Hardly a week goes by that someone from the asphalt paving or concrete trade association writes an op-ed piece telling us how our economy will decline unless we boost funding for roads and bridges. It’s a multi-billion dollar price tag.
At 58, I am old enough to have heard the drill long enough to know it is also an existential exercise without end. What is all but missing from the discussion is why we are in this predicament in the first place.
As a society we have converted every country dirt path to paved or concrete roadways over the years and much of it was poorly built. Too much, done poorly, has put a yoke of maintenance on our shoulders. The persistent and excessive use of deicing salts has done grave damage to bridges and roads.
And, much of the road work was laid down on unstable soils and inadequate foundations resulting in cracking. Even more aggravating is the State of Colorado allowing overweight trucks to run the highways unimpeded.
The Federal government forces trucks through weigh stations but the State allows them to travel the back roads and intra-city roads overloaded, doing significant damage. It even extends to city and county vehicles driving on the bike path system and systematically destroying it.
The list goes on and is well known to transportation insiders. Why has this been perpetuated?
The plain and simple fact is that we have used highway trust funds as a jobs program and have not perceived any limit until now. Overshooting our capacity to maintain and replace infrastructure is of our own doing and will only get worse until we hit rock bottom in our addiction to the free and easy money of the past.
We have to quit behaving like trust fund babies. The question is whether our elected officials will have the courage to confront the entrenched transportation bureaucracy.
Francis M. Miller is a member of the Front Range Infrastructure 2050 Committee. In the recent past he was a member of the American Concrete Institute’s Committee on High Performance Concrete, a member of the Douglas County Planning Commission, and a US Navy SeaBee in the Civil Engineering and Construction Battalions for six years during the Vietnam War. He has spent a lifetime in road construction and is an inventor and expert in thin coat concrete repair. He lives in Parker. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
