A truck for Applied Research Associates Inc. is expected to be traveling and examining Vicksburg streets later this month, a representative of the Champaign, Ill.-based company said Wednesday.

“Right now, it’s on a job in Texas and will come here after it finishes there,” said Carmine Dwyer, project engineer. “We’re looking to have it here by mid-March, depending on the weather.”

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen on Jan. 22 approved a $143,500 contract with Applied Research Associates to do a street survey, which will be used to help city officials develop a priority list for its paving projects under a proposed capital improvements plan, and set a long-range paving program. Applied Research did a similar survey for the city in 2002.

The board wants to spend about $4.6 million of a proposed $9.3 million bond issue to pave city streets. The project will be done in two phases in the north and south wards. The board has not set a date when it will issue the bonds.

Dwyer said the company’s truck will tour all the city streets getting images of the streets’ conditions, and the right of ways as part of a street sign inventory. Sensors attached to the vehicle’s front bumpers will measure what is called “rutting and faulting,” such as sloping in the road surface caused by wear from traffic.

The information collected by the truck will be sent to ARA, where it will be used to develop a software package for the street survey, which will be evaluated at the company’s office in Vicksburg. Information on the signs will be sent to the company’s offices in Illinois and Pennsylvania to develop the inventory.

The survey will evaluate the information in the software to assess wear problems in the asphalt like cracks, potholes and ruts. City and company representatives will review a preliminary analysis of the survey in June, and the final survey report will be presented in September.

Public Works Director Garnet Van Norman said the board will hire an engineering firm to prepare the plans and specifications for the paving projects, adding the survey will be part of the information used by the engineers to prepare the bid specifications.

He said, however, the board may choose to begin a paving project once the bonds are sold.

“If that is the case, we will select some streets that we were going to pave anyway to get started,” he said. Some of the streets under consideration include Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, streets in Cedar Hill Cemetery and some subdivision streets that have not been overlaid, like the streets in Fox Run Subdivision. The city took over Fox Run’s streets in November.

“I’m not sure what major paving will be done at this point until we get the engineering,” he said.