Today while I was at Wawa getting lunch, I passed by the newspaper stand. Normally I will just casually glance at the titles, but I never buy one. Today something in US TODAY caught my eye instantly. On the front page of USA TODAY there was an article called, Stimulus not going to worst roadways. Being a Pennsylvanian it causes some discomfort. It is known that we have the worst roadways. Overdrive.com does a survey with truck drivers once a year, and Pennsylvania has been the title holder of worst roads 5 times in a decade. We were also number one from 1990-1998. Transportation for America, a Washington lobbying group, Reported that 11.3 percent of Pennsylvania's roads were poor.
The Article in USA TODAY found that in Detroit which has a third of Michigan's bad roads, will only receive 10% of the states road funding. New York City which has nearly 900 miles of bad roads will get almost nothing of the 400 million the state allotted to road repairs according to the article. The major problem according too, John Barton head of engineering for Texas' Department of Transportation, "Is that the stimulus is designed to spend as fast as possible to revive the economy. Many roads are in such bad shape that repairs would take too long and cost too much to qualify for funds". This is why instead of fixing the problem the state of Pennsylvania will continue to put band-aid fixes on our roads, because they are just too bad, and will take just too long.
Yes the stimulus is created jobs, and yes it is going to spend 10 Billion in Stimulus aid to repair the nations highways, but too much is going to area's that are well Maintained, and not enough will go to the area's in most need of freshly paved roads.
The USA TODAY article was found in the Fri, Sat, Sun edition dates 25-27 on the front page
