Streets no match for Info Highway

By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY

As if driving and walking in congested downtowns weren't maddening enough, telecommunications companies now are tearing up pavement to install thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable underground, turning streets and sidewalks into obstacle courses.

Companies in the highly competitive telephone, cable TV and Internet industries are blocking traffic lanes and pedestrian walkways to dig trenches in a rush to set up their lines and sign up new customers.

This burst of activity was unleashed by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed companies to compete in every city and residents to have more choices when it comes to telephone, cable TV and Internet services. But it also has created a public-works nightmare that no one was quite prepared for.

Cities are facing thousands of permit applications and a traffic control mess. They also face the cost of repaving streets that have been patched by companies cutting into them. And they have to deal with irate residents.

"The traveling public, whether they're walking or driving, take it out on city officials," says Leonard Krumm, director of field services in Minneapolis, where there are 22 different phone companies.

Companies complain, too. They say that cities are slow to grant permits and that some want them to repave streets that were in shabby condition even before they cut into them.

The problem is worse in older downtown areas where there is little room to dig 2-foot-wide trenches without disrupting traffic. Downtowns also have big concentrations of corporate towers clamoring for state-of-the-art telecommunications services.

Cities worry about gridlock above- and underground. Under most city streets is a complex maze of old water mains, gas, sewer, cable and telephone lines. Now comes new technology: chilled water lines that can cool big buildings more efficiently, and fiber-optic lines that speed up the Internet. The result is a logistical mess.

Krumm, who heads an American Public Works Association committee looking at the problem, says cities are updating maps, modernizing their permit systems, increasing fees and passing new laws requiring companies to restore the streets to their original condition. In March, Minnesota passed a state law to that effect.

Here's how some cities are juggling everyone's needs:

In Denver, where about 100 major public works projects are going on every month, companies must try to run lines down alleys or along railroad yards -- any place away from busy streets.

In Richmond, Va., companies must do their work on weekends or before 9 a.m. and after 4 p.m. on weekdays whenever possible.

Thirteen cities in the Kansas City metropolitan area have joined to develop formulas to recoup the cost of street repair, traffic control and inspections.

Washington, D.C., is telling companies to repave streets they've dug up -- not just patch them. The city had been averaging about 9,000 applications a year from companies wanting to make repairs or install new lines underground. Last year, the number soared to 15,000. In the past year alone, nine new telecommunications companies asked for permits.

Boston is avoiding the problem by getting companies to modernize underground utility lines while streets are being torn up for the "Big Dig," a massive highway project that's the most expensive public works project in history. About 29 miles of scattered and outdated phone, gas, water, sewer and power lines were relocated to run in orderly corridors. About 5,000 miles of fiber-optic cable and 200,000 miles of copper telephone wire will run underground.

Big Dig will eliminate "a spaghetti mess of 100 years of utility lines," spokesman Andy Paven says.

In Chicago, the city asked five telecommunications companies that wanted to get lines underground to do it all at the same time. "The street had been resurfaced a year ago. This way, it didn't have to be opened up five times." says Carmen Iacullo of the city's transportation department. "They did it, and they did it at night."

At Orchard and Willow streets in Chicago's densely populated Lincoln Park neighborhood, the beginning of a curbside trench for new fiber-optic lines for Century 21 Cable signals a long summer of snarled traffic and honking horns.

Hyon Kim, 30, finds the noise and dirt inconvenient, and she worries that taxpayers like her may be stuck paying for the road repair afterward.

That's something all cities worry about. Cutting pavement causes potholes and uneven pavement. Estimates show that it reduces the life span of a street by a third. It can cost about $20,000 a mile to repave a street.

"By and large, utilities across the nation are not paying their fair share," Krumm says.

But Paul Devaney, a senior consultant with Telcordia Technologies Inc., a software, engineering and consulting company in Morristown, N.J., says most companies try to carry their share of the cost. Devaney, an industry representative on the public works committee looking at new guidelines, says there soon will be national standards outlining how much street repair should be done by companies.

But Devaney reminds everyone that "the rate-payer and the taxpayer is the same person" - if the city pays for repairs, taxes will go up; if the companies pay, rates will rise. Either way, residents pay.

City officials remind anyone grousing about all the downtown street construction that it's the only way to give them what they want: faster Internet and more choices of cable TV and phone services.

Kim, the Chicago resident, concedes that "traffic is terrible, but so is our cable. ... This will be good."

Contributing: Fred Bayles in Boston and Debbie Howlett in Chicago.

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