SPIRITWOOD, N.D.—A hulking yellow machine inched along Old Highway 10 here recently in a summer scene that seemed as normal as the nearby corn swaying in the breeze. But instead of laying a blanket of steaming blacktop, the machine was grinding the asphalt road into bits.
"When [counties] had lots of money, they paved a lot of the roads and tried to make life easier for the people who lived out here," said Stutsman County Highway Superintendant Mike Zimmerman, sifting the dusty black rubble through his fingers. "Now, it's catching up to them."
Outside this speck of a town, pop. 78, a 10-mile stretch of road had deteriorated to the point that residents reported seeing ducks floating in potholes, Mr. Zimmerman said. As the road wore out, the cost of repaving became too great. Last year, the county spent $400,000 on an RM300 Caterpillar rotary mixer to grind the road up, making it look more like the old homesteader trail it once was.
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.
The moves have angered some residents because of the choking dust and windshield-cracking stones that gravel roads can kick up, not to mention the jarring "washboard" effect of driving on rutted gravel.
But higher taxes for road maintenance are equally unpopular. In June, Stutsman County residents rejected a measure that would have generated more money for roads by increasing property and sales taxes.
Rebuilding an asphalt road today is particularly expensive because the price of asphalt cement, a petroleum-based material mixed with rocks to make asphalt, has more than doubled over the past 10 years. Gravel becomes a cheaper option once an asphalt road has been neglected for so long that major rehabilitation is necessary.
So much for the shovel ready roads, bridges, and infrastructure jobs created by the stimulus bill!
ReplyDeleteI suuport doing that here. I've said many times recently that this recession has put us back 100 years. This would save not only untold millions of dollars, but it would also force people to slow down. It's a lot cheaper to grade a road once in a while than it is to repave it every three years (whether it needs it or not as has been the case in the past on Rt. 50).
ReplyDeleteYou are wrong. With the traffic on the roads, grading will be a daily job. We are not talking about "dirt road", we are talking about gravel, or ground blacktop. I have said it before, just wait. The roads are going to fall apart. You got people that b!tch about a bump now. Well just wait. Also, there was a guy at one of the public hearings that that lived on Rockawalkin Rd that insisted the county didn't need road graders, and they should contract that work out(LOL), i guess that didn't have anything to do with the fact that he was into that type of work.
ReplyDeleteIt is like the bay bridge, no we are failing as america we cannot afford to pave out roads anymore.
ReplyDeleteSorry folks ride the bumps and take your chances on the bridges.
Have you drove the ND roads thier gravel is better than our paved roads no joke.
ReplyDeleteThe agenda is to re-wild America.
ReplyDeleteThe Global Elites want to re-wild America and crowd the population that remains (Goyim) into cities where government services can be provided more efficiently.
The undeserving Goyim will be eliminated totally eventually - and the blood lines of the Jews will be sufficiently thinned to provide a likely prediction for our next World Leader.
Come quicly Oh Jehova - and provide for us our Savior - who will lead us into righteousness and the Kingdom of YHWH.
Many will prophesy in my name in the last days . . .