I do not own a car, but this past month of March I borrowed one from a friend of mine—a test drive, if you will, in contemplation of whether or not I should buy one of my own.  It having been almost two years since I last owned a vehicle, it was a great reminder on the realities of driving a car.  First, I learned again to enjoy the freedom that a car affords me--not relying on a bus, when available, or the generosity of others, or a cab.  I was also reminded of how unbelievably expensive cars can be---over a hundred dollars a week to keep it running (an amount that, ultimately, made me conclude that having one of my own would be too costly).  But most importantly to my point in this particular article, I was reminded of those road craters in Vermont we call potholes, and just how bad they have become. The Sad State of Vermont Roads
    The state of Vermont roads are a mess, and yet the cost of fixing them is beyond what we can pay.  Moreover, the realities of peak oil, climate change, and harsh, road-destroying winters in Vermont makes maintaining roads--always temporarily--an increasingly unsustainable undertaking.  And yet, what are Vermonters to do when we have potholes deep enough to constitute shallow ponds right in the middle of some of our busiest roads?  I really wouldn’t be too interested in the unsustainability of road maintenance when I’m dragging my muffler behind me down Route 2.
    When the governor asked the Legislature for $3 million recently to go towards fixing the worst of our roads in a plan called “Operation Smooth Ride,” it brought to my mind the story of the Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the dyke.  The questionable taste of that story aside, the moral of it was that sometimes a quick fix is ultimately a fruitless venture.  I’m not faulting the governor for this.  What he finds himself facing is a largely unfixable problem, in which, unfortunately for him, everyone is going to be pissed off regardless of how much money he spends and, in the end, must take away from other projects.  
    There are no statistics indicating the ranking of Vermont roads verses the rest of the U.S., and it doesn’t take numbers for Vermonters to see how far many of our roads have deteriorated.  Regardless, to give this blog some legitimacy, I’ll throw out a couple of good ones.  This year’s budget only allows for 98 miles of paving on the state highway system—that’s actual paving, not crack-n-seal maintenance—which, according to House Transportation Committee Chairman Richard Westman—equates to about a mile paved every 32 years in Vermont.
    Not that the state isn’t doing its best to address this problem head-on.  Recently, the state changed how it ranks road conditions so as to allow for more positive reviews.  That is to say, the folks in charge felt that the words chosen to rank roads generally allowed for only negative reviews; for example, the highest a road could rank previously was “good,” as opposed to “excellent,” or “super awesome.”  However, to give our roads a more realistic ranking, I believe this should be left up to the motorists.  I would rank sections of Route 116 through Hinesburg as “fucking awful,” for example.  Roads could also be “really terrible,” “treacherous,” or “migraine-inducing.” 
Regardless, my point is—boiled down and simplistic as it may seem—that allocating a ton of money for road repair would appear to be addressing the problem in the long-term, but in actuality may turn out to be money not well spent.  It is an unsustainable venture, in as much as road alterations and repair almost universally tend to be.  And as the cost of creating and maintaining roads increases—due to the rising coasts of oil, steel, and aggregate—while the price of driving simultaneously becomes less and less affordable, the question remains as to whether we are investing Vermonter’s time and money wisely.