Officials in Texas this week began converting 83 miles of asphalt road to unpaved lanes of gravel. Years of heavy truck travel has ravaged entire routes in south and west Texas, and going back to gravel is for now the only affordable answer.
Representatives for the state’s transportation department told
the Texas Tribune that construction would begin Monday on a
project that involves tearing up over 80 miles of asphalt that
has been severely damaged over the years due to heavy traffic
brought on by even heavier machinery. An oil boom has caused an
energy industry to emerge near the state’s southwest border with
Mexico, but that extra business has also brought extra traffic.
Now local roads ravaged by oil-industry trucks are far too
damaged to be repaired by what resources the state has, and the
solution officials saw as the most affordable involves serious
downgrades.
“Since paving roads is too expensive and there is not enough
funding to repave them all, our only other option to make them
safer is to turn them into gravel roads,” Texas Department of
Transportation spokesman David Glessner told the Tribune.
TxDOT Deputy John Barton announced last month that the state
agency was moving forward with the plan after efforts to secure
upwards of an extra $1 billion in annual funding for repairs went
unanswered.
Earlier this year the department asked for $4 billion in
additional funding just to maintain roads in their current
condition and another $1.6 billion to address the damage brought
on by the energy sector. State legislators responded by approving
$450 million towards repairing county and state-owned roads
effected by the oil biz. TxDOT said it needs more than double
that sum on an annual basis just to maintain and repair the roads
consistently damaged by oil-industry trucks.
But while state lawmakers did approve a ballot measure that would
set aside $1.2 billion annually for state transportation
projects, residents won’t get to vote on that until 2014. Without
the funding to come close to ordering those repairs in the
meantime, roads were slated to be de-paved this week. Previously,
Barton told the Texas Transportation Commission, “I would
suspect we would continue to convert other roadway segments as we
continue to move forward.”
Additionally, those new roads won’t be able to accommodate
high-speed travel and will require truck drivers to slow down
their pace drastically. “Instead of whipping in at 70 miles per
hour, they’ll have to move in there at 30 miles per hour,”
Barton told the commission, according to the Star-Telegram.
But though the state commission entertained TxDOT’s plan before
putting it into place this week, local lawmakers in the areas
being affected say those calling the shots neglected to confer
with community members before agreeing to dig up their roads.
State Sen. Carlos Uresti (D-San Antonio) said in a statement that
the agency “imposed a unilateral solution on these communities
with no notice, no opportunity to seek alternative solutions, and
no clear understanding of what to expect in the future.”
Dimmit County, a district represented in part by Sen. Uresti,
will see over 30 miles of farm-to-market roads reduced to gravel,
Ian Floyd reported for the Tribune.
Republished from: RT