Public Works

Who We Are

Public Works connects all of Saint Paul's neighborhoods and people by transforming our public infrastructure to deliver safe, sustainable, and equitable systems to meet the changing needs of our communities now and in the future. 

Vision

A thriving, prosperous, and connected Saint Paul for all.

Mission

Public Works designs, builds, and maintains safe, sustainable, and equitable public infrastructure and services to meet the needs of Saint Paul for today and into the future.

Values

• Equity - We respect each other and our community by upholding dignity for everyone and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion for all.
• Trust - We build trust with each other and our community by demonstrating accountability, integrity, and transparency in all our actions.
• Service - We care for each other and our community and take pride in our work and service to better the lives of everyone in Saint Paul.
• Safety - We keep each other and our community safe by building, operating, and maintaining high-quality public infrastructure for all.
• Sustainability - We protect each other and our community by being innovative and adapting our critical work to be sustainable and resilient now and into the future.

Saint Paul Public Works is a nationally accredited department with approximately 350 employees who are responsible for the design, construction and maintenance of the City's infrastructure that is used millions of times each day by residents, businesses, commuters, and visitors to Minnesota's Capital City. 

• 1,874 lane miles of streets & 330 miles of alleys (2,603 alleys)
• 806 miles of sanitary sewer & 450 miles of storm sewer
• 107 bridges (71 city-owned, non skyway)
• 200+ miles of bike lanes
• 37,871 street lights (on 33,105 street poles)
• 413 signalized intersections
• 12,000 annual right of way, transportation, utility plan, sidewalk cafe, & residential parking permits issued
• 1,970 parking meters/spots (193 pay stations and 430 coin meters)
• 80,000 households for garbage service
• 1,183 miles of sidewalk, including 40 miles of sidewalk connected to bridges and 10-12 miles of bike trails, as well as 37 locations of public steps and 98 locations of public crosswalks, islands or medians maintained in the winter by Public Works
• 123,500 households for recycling services

Report an Abandoned Vehicle

Abandoned vehicles are vehicles that have been parking on the street in the City of Saint Paul without moving for over a week. Please provide as much detail as you can about the vehicle.

Once the vehicle is reported the City will start the process of ticketing and potentially towing the vehicle. Not all reported vehicles may be ticketed or removed. To be removed by the City an abandoned vehicle must be ticketed by Saint Paul Police and then towed to a City owned impound lot.

Please note that you will not receive any follow up on your report of an abandoned vehicle.

Report an Abandoned Vehicle

2023 Accomplishments

Saint Paul's Public Works Department consists of more than 350 talented individuals who plan, build, maintain, repair, operate, and manage the Capital City's public infrastructure and citywide programs and services for our residents, businesses, commuters, and visitors. We are proud to make a City that works for all of us. 

Here's a list of some Public Works highlights for 2023 (in no particular order):

Sewers 

• Flood fight: Responded to spring flooding; three weeks of 24-hr. sewer operations. 
• Designed, awarded contract, and supplied construction management for Plato Sanitary Sewer Lift Station Rehabilitation.  
• Designed, awarded contract, and supplied construction management for Water Street Area Sanitary Sewer Capital Improvement Project and Lift station.  
• Repaired storm sewer outfalls along Mississippi River Boulevard and Shepard Road.  

Survey and Maps & Records 

• Exported thousands of Monument and Benchmark records into our new Records Center.  
• Completed a long-overdue maintenance project on the Bridges Garage.   
• Collaborated with Ramsey County on improving our methods for resetting PLS corners.  
• Maps & Records accomplishments: 73 Site plans reviewed. - 25 Lot-splits reviewed. - 60 Encroachment Permit requests reviewed. - 18 Rain Garden Permits reviewed. - 7 plats reviewed. - 12 vacations/easements reviewed. 

Technical Services 

• Compass Deprecation and launched PW-Records Center

Traffic Operations 

• Performed over $1M worth of repairs related to wire theft activities. This included working additional hours over the course of 7 weekends in the fall.  
• Performed over $500M worth of lighting LED conversions to upgrade 70W decorative HPS lamps to LEDs. 
• Performed $1.2M worth of work supporting PW Capital Lighting Projects. 
• Performed $604K worth of work supporting PW Capital Signal Projects. 
• Emphasized striping efforts on crosswalks for 2023 (+20% increase over average). 

Traffic Engineering 

• Completed Saint Paul’s first Transportation Safety Action Plan including a Vision Zero commitment from the Mayor and City Council.  
• Deployed new optimized traffic signal timing plans for downtown.  
• Managed reconstruction of 10 traffic signals and construction of 192 new street lights.  

Transportation Planning & Safety 

• Continued successful implementation of EV Spot Network and Evie Carshare service. Over 150,000 trips with 1.5 million zero-emission miles in 2023. 
• Continued successful management of scooter services. Brought Bike Sharing back to Saint Paul. In 2023 - 312,201 rides on bikes and scooters. 17,000 rides on the bikes.  
• Finalized a staff-approved draft update of the Saint Paul Bicycle Plan.

 Communications & Engagement 

• Held first-ever Snow Summit & Alley Captain Conference and created a new Alley Captain's resource page and tools  
• Created an internal department communications strategy, adding quarterly in-person Director Updates, PW Net, and launched new REACH digital boards for information sharing  
• Helped coordinate communications, media, and engagement/outreach to educate residents about Local Option Sales Tax proposal, which was approved by voters in November 2023.  

Solid Waste & Recycling 

• Implemented customer call center and cart service work for all recycling customers.  
• Implemented integrated client management and collection software in May to provide real-time communication between contracted recycling trucks and City customer service staff 
• Held Waste Reduction Food Too Good to Waste: 7-week food waste reduction challenge for Saint Paul residents  
• Held several new Composting 101 Workshops: Hour-long workshop introducing residents to food waste recycling (composting!) 
• Held 4 Reuse Swaps with more than 1,800 items "swapped" by nearly 300 attendees.

Street Maintenance 

• 2022-2023 record-breaking snow season had 44 winter weather events, 7 snow emergencies and a one-sided parking ban.
• Route-patched the entire city and also responded and addressed more than 3,800 pothole complaints. 

Right of Way Management 

• ROW processed 6,593 Obstruction and Excavation permits, administered the city plan review committee responsibilities and processed 765 Utility Plans. 

Street Design & Construction 

• Completed more than $61 million of street reconstruction projects, including Griggs-Scheffer Phase 2; Annapolis; Edgcumbe; Minnesota; CCB Kellogg Phase 1 .
• Completed first year of Residential Mill and Overlay with Cretin-Bayard and Como-Valentine.  
• Removed over 461 trip hazards from the city sidewalk network.  

Bridges 

• Completed design of the Eastbound Kellogg Blvd Bridge at RiverCentre.  
• Secured all necessary funding for the Kellogg 3rd Street Bridge project. 

Accounting/Finance 

• Sewer Utility maintained AAA Bond Rating from S&P (Accounting worked in conjunction with Public Works and OFS Management to obtain bond funding from Standard and Poors for the Sewer Utility fund).  In which we maintained our AAA bond rating. 
• PW Accounting audited 10,584 lines of accounts payable and p-card data in INFOR. 

Safety & Facilities Maintenance 

• Complied with all hazardous materials and other pertinent permits.
• Responded successfully to operational and facility maintenance and repair activities associated with large and complex field operations sites.   

HR/Equity 

• Hired and trained nearly 60 external candidates and more than 40 city employees for snow ticketers this year. 
• Filled 99 positions.
• Public Works changed the minimum requirements for the Street Services Worker job classification to streamline the hiring and training process for new employees. We eliminated the CDL requirement to make it easier for candidates who do not have a commercial driver’s license to apply, get hired, and receive training (paid for by the City) to achieve a Class B CDL within the first six months to a year of employment. 
• The updated requirements and our extensive recruiting efforts resulted in the largest and most diverse applicant pool for Street Services Works we’ve received in years. We received 122 applicants, 54% of whom are diverse. 
• Twenty-two leaders from Public Works participated in an Undoing Racism workshop coordinated by the City Equity Coordinator and co-facilitated by the Public Works Equity Coordinator.