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Location: Nashville, Tennessee, United States

3/28/2003

Saving on Paving
Today's Tennessean reports on what cutting the Tennessee Department of Paving Transportation's budget by 9 percent will mean. It will mean fewer orange barrels, as TDOT cancels 435 miles of road resurfacing projects. The story says TDOT tries to resurface roads every 12 years and is roughly on schedule. Two thoughts: Anyone who has ever spent much time driving in Tennessee gets the impression that TDOT resurfaces many roads far more often than every 12 years. But even if we choke back our skepticism and believe TDOT only resurfaces roads every 12 years, the delay in repaving 435 miles of roads is a rather small thing.

According to TDOT's website, Tennessee has 87,259 miles of road, of which 13, 752 miles are state-maintained highways. That is 16 percent of the total highway miles within Tennessee. Do the math: 12,752 miles of roads divided by 12 means TDOT intends to resurface approximately 1,146 miles of state highway per year. That's 1.33 percent of the total miles of state highways. The 435 miles represents less than half (38 percent) of the roads that TDOT would, on average, resurface in a single year.

And those 435 miles that won’t get repaved this year are a very small portion - just one half of one percent - of Tennessee's highway system. Chances are, drivers in Tennessee won't notice the difference if TDOT has to delay those projects a year or two.