It is said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Not in Pittsburgh. That old adage must be rewritten to describe the local terrain: The road to unfairness is paved with political intentions.

The political intentions in Pittsburgh are the old-fashioned type: It's about who you are and who you know. If you are Joe Citizen living on a rutted street, you'd better pray that a council member is living down the block.

As Post-Gazette staff writer Rich Lord reported Wednesday, three council members and at least 30 Democratic Party committee members and leaders are scheduled to see their streets, or streets near them, repaved this year.

Only 40 miles of pavement will be resurfaced this spring and summer. So how are the streets chosen? In the late 1990s, the city used a computer-driven analysis, but some officials say that's obsolete so the process has now reverted to something that should be obsolete in a progressive community. The roads are chosen for repaving by eyeball evaluation and requests by the politically connected. The first might be OK, the second is unacceptable.

As our reporter learned, Public Works Director Guy Costa put his own street in Squirrel Hill on the top of the list. To be sure, Mr. Costa may have had reason: It was last resurfaced 30 years ago -- although it got a stopgap coating in 1994 -- and Race for the Cure participants will pass by on May 9.

What's wrong with this is the same thing that is wrong with the other requests by politically influential people with tales to tell of their deteriorated roads: It is very likely to be unfair to the residents of pothole-studded streets elsewhere who haven't seen repaving for years but don't have any connections. There has to be a better way.

Councilman William Peduto sees the unfairness and lack of transparency and is calling for changes to the City Code. He would mandate that Pittsburgh create a three-to-five-year paving plan based on data concerning street composition and traffic usage.

Mr. Peduto would post the plan on the Web for all to see. While 90 percent of the paving money would follow the computer-assisted plan, 10 percent would be permitted for use in unforeseen situations.

Absent the politics, these good intentions would pave a road to better municipal government. Other council members should rally to this in the spirit of reform.