County Rd. 43 Repairs
By Tyler graves
By Tyler graves
I live on the back roads by Harris Park, and let me tell you, County Road 43 is falling apart. Three quarters of the way from my house there are pot holes that take up half the road and you have to drive into the other lane just too barely avoid it while hoping you don’t hit an oncoming car. Personally, I think that county Rd. 43 should just be all dirt so we don’t have to deal with the man made road conditions. Every year construction workers come in and repair the eroded spots, the pot holes, and cracks with loose chip and occasionally actual pavement. Every winter the snow and ice causes frost heaving, a process which the water freezes underneath the road and eventually expands and thaws causing the road to literally blow apart, demolishing 43.
My proposal would be to tear out the entire slice of pavement and turn the road into dirt. If the road were dirt, then there will be no pot holes, cracking, or "warping". If County Rd. 43 was stripped of pavement the road would only suffer from washboards and some occasional erosion. Washboards are no big thing though, yes they try to rattle the car apart, but they are easy enough to get rid of, just take a grader and a blade to swipe them away. Erosion on the other hand, would cause the road to slowly get smaller over time, but it’s fixable. The actual back roads where there is no pavement seem to hold up better than the asphalt ones. They don’t ever break apart, not even if they tried too. The only problem with dirt roads is when huge amounts of water decide rut the road from run off. Let’s now talk about snow and ice on the roads. The ice on pavement tends to stay around longer than it does on the back roads. The ice melts during the day and then freezes all over again once the sun goes down. On the back roads, once the ice melts, the water will just be absorbed by the dirt and will be done with it. When morning arrives again, all of the water thaws and the roads breaks some more. So why should we continue to spend all of this money on a broken road? I just think it’s a waste.
