Gray Matters by Stuart Carlson and Jerry Resler for October 16, 2023

City Hall was reading your mind, Gray.

Normally the streets are resurfaced and then all the underground utilities are dug up and replaced. My street recently done so. On my street the construction flagman uses a checkered flag. That is appropriate for most of us…..

And this Fall. And this Winter. And next Spring. Etc., etc. … Two examples: Here in Indianapolis, 3 or 4 years were necessary to rebuild a 200 yard long N. Meridian Street bridge over White River; the much shorter 30th Street bridge over the same river will be closed for at least 2 years. Back in the Depression ’30’s, the Empire State building was built in less than 18 months.

Like they’ll put that much effort into it. He’ll be lucky to get a couple of guys with shovels and a truck full of asphalt.

They stopped building Stadiums and hotels with road fund taxes and used them to repair roads here.

They “redid” ours a couple months ago, and by redoing them, I mean they spread a layer of oil, then gravel with a lot of dust in it. The dust still hasn’t settled. We can take one of our vehicles to the car wash, and by the time we get home it’s covered with dust again.

I’m with Gray on this one, our neighborhood was scheduled for repaving this summer. Multiple street closures later, there’s still several side streets to be repaved, one has fresh asphalt ending mid-street and work stopped over a month ago. Oh well!

Fortunately, it’s very rare a street department, or even contractor, has to go through the extremes he’s imagining. It usually involves a cold-planer, milling the road down a few inches (giving it the “corduroy” texture), a “shim layer” of asphalt, and a final layer.

And the budgets that most USA cities have mean yo’ll have them patching it in 5 years and this type of work in 10. Shorter if you live in snow country.