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Smaller towns unpaving way for commuters
Heavy traffic on rural roads has some getting roughed up

Too many cars are finding their way onto the narrow farm roads of West Marlborough Township, Pa., and they're going too fast, says farm owner and town supervisor Hugh Lofting. So he has a plan: Turn the asphalt roads back to gravel.

At 6:30 a.m., when Lofting goes outside to tend his chickens and turkeys, "there's just car after car coming down the road. Ten years ago, there were hardly any."

Increased development in Chester County, a horsy and still relatively rural patch of Pennsylvania about 50 miles west of Philadelphia, is causing commuter traffic to spill onto back roads.

Lofting's plan is a sign of a struggle by people who want to control the growth and traffic that are changing where they live. "It's not typical, but it certainly reflects the growing desire of people to have communities that are not always subordinated to transportation," says Kevin McCarty of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, a non-profit group that advocates for pedestrians and public transit.

So next spring, as an experiment, the township plans to chop up the surface of a three-quarter-mile stretch of Wilson Road — a two-lane road bordered by horse farms — cover it with gravel and seal it with oil.

When Lofting proposed returning the roads to gravel, "Everybody kind of scratched their head and said, ‘Yeah, it would slow people down,' " he says. He hopes it will keep some traffic out of the township altogether.

Unpaved roads are rare: Just 5% of the 3.7 million miles of roads in the USA are not paved, according to the Federal Highway Administration. And in a country where automobiles have long ruled, and where making a road bigger is referred to as "improving" it, ripping up asphalt is even rarer.

"It's a very controversial thing," says Gary Toth, planning director of the New Jersey Department of Transportation. Toth is working on a plan to replace a riverfront expressway in Trenton with a boulevard linked to city streets. "We were all trained to design roads for high speeds and mobility. … We're beginning to figure out we need some balance."

In rural Tinicum Township, Pa., on the Delaware River north of Philadelphia, residents can apply to have a road designated as "scenic." Then the township can choose to quit maintaining the crushed-stone-and-oil surface, letting the road revert to dirt over time. So far, that's been done on two of four scenic roads, says township supervisor Nick Forte.

"The advantage to the municipality is it is a traffic-calming technique. There's little or no speeding along these roads," Forte says. "It was a proactive attempt to preserve the character of our community."

"Traffic calming" is the design of roads to slow or even discourage traffic. Orlando, like many places seeking to enhance historic ambience, has torn up 5 miles of asphalt streets in residential and commercial neighborhoods to reveal the bricks underneath.

Brick streets are "a little rougher. They're a little noisier," City Engineer Rick Howard says. "And I think people know that and they just react accordingly."

Returning streets to brick has cut traffic by 10% and lowered speeds, he says. Orlando also has about 45 miles of brick streets that have never been paved.

The city removes the asphalt on a street when a majority of property owners request it. But for every homeowner who thinks brick streets are charming and improve property values, "there's just as many people who think they're too rough, they're too noisy," Howard says.

If unpaving West Marlborough's Wilson Road succeeds in reducing traffic, Lofting hopes to do the same to all the township's narrow rural roads. "That's going to keep traffic where you want it (on main thoroughfares), and it's going to keep the horse people happy," he says.

Lofting, who rents his farm to a racehorse trainer, remembers Wilson Road before it was paved. After the asphalt went down, not only did he find himself speeding, but "it just kind of took the whole character away from that whole section of the road," he says.

"And I'm sure 85% of people would disagree with me."