Transportation Employee Involvement Leads to Big Improvements 
April 8, 2002

Greensboro Department of Transportation (GDOT) employees have been searching City streets lately as part of a new program to reduce citizen complaints. Staff members earn incentives and recognition for finding and reporting maintenance problems, such as potholes, litter, broken traffic signals and streetlights, etc., that the department then corrects.

The new program is called ‘Back to Basics’, a proactive transportation maintenance model that was developed in October 2000 to identify, report and correct transportation maintenance concerns.  The program has two components: Employee Driven Items, where employees earn points by reporting maintenance problems and Coordinated Service Delivery where GDOT maintenance tasks such as asphalt/concrete, stormwater, traffic signals, signs and markings and street cleaning are listed in sequential order on the following priority streets:

• Wendover Avenue
• Market Street
• Friendly Avenue
• Battleground Avenue
• Freeman Mill Road
• Lee Street/High Point Road
• Randleman Road
• Summit Avenue
• Elm-Eugene Street
• Benjamin Parkway/Bryan Boulevard
• Central Business District

The goals of the program are to have a more attractive, well-maintained transportation infrastructure; repair small problems before they become severe; have a 75 percent employee participation rate in FY 2001-02; and lead employees towards more proactive and preventative maintenance techniques.

By recognizing employees for reporting problems and prioritizing maintenance tasks on City streets, the department has greatly improved its services to the community. Since February of 2001, citizen generated pothole concerns decreased by 35 percent, while employee-generated pothole repairs increased over 185 percent! During January/February 2002, employees identified over 1,500 streetlighting malfunctions for repair. The department has achieved 90 percent employee participation, and employees have identified and made more than $225,000 worth of necessary repairs

For more information on Back to Basics, contact City of Greensboro Operations Manager, Dale Wyrick at 373-2783.