Roads, from the latin Ero-de Ha-eh-d (probably). Roads are, by definition, nothing more than a widened path leading from one place to another. But they mean so much more to us now. Imagine going to Safeway for spicy cheese dip without the Seward Highway. Safeway wouldn’t even have your cheese dip without the Seward Highway! If you live in Seward, then you’ll know the struggle of the road crews trying to keep up with our ever-changing weather. This article will pretty much be a rant about stupid ROADS with a little bit of knowledge sprikinkled in.

Let’s start with a way to measure the goodness of a road. The PASER scale (pavement surface evaluation and rating) was developed in Wisconsin and is a way to assign a numerical value to a road’s condition: 1 meaning the road must be reconstructed, and 10 meaning the road is pristine with no maintenance required.  Since 2009, the percentage of roads that are below 3 in the United states has grown from 14% to over 21%. Think about that, the US government is telling you that more than a fifth of the roads you drive on are dangerous.  In The San Francisco/Oakland region, a whopping 71.2 percent of its roads are in “poor condition.” This is the government deeming it unsafe to drive! How are you supposed to do your job and pay taxes on roads that are unsafe?

This brings me to my next point, the fact that there is more money spent annually on road expansion than there is road maintenance. That is a compounding problem; as we build more roads, the theoretical cost to maintain all the roads goes up. However, in reality the budget per mile of road goes down. What?! More money is spent on making roads than maintaining them! 3rd graders are better at budgeting than that! It isn’t hard to comprehend that if this continues the old roads will cease to exist. And it’s not like this is a new thing either. Roads have been expanding for over 20 years.

It also isn’t as if the US doesn’t have enough roads. Take Germany for example, a country known for its extremely dense roadways, with the Autobahn being over 8,000 miles long. Germany has 644,480 miles of roadways, and the US has over 10 times that at 6,882,519 miles of roads. The US has been building more roads every year than the next four countries combined. 

This roadway situation is just another example of the US’s impulsive need to be the biggest and best at everything. With the two biggest navies in the world being the US navy and the US air force, it only makes sense that the US would dump trillions of dollars into ensuring that they keep a lead in road miles.

For America “just” being the best isn’t good enough. America needs to absolutely dwarf all other competition and make them feel like nothing. Compensate much? So next time you hit that pothole and think to yourself “these roads really suck they should do something about it,” remember that the reason your commute sucks is because of compensating politicians who can’t stand the mere sight of competition from their self-induced throne.