KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The City of Overland Park will require new residential streets to be built with concrete pavement starting next month.
The City Council approved a recommendation Monday night to update the City's design and construction standards.
The changes include requiring single-family and multi-family residential streets, collector streets and "super collector" streets to be constructed with concrete pavement.
The changes will also narrow the allowable width of some new local residential streets from 28 feet to 26 feet wide.
The city says the new standards will be published on Nov. 1.
This initiative stems from their pledge to reduce the city's reliance on chip seal, per Overland Park.
Chip seal is an asphalt pavement maintenance method that extends the life of pavement, but can be a rough surface and cause chip rock to gather near work sites.
Over the course of about 20 years, the city estimates this change will mean about 3750 lane miles of street that would eventually need chip seal maintenance, will instead be built with concrete.
The city says the cost of both pavement asphalt and concrete streets is about equivalent.
