Giving Spittin’ Gravel a Whole New Meaning
Welcome to Texas, where Republican leadership hasn’t lowered our electric bill, our insurance rates, our college tuition, or our taxes, but they have done one helluva job lowering our standard of living.
Citing a funding shortfall and the impact of a historic oil drilling boom, Texas Department of Transportation officials on Thursday announced plans to move forward with converting some roads in West and South Texas to gravel.
Approximately 83 miles of asphalt roads will be torn up and converted to “unpaved” roads, TxDOT Deputy Executive Director John Barton said. The speed limits on those roads will probably be reduced to 30 mph.
I guess going back to cobblestone is out of the question so once we can’t afford gravel, we got dirt. Dirt is still pretty damn cheap in Texas and if it was good enough for Davy Crockett, it’s good enough for south Texas.
Now I want you to hear the damnest reasoning I have ever heard.
Commissioner Fred Underwood wanted to make sure the public understood the reasoning behind the decisions.
“This is a safety issue,” Underwood said. “It’s not ‘our roads are bad and we’re not going to keep them up.’ It’s ‘our roads are bad and we’re trying to protect the driving public.’”
What the hell is the difference? Our roads are bad. We can’t fix them. Ain’t that kinda like saying, “We can’t afford to fix our broken fire trucks but so we’re going to fix that by not letting people live in wood houses.”
Thank you Rick Perry and the Republican leadership.
Thanks to Jason for the heads up.
I hope those newly converted gravel roads get their own special signage:
1WELCOME TO OLD STYLE TEXAS
Drive Slow, Loud, and Friendly
They gonna provide way stations for pickin’ the rocks outta them horses hooves?
2Rick: Here in California we name freeways after distinguished Californians. These should probably be named after Rick Perry and Mr. Underwood. These will probably qualify as “scenic routes” and, as such could be named:
3“Gitcher sef a new Perry tires” or –can’t think of anything for Underwood, but I’m sure other witty commenters could!
I’m with Louie C.K. on Texas. Sorry you have to live there—-though No. Carolina is really giving you a race to the bottom!
What’s that going to do to all the jokes about comparing Texas and Oklahoma roads?
“The Farm to Market roads in Texas are better than the US highways in Oklahoma” You can tell that’s an old one – a newer version would compare them to interstate highways.
Texan: “Texas is so big you can drive all day and not get across the state.”
4Oklahoman: “We’ve got roads like that in Oklahoma too.”
They can’t afford to repair the asphalt roads, so they’re going to spend even more money to rip up the asphalt and lay down gravel? Why not just let the asphalt deteriorate naturally? Sooner or later, it will turn into gravel (or semi-dirt) without the expense to do it deliberately.
5The Texas Republicans should have kept “Critical Thinking” skills in the school curriculum. They’re sure showing that they need them.
Welcome back to the 19th century.
6Those are plans to “move forward”?
Forward, did you say?
7bcuz of an oil drilling boom?? as in explosion, something blew up boom?? or a boom fell off’n the rig? mebbe they used the wrong word…or they meant it to mean sump’n else? oh what’s the use!!!
8Oil drilling “boom” led to cuts to road improvements? How’d they come up with that?
9This has to be pretty close to the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard of!
10“Citing a funding shortfall and the impact of a historic oil drilling boom…”
This is happening because the “oil drilling boom” is causing a “funding shortfall”? What?
Can’t. Connect. The. Dots.
11OH! I get it!
Now all we have to do is find out who is the largest gravel producer in Texas and…follow the dots!
Stupid me!
12Aw, there’s a better solution. Make all those roads toll roads. Then the oil field trucks that have torn them up would have to pay to use them and that would pay for repairs. Wait, that might hurt “job creation” better to go backwards to gravel roads.
13Follow the money folks, bet ya 2 shiners there is a Rep. congressvarmint who has an asphalt recycling plant and prolly has the gravel concession too – or maybe another Perry relative? And uh “Underwood road, used to be, but now alls we got is gravel.”
14Reminded me of Molly Ivins:
“Texas is just Mississippi with good roads”
Now they’re working hard on the ‘good roads’ part.
Dang
15Anyone living or running a business on one of these gravel roads should have his/her taxes lowered accordingly. Where I come from gravel roads indicate undeveloped land and it is taxed a whole lot less than the developed kind.
But, you know, it really doesn’t make a lick of sense, does it!
16I’m just saying, if the roads are caliche, you better remember to drive like you’re driving on gravel covered with baby powder because that’s what driving on those roads is like. I flipped a car once on one of those roads and climbed out through the windshield. Also, 80,000 mile tires will last about 10,000 miles on those roads. Voice of experience. But the folks in west Texas are thrilled about the oil boom.
17I just googled who’s the biggest producer of gravel in west Texas. If you’re bored you can go wander around there and try different combinations of words. If we DO figure something out, what’re we gonna do with the information?
18Or you can google koch enterprises and right there are jobs in asphalt industry down on the coast, for Koch Industries. Just remember, if someone is googling these topics your response will come up so use discretion in what you say.
Let’s see now. Why do you suppose the state hasn’t already passed a law that anyone who tears up a road drilling for or producing anything for profit — like, for instance, oil, gas, etc. — will have to pay to repair the roads they ruin after when they are done with them. It’s not as if these companies take their warehouse or manufacturing plant elsewhere if they are required to pay for what they tear up. They have to drill where the resource is. Remember the sign you see in some stores: You break it, you buy it?
19Now I get it. If the roads are all gravel then that’ll keep those darn West and South Texas women from driving to abortion clinics. Makes perfect sense.
20Apparently the varmints don’t realize gravel roads need to be maintained too. Have any of you folks ever driven on a poorly maintained gravel road? Geez Louise.
21Oh but will this quote dog Perry’s claims of prosperity in Texas from now until 2016!
22For those folks that don’t understand the connection between “oil boom” and “no money”:
Texas is big on giving “tax breaks” to big bidness (i.e., throwing money at ’em). You give enough “tax breaks” away and the next thing you know, you’re broke.
It’s as simple as that…or perhaps we should say, it’s as simple as the gov’ner…
23“Welcome back to the 19th century.” Mike, that’s the GOP slogan, along with “Reality is whatever I say it is.” They’re whipping us all back to the 19th century as hard as they can in birth control, labor relations, voting, economics, religion in schools, and just about anything else you can name.
They won’t be happy until they and their friends have 99% of America’s money and the rest of us are living in the third world, scavenging firewood and walking a mile for water.
24Once they’re all gravel, Perry can have them paved with asphalt and call it a capital improvement in Texas for which he’s responsible. Or mebbe he’s jist doin’ it now so his pal Greg can claim the improvement when it happens on his watch.
25The new roads will be perfectly adequate for the horse-and-buggy that will soon be the vehicle of choice for the modern Texan. We don’t need no infernal combustion engines.
26Well now. This is news to make anyone crabby, and on any given day I’m halfway there already. What nonsense!
I have to start going to coffee at the senior citizen’s center to find out whose family owns the road contracting business and the gravel supply contract for the State of Texas. And we need to consider who sells tires, too, because all of the tires that drive over those new roads will need replacing every third weekend or so.
The contractor’s about to make a mint paying workers (documented, of *course*) (wink, wink) to tear up roads before the gravel contractor dumps a few loads of spikey gravel down so the (wink, wink) workers can spread it around.
Then the d*mned oil bidness trucks are gonna rip that road apart in a week, and the folks who live on that road won’t be able to get to the grocery store or the doctor. And there are floods and washouts every spring and fall, so that road contractor will have a lifetime of Texas contract money to retire on real soon.
Let’s not allow the elected ones talk about how everyone else should bring their bidness here until we all have a decent standard of living, good schools, good health care, and decent roads…you know, those pesky details of life. All those things we get promised every election. You remember campaign promises, don’t you? I do.
The elected are having a hard time lately, poor things; their failures are showing. But they’ve done well for themselves. If you’re a road contractor or a lobbyist for a bunch of medical clinics, you can make billions off the State of Texas. You’ll do very well while most of us just make do, on less and less every year.
I’ll go have some bad coffee and good conversation. And I’ll get myself registered as a Deputy Voter Registrar, so while I’m pouring the next cup, I can register anyone who doesn’t run away. And then I will hound them as only an old lady can do, to make sure they vote. Because I’ve had all I can take of this.
Gravel roads!! It’s almost funny. But not quite.
27Well heck y’all, they heard all about those Mexican mules from Steve King R-Iowa, and thought they could save some money! I mean, if nobody down there drives a pickup truck why do we need asphalt? In fact, why do we even need roads?? They’re all just drug traffickers and illegals down there anyway why would we want to spend monay on THOSE kinds of people?
Decommissioning roads is a symptom of serious decline. Maybe folks will FINALLY sit up and take notice of what is going on here!
28This will be a freebie if they simply use the rocks in Rickybobby Perry and Louis Gomer(t)’s heads.
29Isn’t the oil b’ness generating any income for Texas, or is it only going to whom Ricky says it will – namely his friends?
30Texas isn’t the first state to start changing the roads from paved to gravel. North Dakota went there in 2010: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704913304575370950363737746.html.
Notice how the concept of increased highway taxes to pay for better roads doesn’t come up? Next time you want to disrupt the Texas legislature, whisper the phrase “raise taxes to pay for services” and watch the Republicans bolt in terror. I’ve never understood the folks who would rather pay $5,000/year in homeowners fees to live in a gated community rather than $2,000/year in enough taxes to pay for a good police force – but this is what it leads to.
31Um.
The oil and gas boom trucks are tearing up the roads.
What exactly would be the harm in THEM having to pay to keep the roads – yes, I mean the asphalt roads – maintained as if they’d never driven their lily white trucks over them?
32Here are my two favorite quotes from the Wall Street Journal’s article, showing the type of short-term thinking that leads to long-term ruin:
“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. (North Dakota)
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.”
33What we are getting in Southeast Harris County, I think, is what they call “street overlays”. This is the process by which they tear up really good concrete streets, and they “overlay” them with asphalt. They “strip” them, (run some kind of machine over them that does similar to what a garden tiller would do) grind them up, and put the asphalt on what used to be “concrete paved” streets. Isn’t that special? Thing is… there is some money for this stuff, coming from somewhere… Or the City of South Houston wouldn’t be tearing up SH-3… which they are. And doing “overlays”. Not many places I can drive in my area, where there is not road construction. So, where’s the money coming from? I’m curious.
When we moved here in 1945, our house was “in the country” and the road was “oyster shells”, not even gravel. Worst dust you can imagine. It was in a word….”awful”. Now that there is a brand new high school in the area. It’s better.
Here we go… back to the ’40’s.
34What we save on taxes will be spent on insurance. It’s a win all around for all of Perry’s friends. And a lifetime job for the guys who scrape and oil the roads.
35@ Marge Wood- Your description of such roads only holds for when it’s dry.If an armadillo urinates on one then they get slick as grease and the mud can build up in the fender well so thick and tight the wheel won’t turn. This is sure to lure more of those bidnesses goodhair is trying to attract.
36And speaking from personal experience, those stupid trucks will still blow by going 60+ in a 30 mph zone on the gravel.
37Hmm, time to get into the windshield repair/replacement business.
38I remember the time I discovered that the Calhoun County road dept had depraved the Hamburg-Michael Expressway in 1976. On my motorcycle, I rounded a curve and encountered a lovely gravel road newly filled with #3 aggregate and neither tamped-down nor rolled. Talk about aerobic executes l exercises.
39I’ll try to keep my pet armadillos fenced in. I AM curious. Texas is big. The roads they’re threatening to get fixed up are only 87 or so miles. Where are they? Somewhere south of Big Spring or Colorado City or out around Odessa?
40Just heard from one of my sisters-in-law today who told me Governor Goodhair and wife are in the process of building a home outside of Round Top, Texas, less than a half mile from her home. Apparently Perry has a couple of friends who live nearby. She expects their gravel county road will be paved soon and is glad she has another way to drive out from her place. She said the local talk is that he will be running for president again. I wonder if he knows how congested that area is when that area has its big antique shows twice a year.
41When it’s congested, he’ll probably take a helicopter.
42I recently made a trek from my current home in Battle Creek, MI, to my old high school, west of Chicago. (If you were here, I would have just pointed to my pointed to a location on my portable Michigan map [i.e., hand].) As I got closer & closer to Lake Michigan, the interstate highway (still in Michigan, still “free”) was almost undriveable. Once I crossed the border to Indiana, the interstate, now a toll road, was smooth and speedy, and had a lot more cars. Needless to say, I stayed on the Indiana toll road as long as possible coming home.
We have manage to achieve our abysmal Michigan roads by these methods: refusing to consider toll roads (it would discourage truck traffic!); permitting the heaviest truck loads in the country (I think); and closing truck weigh stations (so expensive to run? or something). Now you know: foreign states are stupid, too.
I do feel for the folks of Texas in their conversion of paved roads to gravel (which is also happening in Michigan, BTW). I particularly feel for you because you do not have the blessed season of True Winter, which is the only season during which gravel or dirt roads can be tolerated. When I taught in the Upper Peninsula (and here I would point to the other half of my portable Michigan map [my other hand], and you would say, if you are from a foreign state, “but I thought that was part of Wisconsin? or Minnesota?” and then I would tell you about how, in the Michigan-Ohio war, Ohio got Toledo and Michigan got the Upper Peninsula. and I would say that, really Michigan has *two parts,* they just never tell you about the fabulous part because then too many people would go there and make it non-fabulous. but maybe you should not go there anyway because black flies and bears and wolves, dangerous wolves) But I digress. At any rate, one of my young students once told me that his favorite season was winter. “Why?” I asked, expecting to hear that he enjoyed snowmobiling, or skiing, or rolling his sister down the ski jump–he was an imaginative child. But no, he surprised me. “My road is so smooth in the winter,” he said. That truly brought tears to my eyes. He lived at the end of a long gravel-and-dirt road, as did many of my students. And the only time he ever experienced smooth roads was during True Winter, when snow packed down instead of melting away. It didn’t matter where you lived: in the city, on a paved county road, on graded-once-a-year dirt track. Even poor people had smooth roads in True Winter.
43This is a Great Opportunity. I can see the auto glass industry making large gains. The JP courts generating revenue for the tickets written for cracked windshields. ( no need to raise taxes with a cash cow court ) Paint and Body shops busy, busy, busy. Just think of all the front end alignments and tires that will be needed.
44There is the added benefit of crony contracts handed out for the grading and replenishment of the gravel.
This is an absolute WIN WIN SITUATION.
So they are paying out to make this happen? Wonder how much they’re gonna fork out just to make things worse!!
45