Deforest City Blues: Our road system - it’s a Catch 44

I’ve read we have 3,500 kms of road lanes in London.

I’m not sure if that’s higher per capita than other major cities in Canada but it certainly sounds like a lot.

Actually, the amount of tarmac appears to be more than enough - even more than we can handle - when we look at how much we spend on roads and how well we keep up on the repairs.

Apparently, we spend $20 million annually on work related to our streets and “one half of them are in the ‘now-need' category,” i.e., now need repairs or replacement. (Nov. 24, London Free Press)

You might think that $20 million is a huge amount of money (and it is; I’ve got 12 bucks in my pocket and I feel over the moon!) but when you consider the costs of road work it’s a drop in the tar pits.

According to Deforest City staff, “you would find the budget is so small it would take 110 years to deal with all the road conditions on those minor streets.”


["Cathcart St. is lookin' good and I'm not dead": photo GH]

See, that’s not counting the major roads which take priority.

In other words, we’re in a Catch-44, a bad trap, twice as bad as a Catch-22.

We’re building and paving roads today that we’ll never repair or replace in the future as far as present home owners are concerned, because they’ll be dead.

Will we build more roads? Count on it. It’s happening right now in a far-off suburb named after some wildlife that no longer lives in the area.

Will we increase the road budget substantially? I seriously doubt it. We live in a tax-free zone and household, provincial and national debt is growing like a weed.

Is this a good time to discuss other infrastructure Catch-44s we’ll face in the future, e.g., hydro, gasoline, housing costs?

Maybe later.

***

Catch-44 was mentioned here, as well.

Such a cheery thought, eh.

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