AP Gov pd2A - "Unpaved roads inside Wellsboro Borough"
Unpaved roads inside Wellsboro Borough
Unpaved roads inside Wellsboro Borough
January 21, 2022
Do you live inside the Borough? Is your road dirt?
It’s rough! As someone who lives on a dirt road inside the borough, it’s very frustrating to drive outside the borough on paved roads just to have to come home to a grimy, bumpy, pothole-y road.
The Facts
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Unpaved Roads are Dangerous in the Winter: Roads become treacherous because of the ice and snow. Dirt roads are much more difficult to plow than paved roads because of how uneven they are. In the winter, car wrecks increase drastically on all roads, even more so on unpaved roads
- (Picture 1) As you can see, unpaved roads are dangerous and a car actually fell off the side into the snowy ditch and couldn’t get out.
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Scarification vs. Paving: About every two years, the Borough will run a scarifier, or blader, over our road. Then, they’ll lay oil down to keep the dirt in place. According to (https://alphapavingtexas.com/)” In general, asphalt pavements have an average life of approximately 25 years if properly maintained. Without proper care, however, most asphalt pavements lose 10 percent of their structural integrity within 10 years, and after 20 years, the pavement will have lost 45 percent of its integrity and initial durability.” This means that over the time period of 20 years, the borough could've other paved once, or scarified 10 times - which is what they’re deciding to do. This is proof that paving is significantly cheaper than scarifying.
- (Picture 2) This is what a scarified road looks like, and how scarifying happens
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Paved Roads Outside the Borough: There are areas outside the borough that are paved and have very nice roads. It makes sense that all the roads inside the borough should be prioritized before the roads outside
- (Picture 3) Red lines are unpaved roads inside the borough, yellow lines are paved roads outside the borough (google maps)
Conclusion
According to an unofficial count, unpaved roads during the winter are especially dangerous, they cost more to maintain, and about 10% of roads inside the borough are unpaved. Whereas about 75% of roads exiting the borough are paved. Residents inside the borough must pay the same taxes regardless of whether their road is paved. It is an inconsistent distribution of funds to have only 90% of borough roads paved. These are three very good reasons to make a push to pave all borough roads.
