INDIANAPOLIS — The Indianapolis Department of Public Works is renewing an initiative to improve roads in residential neighborhoods across the city.
Some homeowners say the work is long overdue.
Work is now underway at 30th Street and North Temple Avenue on the city's east side, as Indy DPW crews prep for new asphalt to be laid down later this week on this Indy side street.
"For the past six years we've had our own in-house crews at Indy DPW that have been able to address residential needs on a small scale," Brandon Herget, Indy DPW Director, said.
Now, DPW is pushing to work with city councilors to improve residential streets in their districts, such as District 8 in the Martindale Brightwood area.
"I really appreciate that they're investing back into our area," Resident Roscoe Jones Jr. said.
Jones Jr. has lived on temple avenue for the last eight years.
He says this side of town gets neglected when it comes to neighborhood improvements.
"A lot of potholes, you can get your tires messed up, so you know them coming through here and making these adjustments, fixing up the roads is really needed," Jones said.
Meanwhile, just a block over on eastern avenue, the street is in rougher condition, with bumps and craters in the roadway. So 13News asked Indy DPW what goes into which specific streets gets the repairs.
"We use multiple processes to choose streets with our internal D-4 crews. Those come from MAC complaints and working with councilors with priority on working with their districts because they know their neighborhoods best," Herget said. "On the capitol side, on the engineering side, we use data to inform those decisions and we look at worst CPI index and do address those needs first."
DPW says an increase in-state road funding for Indy has allowed them to have extra funding to help tackle neighborhoods lacking up to date roads.
However, DPW says right now they can only repave existing residential streets and not improve or add in sidewalks.
'Those new complete neighborhoods, beginning next year, assuming passage of the budget, those will be able to address all of those concerns," Herget said.
Meanwhile, for homeowners like Jones, he's just grateful something is done at all.
"It just gives me hope that we on the rise," Jones said.
13News reached out to Indy DPW to see when Eastern Avenue may see improvements. They sent the following statement:
"30th and Eastern is on our radar to check for feasibility, but there is not currently a timeline for work. As Director Herget noted, our in-house team generally works from a combination of Mayor's Action Center tickets and councilor feedback, while contracted work (which may need engineering design work, especially if there is an underlying cause to the poor pavement quality, such as stormwater issues) is more data-driven.
Now that our engineering division has a sustainable revenue source for residential streets in the capital infrastructure plan, we will be able to continue resurfacing more residential streets in the years to come.
This underscores the importance of our move to a Complete Neighborhood Approach - by doing entire neighborhoods at a time, we will improve efficiency and deliver a better return on taxpayer dollars."