Official Maintained Roads List in Twentynine Palms is available to public

Paved or unpaved? City-owned or private? Questions about who should maintain which road surface time and time again in Twentynine Palms, most urgently after a storm when clean-up assistance is needed by Public Works. Cal-Trans is responsible for Highway 62 and a small stretch called Outer Highway. After years of being listed as a “future council initiated item,” the list finally became real when it was unveiled at the January 27 city council meeting. Community Development Director Keith Gardner and Public Works Superintendent Craig Stacey worked with staff to create an exhaustive color-coded inventory of which roads the city maintains and which roads they do not. (Such a list is also mandated by the state for all cities and counties.) “It was quite the effort, said Gardner. “It really came into light after the flooding a couple of years ago and we wanted to be really transparent with what the city maintains and what the city does not maintain.” The official list comprises two segments - Maintained Paved and Maintained Non-Paved - and includes approximately 170 miles of thoroughfares. The cost-per-mile to maintain these roads is approximately $9,000, roughly $1M-$1.5M annually. Gardner says the city often fields requests for prospective roads to be created and maintained but there are requirements. “So there’s a two-step process, the roads have to be dedicated to the city and then have to be improved for acceptance. Dedicated and improved before the city will accept it for maintenance,” said Gardner. A prospective new road must be engineered to meet city standards with an approximate cost of $1.3M-per-mile to cover design, right-of-way dedications, and construction. Of course, all would come under review by the Planning Department, City Engineer, Planning Commission, and then forwarded to the City Council for formal approval. Once a street is ‘created’ and added to the list, it becomes a public right-of-way and accessible by anyone anytime and the city will maintain it in perpetuity. Gardner stated that as of right now, there are no qualifying requests for new roads. “Those come in informally all the time. ‘Hey city, I want my dirt road paved’ and then we got to explain that dirt road is not a publicly available street so therefore the city will not maintain it,” said Gardner. “That seems to be a huge obstacle for roadways to be accepted into a city. Any streets that are dedicated to the city, that the city also maintains, are also available to the public at any time of day or night. That’s another consideration. A lot of these people who live on rural roads may not want that extra traffic going by them.” You can see the official Maintained Roads List here.