Our crumbling roads

I've never understood the lack of accountability in building new roads even as older roads crumble. If we can't keep up with the maintenance of our existing roads, what makes people think we can also maintain the newer roads?

That's a question that a new study, Road Work Ahead, looks at. Perhaps predictably, the study points the finger at politicians who favor new roads to keeping older roads in shape. I've drove on roads that made me livid-particularly Highway 100 west of Howell Avenue in Oak Creek-because they were over-designed and over-engineered but under-used.

I'm sure you all know of a road like that-a brand-new road with multiple lanes and turning lanes that doesn't appear to be justified by the actual traffic (or destinations). Yet near the airport, there is a road with a single lane in each direction and no turning lanes which serve many hotels on it and is quite literally crumbling. Not the image Wisconsin wants to present to tourists and business travellers, is it?

There are similiar overbuilt roads in Racine County, Waukesha County, and I'm sure many other counties. My suspicion is that they were designed and built to encourage development. Nothing wrong with that by itself, but what I'm seeing often seems nothing more than land speculation at the expense of existing businesses.

This, of course, is subsidized by the federal government, the state government, and municipalities. But ultimately, we all pay for it with our tax dollars.