Erik_A

Cash-Strapped Towns Are Un-Paving Roads They Can’t Afford to Fix

https://www.wired.com/2016/07/cash-s...nt-afford-fix/

deapee

Wouldn't mind living there. Around here, the roads have to be paved or they couldn't plow them when it snows I'm sure.

Banzai

It's like watching the decline of Rome. A once-great empire that can no longer build roads.

Sad, really.

turkey9186

Linn County Oregon did this in the mid 90s. Five years later they had turned them back into chipseal roads.

jon c. 

They've gone in the opposite direction here. In the 90s and the early part of this century, my county decided to pave all previously dirt roads. They had previously done so only if a majority of property owners assented, but ultimately they decided do it even over the objection of homeowners.

In the last few years, the adjoining county (where I do most of my riding, living only a mile from the county line) did the same thing. Being a very rural county, many of these roads see very little traffic so it's really been great in terms of opening up new loops to ride. Being the smallest and one of the poorest counties in the state, I'm not sure where they got the funding. But I'm glad they did.

FarmPond

If the road can't be maintained or up kept it's absolutely better as a gravel road. I live in Iowa and there was a lot of this shift back to gravel around the mid to late 90's. Counties stopped trying to maintain blacktop roads that had little traffic. Plus the cheaper asphalt roads couldn't withstand the weight of our farm equipment or the frost boils that happen during freeze/thaw cycles. They were having to resurface areas every year and were not going to spend the money to do full blown concrete.

A well maintained gravel road is great to drive on. It's much easier to maintain and remove snow from than an uneven surfaced blacktop or even rundown concrete surface. I live on a gravel that was once a blacktop and except for the extra dust I much prefer the gravel over the potholed/frost heaved blacktop it used to be.

Andy_K 

The only thing that irritates me more than chipseal is having county roads employees telling me that as a cyclist I will enjoy the chipseal once it's had time to settle in.

I tried to convince Washington County that applying chipseal to the recently annointed Tualatin Valley Scenic Bikeway was a bad idea. They assured me it would be fine.

trail_monkey

^^^^^^Iowa here too and Farm Pond is right. There is plenty of old asphalt around here that is ground up into gravel in sections. So you get a section of pavement then it turns to gravel and then back to pavement. Pretty common in Iowa

NYMXer

I would hate to choose between raising taxes or maintaining roads..... but poor roads will cause premature chassis wear, so either way, motorist are going to be paying more.

Some roads are not holding up due a poor sub base, others (like maybe the one in the article) suffer damage from the "freeze-thaw" cycles.

Many roads in my area are of the tar/chip finish and cycling on them is no issue at all. The joy is when we are lucky enough to ride on some blacktop (macadam), wow...... what a ride! I guess it is all about where you live (freeze/thaw) and municipal funds.