The Wall Street Journal reports that state and local budget woes are leading to rougher road surfaces:
Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.
In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as “poor man’s pavement.” Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel.
It sounds like a temporary solution to recession-induced budget woes–cutting back on road maintenance costs while tax receipts are down. Thing is, changing a road surface isn’t all that temporary,. like furloughing a worker. If you’re grinding up the asphalt, you’re likely doing away with the pavement for years to come.
There’s another factor suggesting this may be a long-term trend rather than a quick budget fix: higher energy prices have made petroleum-based asphalt more expensive. Asphalt is made from bitumen, a by-product of oil distillation. Although bitumen is still quite readily-available, the recent surge in oil prices has made it more expensive to obtain and process the raw ingredients needed to pave roads. When the 2008 oil bubble hit, many counties and municipalities started cutting back on or deferring road projects before they saw a cataclysmic drop in tax revenues. I suspect that even if/when local governments are able to right their balance sheets, $80+ oil means we’re not going to see repaving on the scale we once did.
The WSJ piece credits the automobile for the creation of our paved road system:
Paving grew in popularity in the early 20th century as more cars hit streets and spread when the federal government built the Interstate Highway System.
That’s not entirely correct. Bicyclists actually who started the movement to pave America’s roads:
The bicycle, quite literally, paved the road for automobiles. The explosive popularity of the human-powered, two-wheeled vehicle sparked road construction across the Western world’s cities. The League of American Wheelmen was a major vector for the political will necessary to build better roads with more than one million members (out of a mere 75 million people) at its peak. Sure they engaged in silliness like racing and bicycle polo (!) but at heart, the group was a potent, progressive social force that inadvertently helped bring about its own end by getting roads paved, thus making long distance “touring” possible in automobiles.
This is where the rubber meets the road for me. I don’t often drive on remote, rural roads that are at risk for going gravel. But I occasionally bicycle them. And bicycles don’t mix well with gravel, or chip-and-seal, or even potholes. So I hope graveling doesn’t rear its ugly head in East Tennessee . . . at least not on any roads that matter.