(This section of Nicollet Avenue, shown in 2011 in the 3600 block, was reconstructed the following year as the city has focused on improving the condition of its major streets.)

Streets in Minneapolis are holding their own in terms of surface condition, according to an annual analysis of their condition. But the trends vary by type of street.

The annual rating, know as a pavement condition index, measures the surface condition of streets based on visual observation of the smoothness of their surface. It's watched as a measure of whether investment in streets is keeping up with deterioration caused by age, weather and heavy traffic.

The average index for all city streets held at 69 on a scale of 0 to 100 points, with 100 a perfect score. It's the sixth straight year that the rating has held at that level, stabilizing after a long decline from 81 in 1995.

But the trends vary by category of street. For example. parkways notched their third straight year of improvement, hitting an average of 70 after bottoming at 68 in 2010. The category known as local streets, a smaller category that includes lower-traffic streets in industrial areas, also recorded improvement, but only to an average of 56.

However, it's clear that the city's current pace of resurfacing of residential streets isn't keeping up with their deterioration. Their index now stands at 71, continuing a long-term decline at least since 1995, when the rating averaged 87, shortly after completion of the city's 30-year residential paving program in the 1990s. The city has residential paving projects scheduled this year in the western Powderhorn area of south Minneapolis, and for the area bounded by Lowry, Penn, Dowling and Lyndale avenues in north Minneapolis

Meanwhile, the 2014 rating of the city's state-aid streets, the major streets that carry that highest traffic volumes, sagged one point to an average rating of 69, ending three years of improvement after that rating bottomed out in 2010 at 65. Heidi Hamilton, the city's deputy public works director, said she doesn't put too much importance on one-point fluctuations.

In recent years, the city has changed strategies toward putting more of its repaving dollars into milling off a portion of the street surface and replacing it with new asphalt. That's a 10- to 15-year fix that allows to cover more miles than other paving methods, but it doesn't address underlying deficiencies in the street's subsurface.