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, the Atlantic’s CityLab was on it.
The statement that Iowa should have fewer roads does not mean what anti-road and anti-car groups want it to mean. It has everything 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).
The following statistics on Iowa’s road system — from dirt or at least gravel to interstates — come from a Federal Highway Administration database found via this link:
- Iowa ranks 14th in the nation in total lane miles.
- Iowa ranks seventh in the nation in lane miles per capita, using 2010 census numbers.
- Iowa ranks fifth in the nation in total lane mileage of rural roads, but 32nd in total lane mileage of urban roads.
By those numbers, Iowa is punching above its weight in road miles. Iowa’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, Iowa is the only state in the Union whose population didn’t increase by 50 percent after 1900. “The system is going to shrink” means that counties — which control more than three-quarters of Iowa’s entire lane mileage and Iowa’s bridges — are going to have to consider abandoning some of those section-line roads. That, in turn, is going to hurt rural areas even more.
CityLab, as well as other anti-road and anti-car websites including the one whose group’s leader is quoted in the Gazette, are completely overlooking that component of the situation. Iowa is not going to stop building major highways and urban arterials. A decrease in system mileage will come at the county level. When you read Trombino’s actual words (see the CityLab link at top), it should be understood in that context. At least one commenter at StrongTowns got it.
To connect Trombino’s statement to “peak car” or think it holds any significant implications for public transit or bicycles is to fundamentally misread the situation.
