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Too far gone?

If anyone in our area needed a reminder that the efforts to maintain our state’s roadways has been ridiculously underfunded, all they had to do was listen to the discussions during last week’s Brooke County Commission meeting.

Commissioners were approached by a county resident who expressed continued concerns over the status of U.S. 22, which, despite various attempts at “fixing” its crumbling surface over the years, continues to present unevenness, with a variety of cracks, craters and bumps.

State Route 27, also known as Washington Pike, is another road of concern, with residents seeing it as being long neglected to the point that even a patching program set up for it this year seems to have provided little relief.

Those are just two examples, but they are big ones given they are among the primary roads traveled by residents in our area. We’re sure anyone reading this can come up with at least a half dozen other examples of state roads in need of some type of improvement to better serve the motoring public.

The problem has, and most like will continue to be, a lack of necessary funding.

According to our report from the commission meeting, officials have said the money needed to truly provide a fix for Washington Pike is more than our entire region is funded through the West Virginia Division of Highways.

The worse news is that, as we’ve reported several times in recent months, state officials have expressed concern about the state’s budget in the years ahead, meaning the chances of increased funds for many of our programs won’t be happening for some time.

Providing safe corridors of transportation should always be among the state’s priorities, no matter who is governor or in the Legislature. Sure, there have been programs – such as former Gov. Justice’s Roads to Prosperity, several projects of which haven’t even started, let alone been completed – but it seems as if there is just no catching up to get us where we need to be.

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