Roads to Ruin: Towns Rip Up the Pavement

[Lumi]

Roads to Ruin: Towns Rip Up the Pavement

Asphalt Is Replaced By Cheaper Gravel; 'Back to Stone Age'


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.

 

[Trench]

I've spent a lot of time bird hunting in North Dakota Lumi and for every mile of blacktop, there's a hundred miles of gravel roads there. In a state of less than 700,000 people, they don't have the tax revenue or the need for more blacktop.

Trench

 

[Lumi]

That's understandable, but tearing up what's existing and turning it to dust or gravel?

Don't let gmroz know to shoot birds :mj07:

 

[Trench]

That's understandable, but tearing up what's existing and turning it to dust or gravel?

Don't let gmroz know to shoot birds :mj07:

It makes a lot of sense to me. Gravel roads are cheap and easy to maintain. Blacktop is not. I've driven thousands of miles of primitive roads, dirt roads and gravel section roads througout the Dakotas. Most rural landowners are fine with gravel roads because it keeps their property taxes down.

Trench