During the last week’s Association of Indiana Counties meeting in Indianapolis literature was passed out concerning Indiana Road Funding.
In 2010, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave Indiana a D+ grade for its infrastructure.
Currently 19 counties have conducted PASER rating of their roads and Marshall County is one of those counties. Over half of the paved county roads in the state are recommended for improvement based on their PASER rating with 51% of the paved county roads having a rating of fair to poor.
County highway, city and town street department maintain nearly 90% of all public roads in Indiana with the counties having 69.1% of all public road in the state.
The information provided to county officials indicates that 25% of Indiana county bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Counties maintain 12,836 bridges and an estimated 260,000 culverts while INDOT maintains 5,596 bridges. Locally Marshall County has 9 bridges with a poor rating.
The International Roughness Index (IRI) traditional standard for smooth pavement is 125 with anything greater recommended for improvement. 77% of paved county roads exceed an IRI of 125 while 46% of paved county roads surveyed have an IRI greater than 200.
Road funding matters, because properly funded roads mean safe roads and properly maintained and constructed road produce economic development. Poorly funded roads are unsafe and the injury crash rate on local roads in Indiana is more than twice the injury crash rate on state road.
