SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Towing a gadget-packed trailer hitched to his e-bike over endless miles of sidewalk, Lord Carson Mba-Aziantu gets endless versions of the same question.<\/p>\n
What exactly is he doing?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had people ask me like, \u2018What is that? Are you a DJ on wheels?\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Unless DJ is short for \u201cdata jockey,\u201d no, he\u2019s not. Nor is he \u201cstreaming,\u201d as others ask, though at least that\u2019s closer to reality.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need to get a shirt that says, \u2018I\u2019m collecting … data,\u2019\u201d he joked. <\/p>\n
Thanks to Mba-Aziantu and other workers from Roadway Asset Services (RAS), an Austin-based company finishing up a three-year contract with the city, San Antonio is close to having a complete assessment of the condition of all 5,919 miles of its disjointed sidewalk system.<\/p>\n
The trailer, or \u201cchariot\u201d as RAS riders call it, is packed with cameras, a laser, GPS, and an internal level, and the e-bike has a forward-facing camera. By towing it over sidewalks and having riders log obstructions like utility poles and mailboxes, RAS can map out defects and use an algorithm developed in conjunction with the city to score each section.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so you have all these defects; we call them cookie crumbs. And then we\u2019ll actually score the whole segment based on that. We\u2019ll score it for slope. We\u2019ll score it for obstructions. We\u2019ll score it for horizontal defects and vertical defects,\u201d explained Karlo Jajliardo, the Public Works engineering programs manager for the special projects section.<\/p>\n
It can be slow going, though. On good sidewalks, clear of obstructions, Mba-Aziantu said he logs about 30 miles in a day, but that drops off on rougher sidewalks.<\/p>\n
RAS only needs to finish about 112 more miles, Public Works officials say, but close to 73% of the city\u2019s sidewalks are rated to be in \u201cfair\u201d to \u201cexcellent\u201d condition so far.<\/p>\n
A slide from a Public Works presentation during a Sept. 2, 2026 San Antonio City Council budget discussion (City of San Antonio)<\/p>\n
They say the map will help them make decisions on where to invest a limited amount of city dollars, especially when they combine the information with \u201cdestination scores.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn other words, if the location is in close proximity to a high-pedestrian area like a school or a park, community center, hospital, bus stop, or something along those lines, then we\u2019re better able to use a combination of the condition score and the destination score to target those areas to ensure that the limited funds that we have for sidewalk maintenance in the city \u2014 that we\u2019re able to allocate those in the most effective areas where it\u2019s going to have the most impact,\u201d said Anthony Chukwudolue, the Public Works deputy director over streets.<\/p>\n
The city has more than 1,500 miles of gaps between existing sidewalks, but Public Works officials estimate filling all of them in would take about $900 million. And that\u2019s before they tackle maintaining the sidewalks that are already in place.<\/p>\n
A slide from a Public Works presentation during a Sept. 2, 2026 City Council budget discussion (City of San Antonio)<\/p>\n
The proposed city budget has only $12.8 million earmarked for sidewalks \u2014about 60% of what it had two years earlier \u2014 which is enough to add 12.8 miles of new sidewalk and repair another 8.7 miles.<\/p>\n
A portion of the money will be used specifically to grind down tripping hazards where the sidewalk panels don\u2019t line up and remove obstructions like utility poles.<\/p>\n
The idea of the condition assessment isn\u2019t foreign to the city. Since 2011, Chukwudolue said, the city has hired a consulting firm every three to four years to score its streets, which helps direct its investments. <\/p>\n
Chukwudolue said the city plans to release the new sidewalk conditions on its website when the work is completed. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo they have a better sense through that on when potentially the city might be able to come to their area to do something,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Read also:<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Towing a gadget-packed trailer hitched to his e-bike over endless miles of sidewalk, Lord Carson…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[973,82,84,83,840],"class_list":["post-425699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-infrastructure","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}