AbstractTechnical code of maintenance for urban road (CJJ36‐2016) is an important basis for evaluating urban road conditions. However, when calculating the pavement surface condition index (PCI) using the evaluation method in this code, it is found that there is a situation where the disease increase and the score decrease. In order to quantify the unreasonable points, we simplified the types of diseases to conduct research and found that when the deduction of one disease remains unchanged, a new type of disease is added. When the deduction ratio of the increased disease is less than 26%, the road surface does not conform to the actual situation. In order to better evaluate the pavement condition of urban roads, this paper investigates other commonly used calculation methods for PCI of urban roads, and optimizes the PCI evaluation method. Through comparative analysis, the optimized evaluation method is more in line with the actual situation. The result is more reasonable.