“The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.” This quote aptly describes how well Maine keeps up with its road maintenance. There seems to be no way we can catch up with repairs, because the chances are pretty good that there will never be enough money.

Gov. Paul LePage has proposed a $100 million dollar transportation bond, $46 million of which would be designated for highway construction, reconstruction and rehabilitation.

$30 million would help improve our bridges, $19 million is earmarked for ports, harbors, airports and railroads, and $5 million would be reserved for Maine towns for secondary roads.

This sounds like a lot of money. However, when you consider how many miles of roads we maintain and the number of bridges, it doesn’t seem like so much.

Most of us would agree that our roads are a mess. While we’re told our bridges are safe, some of us question it, knowing how long they’ve been around. We all get excited when a road we travel on a regular basis gets repaved and improved, but before we know it, in a few short years we’re back to square one, long before it’s on the schedule for rehab.

There simply isn’t enough money to follow the kind of repair and replacement schedule we would like. What also hurts many Maine roads is that they don’t have a solid base, unlike neighboring New Hampshire.  We repave, and in no time at all, the newly resurfaced road or stretch of highway is a mess.

Most of are destined to spend the better part of our lifetime complaining about the condition of our roads, probably because we’re too young to remember (thank goodness) when some of our most heavily traveled streets were little more than muddy ruts for much of the year.

We love looking at the old photos and reading newspaper accounts of local transportation in horse and buggy days, before the invention of the almighty automobile.

We can remember our mother telling about trips from her father’s grocery store in Round Pond down to New Harbor and South Bristol taking orders one day, and then making delivery a day or two later, all via horse-drawn carriage. Both trips took the better part of the day.

Today’s motorist wants to reach his or her destination by the fastest means possible, with no delays, potholes, frost heaves, or rough spots in the road.

We curse when we encounter pavement that bounces our vehicle all over the place, sure we’re probably going to face yet another trip to the auto repairman for a front end alignment.

Horses and carriages were far more kind to our dirt roads of yesteryear than the vehicles and drivers of today are to their paved roads. We also share our roads with heavy trucks and other equipment, which add to the wear and tear on hot-topped surfaces.
So, we’ve got to expect we won’t get many years out of any repaving project (unless, of course, we decide not to drive on the new pavement). Maybe we could put a limit on the number of vehicles or hours of use. Guess that’s not too likely to happen.

With little frost in the ground this year due to our mild winter, we’ll probably have a little less to complain about this spring.

But don’t fret; there are sure to be an ample supply of potholes, construction projects, Sunday drivers and other annoyances to keep us grumbling. Happy motoring!