1. HOW MANY MILES?
Submit your mental guess as to how many miles of streets the city maintains the Eau Claire. Close your eyes! Don’t peek with your peripherals! The answer is 341.9 – you were so close!

2. STOP STALLING
It would take far too long to figure out how many parking spots are contained in the city (but bonus points for anyone who does!), so we just focused on downtown. The city estimates private stalls add more than 2,500. Two parking structures tack on another 539 spots. Off-street lots total 681. There’s 130 metered spots, and another 1,020 un-metered. That brings the grand total to more than 4,870 parking spots downtown.

3. GET INTO MY CAR (STATS)
In 2007 there were 51,365 vehicles registered in the City of Eau Claire. If we assume it has risen with the population, there’s about 52,000 vehicles in a city of about 65,000 people. That’s .8 cars per person. (And that counts the roughly 4,500 kids who don’t have cars!)

4. STREET LEVEL TLC
Year in and year out, the city spends boatloads of dough to maintain our roadways. (And that’s just city roads, not state or federal!) This year it’s $520,000 for signs and signals, $1.15 million for snow/ice control, $767,000 for sweeping, and $3.08 million for general maintenance like seal coating. All in all, that’s $5.514 million.

5. PEOPLE POWERED
The city employs 8 light equipment operators, 4 tandem truck drivers, 6 skilled workers, 12 heavy equipment operators, one clerk, 3 supervisors, and one manager. That’s 35 people in the street division. In 1987, it employed 50 people – that’s a 30 percent reduction while street miles have increased by 22 percent!