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Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Roads to Ruin: Towns Rip Up the Pavement

Author:     LAUREN ETTER
Source:     The Wall Street Journal
Publication Date:     9-Aug-10
 Link: Roads to Ruin: Towns Rip Up the Pavement
Stephan:   Unpaving our roads. Can anything be more symbolic of what has gone wrong with America? We are closing our schools, closing libraries, shutting down our street lighting. But nothing, for me, is quite as symbolic as unpaving the roads. Have you ever before heard of an advanced nation tearing up the pavement of its roads? This is the natural progression and inevitable consequence of 30 years of conservatives pounding away that government is bad. It began with Ronald Reagan and his statement that that 'government is not the solution, government is part of the problem.' We are now reaping the fruits of that worldview and, if the midterm elections go as many believe they will, and Republicans gain seats, it will only get worse. Unpaving the roads. It is the sign of who we have become, and the road we have chosen.

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 […]

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