One local community will be receiving state funds to assess the state of their roads.

The Southeastern Michigan Council of Governments, or SEMCOG, announced this week that they will be awarding $60,000 in state funds to communities within their 7 county region, including South Lyon. The funding will be used to help support road asset management planning. 30 miles of roads within South Lyon will be rated using the Pavement Surface Evaluation and Rating, or PASER, system. The PASER system rates roads as being either poor, fair, or good.

Communications Specialist for SEMCOG, Trevor Layton, said it’s useful for getting out in front of future problems. The goal is to keep roads out of the poor rating. Layton said there are less expensive measures that can be implemented to preserve roads at the good or fair levels, but once they dip into poor, often times costly reconstruction is the only alternative. In these times when many communities are suffering from limited resources, projects like that can be extremely difficult to pull off.

Executive Director of SEMCOG, Kathleen Lomako, said that whether communities like South Lyon are collecting data for the first time or supplementing an existing road assessment program, SEMCOG is dedicated to supporting best practices. Layton said the funding should become available within the next year. (MK)