How pitted is that pavement? Check out Costa Mesa’s interactive road condition map

Looking to avoid a bumpy ride while driving in Costa Mesa? The city has a tool you might want to check out.

Officials recently crafted an interactive road condition map that displays information on the state of every street citywide.

Using a metric called pavement condition index, or PCI, Costa Mesa officials color-coded the map to provide a snapshot of each roadway — with blue segments being in very good shape and red ones classified as very poor.

The map, available at apps.costamesaca.gov/maps/RoadCondition.html, also includes estimates of when specific stretches might be in line for some rehab work and a tutorial to walk residents and commuters through some of its features.

Taken as a whole, “Costa Mesa is definitely way above average compared to the state, but also compared to Orange County” in terms of the general pavement conditions of its streets, city Public Services Director Raja Sethuraman said in an interview this week.

Costa Mesa’s citywide PCI is about 87 out of 100, he said.

That’s above Orange County’s average of 79, and markedly outpaces the statewide average, which is 65, according to the 2016 California Statewide Local Streets and Roads Needs Assessment.

That’s not to say all Costa Mesa’s streets are in immaculate shape. A handful — like Pomona Avenue between 16th and 18th streets, Monte Vista Avenue from Irvine Avenue to Santa Ana Avenue and portions of the Newport Boulevard northbound frontage road — have PCI scores of 40 or below, indicating they’re in “very poor” shape, according to the city’s map.

Sethuraman said those more worn-down streets are atop the city’s list of repair priorities and the plan is to take care of them in the next few years.

“The goal is to get to it when the repairs are minimal,” he said. “That way, we can do it much more efficiently and in a cost-effective manner.”

The amount the city spends to rehabilitate, maintain and repair streets, sidewalks and alleys varies from year to year but typically hovers at about $6 million annually, according to Sethuraman.

Officials also actively seek other funding to supplement city dollars. For instance, Costa Mesa is proposing to use $480,000 worth of community development block grant funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for improvements on the rundown stretch of Pomona.

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UPDATES:

4:20 p.m.: This article was updated to update the citywide PCI score.

This article was originally published at 11:45 a.m.