Agenda Packets - 2023/03/03 - Laserfiche WebLink

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The City of Falcon Heights expects that by limiting the number of garbage trucks on each street to one hauler, the usefulness of the streets could be extended 5 to 10 years, and that the overall costs to repair streets will be lower. The implied expectation that having one hauler with shorter distances will cause less pavement damage is somewhat questionable, however. The report quotes the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute as saying that with longer distances between stops, vehicles will be going faster when they stop. In reality, it is the rate of deceleration that can cause increased pavement damage, and it is not necessarily true that with longer distances between stops that heavy trucks will decelerate any more rapidly than those that have travelled shorter distances. Resource Strategy Corporation, City of Chanhassen, 1993 (12) In 1993 the City of Chanhassen conducted a review of other studies regarding this issue. Some major findings were from studies conducted for the Metro Council and by Bonestroo which stated the following. • "As they fill up on the route, many refuse collection vehicles operate overweight, especially during the spring months when waste generation rates increase but road weight limits may be at their lowest... Further, the number of overweight vehicles using roadways increases the potential for paving damage." • "The damage that garbage trucks inflict on City streets is magnified in the spring when road restrictions typically restrict other trucks from using the same streets" (8). R3 Consulting Group, City of Fort Collins, Colorado, 2008 (13) In the ongoing discussion about the source of deterioration (whether it is primarily caused by the environmental or traffic factors) the City of Fort Collins, Colorado, commissioned a study to evaluate the impacts of numerous garbage trucks on their residential streets. Some of the findings in this study include the following, noted with the sources cited in the R3 Consulting Group's report, where appropriate. • "While roads will deteriorate if simply left unused, most deterioration is associated with use; and the damage caused by vehicles goes up much more than proportionately with size and weight. Hence, costs associated with maintenance are greater for trips made by heavy vehicles" (10). The report also recognized that "In general, all other factors the same, moving from an open competition collection system to a districted collection system would be expected to reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled with a corresponding decrease in the associated street maintenance impacts." The ensuing discussion about open competition vs. districted collection presented the following considerations. • Both the size of the collection vehicles and the average number of passes each vehicle makes down each residential street segment may change under a districted system. As a result the impact per vehicle may be more or less than under the current open competition system.