The eyeball evaluations, complaints and political input that drive the paving schedule in the city of Pittsburgh may soon take a back seat to data, with Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and City Council looking at alternatives.

Yesterday, council voted to hold a special meeting on paving decision-making before it votes on Councilman William Peduto's bill demanding a computer-aided process. Deputy Public Works Director Mike Gable said the mayor has ordered his department to evaluate paving planning systems, to find out which work best and are compatible with the city's management software.

During the late 1990s, the city used specialized computer software to help decide which streets to repave. Mr. Gable said that software was abandoned because staff cuts made it impossible to update the data.

"We need to have a system," Mr. Peduto said. "There is nowhere else in the country that is throwing away an engineering system and replacing it with eyeball inspection."

Councilman Jim Motznik defended the current system, holding aloft the clipboard he used when he was a public works employee to hold one-page street evaluation worksheets.

"There's misinformation being sent to the media that the system in place is unfair -- it is not -- and that council members pick streets and committee people pick streets, and they don't," he said.

He and other council members confirmed that they ask the Department of Public Works to put streets in their districts on the paving list but said they don't do it for political reasons.

Forty-six members of the city Democratic Committee will see the streets in front of, next to, or across an intersection from their homes repaved this year if all the streets on the city's paving list are resurfaced. Three council members will see their street, or a section very close to their home, repaved in a year during which just one in 20 miles of city streets will get fresh asphalt.

Council President Doug Shields said that a block of Beacon Street on which Public Works Director Guy Costa lives, which is currently being repaved, "was certainly in passable condition" prior to being stripped of old asphalt. Meanwhile he can't get other, worse streets in his district on the paving list, he said.