BRENTWOOD, Tenn. (WTVF — Our roads experience a lot of wear and tear. We have wet summers, and icy winters and our population continues to explode.
In Brentwood, a special car mounted with cameras and sensors drives all 500-lane road miles to gauge the conditions.
"It provides us some of our priority areas to focus on, and then there's always first-hand observations before the paving list is generated," said Todd Hoppenstedt, Brentwood Public Works Director.
Hoppenstedt said StreetScan and the cloud-based database that it generates is handy when he's budgeting and planning. It keeps him from wasting tax dollars on roads that are in good shape.
"We like to stay ahead of the curve as much as we can while remaining responsible with our dollars," Hoppenstedt said.
Over eight days, the StreetScan car is collecting data on road defects like potholes, bumps, and cracking.
Public Works has made a roughly $51,000 investment in the survey.
"It helps to defend our decisions and make sure we're on track with those larger dollars," he said.
Conditions were first logged in 2021. Before the use of this technology, it was solely up to Public Works and the community to keep an eye on road conditions.
Funding for streets and a project like this comes from a variety of sources including things like fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees.
We found out that Nashville uses a similar system. There, each street is assessed every two years, and given a condition score which is how NDOT develops and prioritizes the paving list from year to year.
Young or old, we all love to play board and card games! Those games become even more important when you are indoors and don't have the ability to get outside, like patients in a hospital. Austin Pollack shares the story of students in a Nashville family who have helped re-launch the Red Wagon project to collect games for patients at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt.
- Lelan Statom
