{"id":6360,"date":"2015-07-14T10:11:10","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T15:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=6360"},"modified":"2015-07-14T01:44:19","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T06:44:19","slug":"on-the-iowa-dot-directors-fewer-roads-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2015\/07\/on-the-iowa-dot-directors-fewer-roads-statement\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Iowa DOT director&#8217;s &#8220;fewer roads&#8221; statement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The director of the Iowa Department of Transportation, Paul Trombino, said recently the state of Iowa is going to have a smaller road system. This potentially explosive statement has been <a href=\"http:\/\/thegazette.com\/iowa-dot-director-road-system-will-shrink-20150713\">picked up by the Gazette<\/a>, but before that,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.citylab.com\/commute\/2015\/07\/iowa-makes-a-bold-admission-we-need-fewer-roads\/398021\/\">the Atlantic&#8217;s CityLab<\/a>\u00a0was on it.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>The statement that Iowa should have fewer roads does not mean what anti-road and anti-car groups want it to mean.<\/em><\/strong> It has\u00a0<em>everything<\/em> to do with the population struggles of rural Iowa. This needs to be made crystal clear immediately (except, unfortunately, the initial opinions are a week out).<\/p>\n<p>The following statistics on Iowa&#8217;s road system \u2014 from dirt or at least gravel to interstates \u2014 come from a Federal Highway Administration database <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.cubitplanning.com\/2010\/02\/road-miles-by-state\/\">found via this link<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Iowa ranks 14th in the nation in total lane miles.<\/li>\n<li>Iowa ranks seventh in the nation in lane miles per capita, using 2010 census numbers.<\/li>\n<li>Iowa ranks fifth in the nation in total lane mileage of rural roads, but 32nd in total lane mileage of urban roads.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>By those numbers, Iowa is punching above its weight in road miles. Iowa&#8217;s system of gravel and farm-to-market roads, built on just about every section line that could hold one in the late 19th to mid-20th century, came when people were more evenly distributed and lived on smaller farms. That system is now serving a continuously shrinking rural population. Remember, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/govbeat\/wp\/2013\/09\/16\/iowa-sees-rapidly-aging-population\/\">Iowa is the only state in the Union whose population didn&#8217;t increase by 50 percent after 1900<\/a>. &#8220;The system is going to shrink&#8221; means that counties \u2014 <em>which control more than three-quarters of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.iowadot.gov\/about\/Roads,Streets,andBridges.html\">Iowa&#8217;s entire lane mileage<\/a>\u00a0and Iowa&#8217;s bridges<\/em> \u2014 are going to have to consider abandoning some of those section-line roads. That, in turn, is going to hurt rural areas even more.<\/p>\n<p>CityLab, as well as other <a href=\"http:\/\/rebelmetropolis.org\/iowa-dot-embraces-the-logic-of-smart-decline\/\">anti-road and anti-car websites<\/a> including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.strongtowns.org\/journal\/2015\/7\/6\/iowa-dot-chief-the-system-is-going-to-shrink\">the one whose group&#8217;s leader is quoted in the Gazette<\/a>, are completely overlooking that component of the situation. <strong>Iowa is not going to stop building major highways and urban arterials.<\/strong> A decrease in system mileage will come at the county level. When you read Trombino&#8217;s actual words (see the CityLab link at top), it should be understood in that context. At least one commenter at StrongTowns got it.<\/p>\n<p>To connect Trombino&#8217;s statement to &#8220;peak car&#8221; or think it holds any significant implications for public transit or bicycles is to fundamentally misread the situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The director of the Iowa Department of Transportation, Paul Trombino, said recently the state of Iowa is going to have a smaller road system. This potentially explosive statement has been picked up by the Gazette, but before that,\u00a0the Atlantic&#8217;s CityLab\u00a0was &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2015\/07\/on-the-iowa-dot-directors-fewer-roads-statement\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[13,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-highway-miscellaneous","category-iowa-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6360"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6363,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6360\/revisions\/6363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}