The Last Thing America Needs Is More Roads, More Gravel Instead

[M II A II R II K]

No More Roads


APRIL 3 2017

By Henry Grabar

Read More: http://www.slate.com/articles/busine...ore_roads.html

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Roads and bridges. That singsong phrase is a well-worn exhortation to common sense and consensus, an expression designed to summon us, like Christmas morning church bells, from the trenches of partisan warfare.

- It’s what President Donald Trump wants: “We will build new roads and highways and bridges and airports and tunnels and railways all across our wonderful nation,” he said in his inaugural speech. And, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman suggests, what liberals want too. The Democrats’ own recently unveiled infrastructure plan calls for $210 billion for, you guessed it, roads and bridges. We should expect to hear a lot more of it. Now that the American Health Care Act has tanked, the Trump administration is eager to move on to other issues, including passing an infrastructure bill.

- They will almost certainly share a mantra: roads and bridges. There’s just one problem: America does not need more roads, suspended or otherwise. The rural population, after three decades of declining growth, started shrinking in 2010. In America’s metro areas, where more than 4 in 5 Americans live, the road network has been expanding faster than population growth since 1980. That has created an unprecedented maintenance crisis, in addition to facilitating sprawl, harming the environment, undermining Main Street commerce, and draining local budgets. Not only should we not be building more roads, we shouldn’t necessarily be repairing the ones we have.

- Since 1980, according to the Federal Highway Administration, public road mileage rose from 3.86 million miles to 4.19 million. Lane miles rose from 7.92 million to 8.8 million. Both those figures lag far behind population growth. But take a closer look, and a pattern emerges: Rural road miles have actually decreased in that time. All the new roads are urban. --- In and around cities, road mileage has grown at exactly twice the rate of population. In 1980, there was a mile of urban road for every 273 residents. Now, there’s a mile of road for every 215. That means fewer people responsible for the money that keeps that mile of road in good shape.

- Old miles still outnumber new ones 99 to 1 every year, but states spend more money making incremental additions to the road network than taking care of the rest. All that road construction is a subsidy for sprawling greenfield development, which in addition to placing Americans farther from work, shopping, and one another, exerts an enormous, unaccounted cost on the environment. It’s also very expensive. Traditionally, cities and counties have footed the bill for expanding roads and other utilities for new development, forecasting jobs, population growth, and an expanded tax base but discounting distant repair obligations.

- Making America gravel again is more popular than you think. More than half the states have engaged in “unpaving,” which can be used to slow traffic or adapt a road to diminished use. But saving money is the paramount reason: In 2009, Montpelier, Vermont, saved $120,000—one-tenth of the city’s entire streets budget—by unpaving one of its streets. Faced with unprecedented maintenance costs for its own sprawling road network, Omaha, Nebraska, is also engaging in pavement-to-gravel conversions. Gravel is good. It’s cheaper than concrete and often has lower maintenance costs.

- It can be more easily repaired after damage from potholes or heavy vehicles. “There is nothing wrong with a good gravel road,” says the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Telling that to the roads-and-bridges crowd won’t be easy. “It’s hard for folks who have a paved road to go back to unpaved,” says Laura Fay, a research scientist at the Unpaved Roads Institute (formerly the Road Dust Institute) in Montana. “They feel like it’s going back in time. Folks just feel like they deserve better.”

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[CastleScott]

^ Hopefully concrete pavement will be utilized a bit more as it holds up more to heavy truck loads, lasts longer and easier to maintain than asphalt.

[SFBruin]

This will lead to an increase in vehicle maintenance costs, no?

[M II A II R II K]

Unless they make better wheels.