.

“Yeah, we got a number of them. Probably the most impactful one will be on 32nd avenue south. We’re gonna bid that out in June, hopefully get some work done at the intersection of 25th Street and about two blocks to the east of there going to 22nd street. Hopefully we can start it in, hopefully August 1st, work until about November 1st, suspend it for winter then start it again in the spring,” said Gorden.

Gorden says most of the funding for rebuilding these roads come from local sales tax while bigger projects will use some funds from a federal bill passed last year.

“The federal stuff comes through the highway bill and that was passed last fall. That was IIJA, Infrastructure Investment (and Jobs) Act. There is some of the federal money coming in on 32nd Avenue South but most of it is local sales tax and local special assessments,” Gorden says.

Like many employers across the country, the city has trouble attracting workers.

“One of the big things is getting contractors that can actually complete the jobs with qualified labor and supply chain issues are hitting home on the building materials for streets so getting over those obstacles, it’ll happen but it might be kind of a pain,” said Gorden.

Gorden adds some of the supply chain issues they’re experiencing include manhole structures, PVC pipes, concrete, gravel and hydrants.