Have Your Say: Granular Road Conversion (March 14, 2019)

To the Editors,

In Europe, where I lived for some years, politicians had a favourite tactic for gaining rural votes. They paved granular roads as fast as possible. In the short term, families along those roads were delighted. However, maintenance expenses ballooned over time. No one foresaw the increased cost of repairing wash-outs, filling potholes, and eventually remaking surfaces in the case of paved roads. In the longer term, any hoped-for improvement was undone by unaffordable upkeep.

On first arriving back in Canada, I was relieved that we did not seem to be falling into that trap. And then I saw Haldimand’s announcement of an expedited conversion plan for “all County roads … by 2025.” That plan runs contrary to the engineering wisdom that it only makes sense to replace granular roads that serve over 200 cars a day. In fact, some US jurisdictions actually went back to granular roads in low-traffic areas because maintenance costs got out of hand.