A Return To The Stone Age?

File this under possible evidence that we are in a slow decline. Last July 17th, the Wall Street Journal reported on a trend among States and Local governments across the country to allow paved roads to return to gravel because they can't afford to maintain the pavement.

Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.

In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as "poor man's pavement." Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel.

While the argument can be made in the case of some of the roads converted or allowed to erode back to gravel that the populations or the purposes they once served no longer exist, in other cases it is purely a matter of tax revenue being reduced through tax cuts until maintenance of roads is impossible.

"I'd rather my kids drive on a gravel road than stick them with a big tax bill," said Bob Baumann, as he sipped a bottle of Coors Light at the Sportsman's Bar Café and Gas in Spiritwood (ND).

...,A lot of these roads have just deteriorated to the point that they have no other choice than to turn them back to gravel," says Larry Galehouse, director of the National Center for Pavement Preservation at Michigan State University. Still, "we're leaving an awful legacy for future generations."

Some experts caution that gravel roads can be costlier in the long run than consistently maintained asphalt because gravel needs to be graded and smoothed. A gravel road "is not a free road," says Purdue University's John Habermann, who organized a recent seminar about the resurgence of gravel roads titled "Back to the Stone Age."

Is this decline an isolated trend in the overall picture of our society's and our nation's health? Is it emblematic of a slow erosion of infrastructure with potential impact on economic and societal cohesion? If so, what conditions contribute to the causes of this ongoing slow erosion of infrastructure? Or is it simply the re-alignment of resources based on changing needs of the nations rural states and counties?