Cannot keep quiet about road conditions any longer

Susan Witt, Morgantown
I know that everyone in Monongalia County is fed up with the condition of our roads and what appears to be the lack of timely repairs to them, but after attending a family reunion in Calhoun County. last weekend I cannot keep quiet.
The roads there in one of the poorest counties in the state were in remarkable shape. The small back road that we traveled was recently paved, potholes were filled and leveled and the sides of the road were in much better shape than ours.
Our county is one of the largest and wealthiest in the state and has the distinction of being the one with the worst roads. I have called numerous times in the last three years to get the ditches along Halleck Road on the W.Va. 73 end cleared so that water has somewhere to go, but I am told every time no ditching machine is available.
Whatever happened to the good old shovel and manpower? It does no good to dig a ditch that has no place to drain. The culverts are blocked in numerous places. It doesn’t take a college degree or a CDL to dig a ditch or cut weeds. It does no good to repair roads that are not maintained to prevent them from getting into the same shape year after year.
I applaud the work being done on the Goshen Road-W.Va. 73 intersection .It needed done, but most of the people using that road are out-of-state truckers or travelers who do not pay taxes in the county and are some of the ones tearing up our roads to start with.
Truck traffic on W.Va. 73 demolished that road, and we are holding our breath hoping that it will be repaired this summer.
Why do fully loaded trucks travel W.Va. 73 and return via the interstate when traveling to Fairmont and other places south? Why isn’t the weight limit the same as the weight limit on I-79 bridges?
Would lowering the weight limit on W.Va. 73 and having scales in place on that road more frequently cut down on its wear and tear? Now, we have a cement plant on W.Va. 73, too. That’s not going to help. Of course by the time the really bad section gets resurfaced other sections will be gone.
Halleck Road has gotten so bad that it is unsafe to drive at times due to runoff and potholes that force people to change lanes to miss them.
We have wasted a large part of the summer getting the roads repaired and a good chance to give some people in the state who say they can’t find work a job, even if it is manual labor.