Published: July 10, 2009 04:32 pm      

Aging roads

Southern West Virginia has many needs

A new study is suggesting that West Virginia will need to find nearly $5 billion over the next 10 years to maintain roads and bridges that it calls “among the deadliest in the nation.”

TRIP, a nonprofit, Washington, D.C.-based transportation research group, unveiled the report at a highway construction project in South Charleston Wednesday to draw attention to what it calls an issue vital to the safety and economic vitality of the state, the Associated Press reported.

The group concluded that 8 percent of the state’s roads are in poor condition with another 29 percent in mediocre condition. It also found that 15 percent of bridges 20 feet or longer are “structurally deficient,” with another 22 percent “functionally obsolete.”

While the study argued those terms don’t necessarily mean the bridges are unsafe, it does mean they need more attention and maintenance work.

The study further concluded the poor condition of roads and bridges may play a role in the state’s high traffic fatality rate. Based on federal data, the report found that from 2003 to 2007, West Virginia had a rate of 2.1 fatalities per 100 million miles of travel, or the third highest rate in the country.

We believe this report should be seen as a call to action by state officials. While we have heard much discussion in recent months about the so-called urgent repair needs along the 88-mile West Virginia Turnpike, highway officials haven’t had much to say about the condition of other roads and bridges across the state, particularly those here in southern West Virginia where some of the oldest and most obsolete of all state bridges can be found.

The new report is also a reminder of the urgent need to complete new roadways in the Mountain State, including the King Coal Highway, the Coalfields Expressway and the Shawnee Parkway.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly known as the federal stimulus plan, awarded only $211 million for roads and bridge improvements in the Mountain State, a figure the new report is calling inadequate. Further complicating the lack of federal stimulus dollars is the fact that all of the funds earmarked for the state’s Third Congressional District were sent to Raleigh County by state Transportation Secretary Paul Mattox for the East Beckley Bypass. Urgent transportation needs in the deep south counties were ignored, including McDowell County — which still doesn’t have a four-lane highway in the year 2009.

We urge state transportation official to instead take a serious look at the TRIP study. It’s an alarming reminder of the real transportation needs facing the Mountain State, and southern West Virginia in particular — including those roads and bridges that aren’t supported by toll dollars and are in urgent need of repair now.