Scott Mooneyham’s latest column questions the wisdom of the state continuing to pave dirt roads. He mentions an example from Cumberland County, in which the state paid $728,547 to pave a mile of Garden Williams Road to serve two houses.
That the state’s dirt road paving efforts have reached such poor returns for the money spent comes as little surprise. Indeed, it was something that then JLF Director of Research Jonathan Jordan and I wrote about in a 1999 JLF policy report titled “Road & Track”:
Over time, however, as densely populated dirt roads have been paved, the return – as measured by houses per mile paved — has gone down substantially. This is called diminishing marginal returns in economic terms, and is to be expected. Given North Carolina announced priorities, this translates into spending more and more money to pave additional roads to serve fewer and fewer people. At the same time, the state’s road maintenance is wholly inadequate (excluding interstates and road widening), with only have as much money provided as called for by DOT paving guidelines, In short, North Carolina is paving a lot of roads, but without proper maintenance, the formerly dirt roads simply deteriorate and become poorly maintained paved roads.
