Civic Journalism PA's roads

A major problem that has been facing our local communities for a long time now is the lack of the quality of the roads we drive on. For many years now there has been an ongoing joke in Pennsylvania about how the roads in the state are not maintained properly and are terrible to drive on. This ongoing joke is based on truth, most of Pennsylvania's roads including our community's is plagued with potholes and poorly maintained streets. This problem affects everyone that drives in the valley and would be a quality of life improvement for everyone. Not only is it uncomfortable to drive on an uneven and rough road but it is also bad for the car. Potholes can damage suspension causing divers the need to pay the fees of getting their vehicle repaired. This can hurt less wealthy members of the community that can’t afford these repairs on a regular basis. Not only does the local government not take action to fix roads most of the time, but when they do it sometimes makes the road worse. An example of this is when the local government repaved a local road in Sayre name Roosevelt Street. The government decided to not repave the road but do something called tar and chip. This is the process where they lay tar over the road and then but put gravel on it. This method was chosen because it was said to be cheaper. But this method led to an in town road which was paved and smooth to become what is essentially a dirt road. The gravel placed on it soon went into all of the home owners yards and driveways. This led to damage to some of the driveways. The method used also caused the manholes in the street to be at a lower elevation compared to the rest of the street making all of the manholes into large potholes. This action taken by the government led to the road being much worse than it was before, many of the homeowners claim that it is a pain to drive on and is an eyesore for the community. So how do we fix this problem? The first step is to work on repaving several of the roads around the town, and not just tarring and chipping them. Either tearing them up and repaving them or sealing up the potholes. The roads also must be repaved more frequently which entails them being repaved every 10 to 15 years. But to do this the local government will either need to limit funding for other projects to get enough money for the repaving or higher taxes. These solutions would cause the valley to be a much more enjoyable place to live compared to the way it is now.

This picture shows the manhole covers after the road was redone.  As shown it in the image the manhole covers are much lower than the surrounding road cause the car shake around when driving over them.  There are spacers which are normally used to prevent this from happening but the local government did not use these when repaving the road.  

This image shows the state of the road after it was repaved.  As the image shows the road is very reminiscent of a country road and not an in town street such as this one.  

This image shows the abundance of gravel that enters the driveways and yards of all the residents that live on the street.  This gravel can cause damage to the driveways which requires for them to be repaved costing the homeowners a large amount of money.