The Struggle to Mend America’s Rural Roads

The roads look like losers in a barroom brawl. Thick, jagged cracks run down the asphalt like scars, interrupted at points by bruised bumps. In some places, guardrails are tilted off their moorings like a pair of glasses knocked askew.

“It is not real stable — the shoulders are eroding in many places,” Mr. Nelson said. “When you’re going through with an 80,000-pound load of soybeans and meeting cars, that’s dangerous.”

Throughout much of the Midwest and South, the rural transportation system is crumbling. Two-thirds of the nation’s freight emanates from rural areas. Traffic volume has increased. And over the years, tractor-trailers and farm equipment have been supersized, ballooning in length, breadth and weight.

A legally loaded semi-trailer truck can produce 5,000 to 10,000 times the road damage of one car according to some estimates, said Benjamin J. Jordan, director of the Wisconsin Transportation Information Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Roads and bridges have not kept up.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/business/wisconsin-roads.html?emc=rss&partner=rss