On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 1:41:10 PM UTC-8, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 1:22:44 PM UTC-8, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Tuesday, 18 February 2020 16:12:43 UTC-5, wrote:
On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 8:36:32 PM UTC+1, Frank Krygowski wrote:
“In 10 years, we’re going to start turning roads back into gravel” if
nothing changes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/b...sin-roads.html

As I've mentioned, Ohio has 88 counties. Some, like mine, have many more
miles of county roads than do others. But the state's funds distributed
for county road maintenence gives each county 1/88 of the total instead
of giving on a per-mile basis. I frequently see the effects when riding
from one county into another.


I can't complain about the condition of our country roads. They are well maintained compared to Germany and Belgium were I ride also frequently especially Germany. The roads in Belgium are awful. There are no borders anymore but as soon as you cross the invisible Belgium border you now immidiately you are in Belgium. Your fillings are rattling out of your teeth.

Lou
--
- Frank Krygowski

That's exactly what Duane says about riding from Quebec to Ontario Canada.

Cheers

This is interesting. Why do you suppose they went from very good roads during the Presidency of Eisenhower to the slow degradation of roads since? They are continually asking for additional taxes for road repairs. People, sick of the poor roads comply and pass these taxes and nothing seems to ever come of them. I noted road repairs after the last gas tax increase - in one rich neighborhood that had good roads to begin with.

Eisenhower was the interstate system and not county roads, but existing roads were better 60 years ago -- in large part because they were 60 years newer.

Apart from graft and the usual inefficiencies in road building and repair, road maintenance budgets are stretched because of lost gas tax revenues, competition with other public transportation modes, new road construction -- and just a lot of roads to maintain.

I'll defer to SMS on this, but it is my understanding that funding for local road construction can come from a lot of sources (state and local bonds, local option taxes, gas tax, etc.), but maintenance may have fewer funding sources or a lower priority over existing sources. When a county gets a nice new rural road, it can be like getting a free Bugatti. It gets a hot new car but can't afford the $21,000 oil change. And if a county is building a lot of new roads, its funding sources may be tapped, and it has nothing left for maintenance -- and then it has even more roads to maintain. One reason why roads are going to hell is because there are so many new roads.

-- Jay Beattie.