The $20,000 Rule: How Much Does It Really Cost to Maintain City Roads?

Every city manager and public works director has asked some version of this question: If we spend X on roads this year, what happens? The honest answer is that it depends — on your road network, your starting condition, your goals, and your methodology. But we can model it.

Using GoodRoads' pavement management tools, we ran a citywide PCI projection across a wide range of annual budget levels — from $0/mile all the way up to $300k/mile.