Five-Year Road Improvement Plan
Overview:
The County of Prince Edward has developed a five-year plan for improving roads across the municipality.
This plan is intended to guide the preparation of the County’s budget and work plan each year through 2027. Each year, staff will review the plan and verify the roads on the list are still candidates for the specified technique (micro surfacing and single surfacing). Adjustments to the plan may be made based on those field investigations. View the updated work plan for 2024.
Staff are currently updating the five-year plan for asphalt roads in urban areas that takes into account the condition of underground infrastructure (water, sanitary, and storm). Once that asset management work is completed in 2024, staff will provide an updated priority list for reconstructing and resurfacing asphalt roads that coordinates the need of all elements (both road surface and underground infrastructure).
Strategic Alignment:
Livable community: This plan relates to the municipal priority of ensuring roads can continue to connect various communities and allow for economic and social opportunities. As well, the plans is intended to ensure roads are in a condition where young and old can walk or bike to improve health.
Infrastructure renewal: This plan relates to the municipality’s goal of maintaining in good condition the existing core infrastructure and services.
Key Documents:

Road Condition Mapping 2021
The map shows the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) of roads in the County.

Road Network Asset Management Planning
A staff report from January 2023. Council approved the motion in the staff report directing staff to incorporate the five-year capital road network improvement plan as part of the 2023 budget process.
Background:
The County is responsible for maintaining and renewing 1,047 km of roads: 342 km are surfaced with asphalt, also known as High Class Bituminous (HCB) material, and 523 km are paved with surface treatment, also known as Low Class Bituminous (LCB) material. Of this total, approximately 90 per cent are within the rural environment.
In order to develop the road improvement plan, staff consider a number of key elements.
Road condition: Field condition assessments of all municipal roadways were completed in 2021 by StreetScan, a company that inspects roads using state of the art mobile sensing technology and provides detailed visual records. Factors include physical condition of the surface and the comfort of the ride. View the road condition map
Risk and asset criticality: Risk is determined by the probability of road failure and the consequences should failure occur. The County estimates the probability of failure based on the field condition assessment (see above) and average daily traffic counts.
The consequences of failure take into account financial, environmental and social impacts. The criteria include:
- Roads that support growth and tourism, or where upgrades would provide a regional benefit.
- Roads with drainage systems where there are condition or capacity issues, where reconstruction would slow the deterioration of the road and mitigate potential for flooding or assist in the management of climate change impacts.
- Roads with an historic high volume of calls for emergency services, where reconstruction would result in significantly reduced response time and wear on emergency vehicles.
- Roads where upgrade would result in increased local benefit, such as low volume rural roads with a higher density of properties or driveways.
Service levels: They define the quality level at which the service is provided to the community. In the case of the road plan, service levels take into account public expectations, requirements under provincial legislation, and financial capacity of the municipality to deliver different levels of service.
Annual lifecycle management strategy: The County seeks to proactively manage the deterioration of roads. Doing so will ensure that the roads can continue to meet service and performance requirements at the lowest total cost.
The County’s current lifecycle management strategies include crack sealing, micro surfacing, rehabilitation of surface-treated (Low Class Bituminous) roads, and reconstruction of asphalt (High Class Bituminous) roads.
Learn more about road rehabilitation and preventative maintenance and road reconstruction and the work planned for each of these strategies in 2024.